Indiegogo is a growing international crowdfunding platform with a diverse array of project categories. Creators ranging from inventors to artists have been using the website in greater numbers to finance new products and projects.
In this article, I’ll dive into some of the common mistakes and points to keep in mind when creating your first Indiegogo campaign. If you find these Indiegogo campaign tips to be helpful, leave a comment and let me know!
1. Don’t Skimp on the Video
According to the Indiegogo handbook, “projects that use a video raise 115% more money than campaigns that do not.” Not only should your campaign have a video, but it should also be in the sweet spot of 3-5 minutes and cover what the product is, why your team is raising funds, what those funds will be used for, and why you can pull off the project and make good on the rewards.
A video will help show strangers that you are serious about the crowdfunding project and that you have already been able to execute and build a working prototype. There have been more and more fraudulent crowdfunding campaigns in the news recently and it’s important to make every effort to demonstrate your credibility to potential backers.
2. Only Choose Flexible Funding if it Makes Sense
Most creators will default to choosing the ‘flexible funding’ option, where they will receive all the funds pledged to their Indiegogo campaign even if they do not hit their goal. The logic is that it takes so much work to run a crowdfunding campaign that they don’t want to risk not hitting their goal and losing all those funds that have been contributed.
However, if your ability to ship out rewards to backers is contingent on hitting your goal, then choosing flexible funding would not only severely delay rewards should you fail, but it also might lead to the possibility that you will never deliver on your rewards. Why? Because there is a funding gap between how much you’ve collected and what you actually need to complete the project.
If you’re going to choose flexible funding, then be sure that you can make good on your rewards even if you don’t hit your crowdfunding goal. For more information, check out flexible vs. fixed funding.
3. Make Your Pitch Scannable
One of the bigger turnoffs for a crowdfunding backer is to come to a page and just see a wall of text without any kind of dividers or easily digestible paragraph structure.
It’s likely that after watching your video, a backer might want to know more about a specific aspect of your project, like the founding team or how the funds will be used. Make it easy for them to find these sections by using clear headers or dividing images with header text.
You should also read your text pitch out loud to ensure that your writing style is natural and easy to understand. This will help catch awkward grammar errors and misspellings. If you read it out loud to another person, it will also help you figure out whether or not you need to provide more or less detail to get your points across.
4. Simple Rewards Are Better
It’s tempting to get complicated with rewards in the hopes of satisfying many different types of backers. However, I can guarantee you that it will make reward fulfillment a nightmare. In my interview with Maxwell Salzberg, the co-founder of BackerKit, we talked about how add-ons and multiple reward variations can initially seem appealing, but they will come back to haunt you later down the road.
Ask a friend to take a look at your reward section after watching your video and see if they understand what each tier is offering. What tiers stood out to them? Did they think they were priced appropriately?
In addition to keeping to the rule of simplicity, creators should also strive to give backers (especially early backers) a large discount off the eventual retail price. People who support your crowdfunding campaign are early adopters and deserve the best possible price. If you were not aware, most crowdfunding campaigns do not yield a large profit.
The goal of crowdfunding is not to make a heap of cash, but to get the name of your product out there, get it into the hands of beta testers, and use that momentum to launch your business or e-commerce store.
If you need help coming up with reward ideas, check out this post.
5. Begin Outreach Locally
Another statistic that Indiegogo has compiled since their launch in 2008 is that typically 30% of a project’s funds will come from friends and family. In my experience, this initial 30% not only gives the campaign social proof, but it also helps you rank in gogofactor more quickly and will increase the chance that strangers who visit your Indiegogo project will stay around to watch your video and browse through your campaign text.
You should aim to hit 30% of your fundraising goal within the first week (ideally first 3 days) to be in good shape. The best way to ensure this is to personally email, facebook message, and call each of your friends. Make sure that they understand what Indiegogo is, how it works, and when they should pledge their support.
This will give you a chance to answer any objections or qualms that they might have regarding your campaign.
After you feel comfortable about your personal and professional network’s willingness to support your project, it’s time to begin approaching local news publications and organizations. Getting a local PR hit will help getting press from other publications and also might lead to pledges when you launch.
After you’ve sufficiently networked in your local community, it’s time to begin crafting a broader marketing strategy.
6. Put Yourself In Their Shoes
When you begin doing PR outreach and marketing your project to niche communities, the worst thing that you can do is spam your link with a generic phrase hoping that people will take a look at your project. This does not work.
Pretend that you are at a cocktail party networking event. Would you form relationships or connections if you were to go around pushing your business card on everyone before they could get a word out? I don’t think so.
Always put yourself in the shoes of the person you are trying to reach and think of how they would like to be approached. If they are a journalist, they write for a particular readership and usually cover certain types of stories. How can you frame your pitch in a way that would get them excited to share it with their readership?
If you’re trying to get noticed in a niche community like a subreddit, take a few moments to check out the postings that have been received well. Have they been posts sharing experiences or news stories? If they are news stories, then it might be better to share a news story about your campaign then your campaign itself.
7. Build a Community
One of the most overlooked parts of an Indiegogo campaign is the comments section. In this section, you can engage with enthusiastic supporters and encourage backers to submit your project to websites or tell their friends about your campaign.
All great communities have a vibrant discussion section and the comments section is one way that you can get backers excited about your project reaching funding milestones. You can also use the comments section to address any complains or concerns that might be turning away potential new backers.
Finally, the comments section can lead to some great backer testimonials that you can include on your website later or in press releases or interviews.
8. If You Fail, Try Again!
For many creators, crowdfunding might be the first time that they’ve had to consider doing PR outreach, managing social media accounts, planning reward fulfillment logistics, and producing a pitch video.
It’s a lot of work and there are a lot of different types of hats you need to wear to be successful. Should you fail, think of it as a learning process. You can use your failure to figure out better ways to market your product to your target audience. You might also get the feedback that your product really isn’t needed in the world and that you should come up with another invention or idea.
There is no harm in taking another crack at it further down the road. I’ve met creators who have had both successful and unsuccessful campaigns. Some even failed at several campaigns before having a success.
Just remember, “It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success.” – Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
