In the process of CCO (Crowdfunding Campaign Optimization), you might have come across the term Gogofactor in the Indiegogo help center or on the Indiegogo blog.
If you haven’t, “Gogofactor” refers to the algorithm that Indiegogo uses to determine:
Search rankings, placement on the site, featured spots in our newsletter or blog, and inclusion in our press outreach.
The algorithm is merit-based, meaning that you, as a creator, have the ability to control whether or not you optimize your crowdfunding campaign and improve its page rank on the website.
In this article, we’re talking about:
- What is the GogoFactor?
- How you can optimize your campaign for increased traffic
- If optimizing your campaign in this way is truly worth it
Let’s get started!
What is Indiegogo’s GogoFactor?
Here’s what Indiegogo has to say about the Gogofactor:
“Your GoGoFactor is automatically measured by the number of times you share your campaign, update your contributors, update your campaign, or refer people using your custom URL. It also measures the overall level of contributor activity, including funding, comments, and pageviews. Campaigns with a high GoGoFactor are featured on our home page, in our social media outreach, and at conferences or in the press.”
“Your Gogofactor is a combination of many factors that measure the overall activity of your campaign along with the completeness of your pitch and media.
Your Gogofactor is a rolling average, so it’s important to continually keep your campaign active. Your campaign is ranked relative to all of the other campaigns on the site. By staying active, your Gogofactor will continue to go up.
We use gogofactor as our key measure because we find that there is a direct correlation between campaign activity and fundraising success.”
What This Means:
Indiegogo wants you to use their software and tools to keep people coming back to their website, which in turn will help you raise more funds and grow their revenue.
It’s a mutually-beneficial endeavor. The better your campaign trends, the more money you raise. And in turn, Indiegogo gets a larger haul (they take 5% of all money you raise.
How to Optimize the Gogofactor – Back End Management
1. If you’re going to share the campaign on social media or other means, always use your custom URL. You could store the url and any relevant links in Evernote or Google Docs so that you always have access to the information, even on the go with the accompanying iphone/android apps.
2. Do a campaign update once every 5 days (minimum). Even though this will factor into GoGoFactor, it’s also a good idea to keep your backers informed about your progress and answer any major questions that have come up.
3. Log into your Indiegogo account every day and perform an action. That could be sharing it via the specific social media sharing buttons Indiegogo provides, replying to comments, or doing a photo update.
4. Make sure that you pay attention to the “completeness of your pitch.
This means your campaign should:
– Have compelling reward tiers and more than 2-3. How many perks do other campaigns in your category offer?
– Have a video and images in the campaign text. Make sure your campaign’s pitch word count that is comparable to other campaigns in your category.
5. Update your campaign (not necessarily your contributors directly) with new images, facts, FAQ, etc. at least once a week.
Optimizing Campaign Front End Management
1. Plan to have your social network, friends, and family pledge 20-30% of your fundraising goal within the first week. Although you may not have as large of a social network as other campaigns in your category, gogofactor is a rolling average and your overall score may be better than other recently launched campaigns or campaigns that have stagnated and are no longer merit-worthy of having a high page rank.
2. Plan to drive your own traffic through PR outreach, forums, social media groups, emails, and more. There are two types of traffic: sustainable and temporary.
Temporary traffic might be when someone reads your email or tweet and clicks through to check out the campaign. This source of traffic is not repeatable. You must keep working to keep it flowing. Some types of news articles where you are featured will have a ripple effect and last upwards of a week, but eventually you must re-produce the effect.
The ripple effect might look like: A larger publication features your campaign. Other bloggers interested in that niche re-blog and link to the article with comments. All of those articles are tossed around social media. If there is something especially newsworthy, it may be picked up by another larger publication (ever notice how large publications tend to write about the same things?).
Sustainable traffic can come from blog or website articles that continue to deliver clicks if the article is “sticky” or continues to be relevant. I did a great interview on my Crowdfunding Demystified Podcasts that explains this here:
Insider Hacks to Raising More Than Half a Million on Indiegogo
Sustainable traffic can also come from being extremely helpful by publishing your own blog article, providing awesome content on Reddit that continues to be upvoted.
Strive to engage in both types (temporary and sustainable) in your campaign outreach to optimize the amount of traffic you are driving to your page. Yes, you should be doing this every day of your campaign.
3. Ask your core team of supporters to clear their browser cache each day and visit your campaign page throughout the day (ideally from a different IP address like a coffee shop). This is sort of a gray-hat cheating technique to boost your page-view factor. I don’t endorse it, but I figured I’d throw it out there.
4. Encourage your initial supporters to leave comments regularly on your campaign. I’ve already talked about the importance of comments, but in short: They will boost your Gogofactor, can be used as testimonials, increase the likelihood that strangers will comment, and will keep you in direct touch with your audience.
The basis of all small communities initially are the discussion section, whether it’s a blog, forum, or youtube video. You want a small community to form around your campaign.
5. Ask your core group of supporters to use the social media sharing widgets on your campaign page. I would always default to using the sharing tools that Indiegogo provides, as these are the metrics they can easily track and therefore will be more likely to include them in the Gogofactor algorithm.
Does this really work?
Again, your Gogofactor score is a rolling average and is compared against other campaigns in your section. Depending on the frequency and quality of campaigns Indiegogo is receiving, you may rank higher or lower at different types of the year, despite taking the same actions.
However, it definitely does work and keeping the pointers above in mind will improve your results.
Not only will you be featured on the homepage, but it basically means that Indiegogo will do a lot of the marketing grunt-work for you, such as:
- Featuring your project in their newsletter
- Writing a blog post about you
- Making social posts around your campaign
This is all stuff that you’ll have to do yourself no matter what; but having the platform behind you can be an opportunity to reach a huge audience that you may not have been able to acquire on your own.
Maintaining Momentum
Maintaning momentum is arguably one of the hardest aspects of crowdfunding.
The gut reaction for most creator’s I’ve spoken with is to choose a high goal (because they need a lot of money for an office, marketing materials, product, human resources) and a long duration (they want the maximum amount of time to collect donations or pledges).
Ironically, I find the opposite to be most effective. Having the lowest goal possible that will still allow you to create the project and deliver your rewards on time makes it easier to:
1. Maintain morale with your team as you progress
2. Reach the 20-30% mark that’s required to jumpstart funding and be recognized by the Gogofactor algorithm
3. Further incentivize backers and maintain momentum with stretch goals.
In addition, having a shorter campaign duration (~30 days) makes it easier to focus all of your energy during a concentrated time period and ensures that your efforts are spent productively.
Running a campaign is a lot of work and coordination. It’s better to ramp up and be laser focused for a shorter time period, than be lax and less driven over a longer timespan.
Key Conclusions
Optimizing your campaign to rank more highly on Indiegogo by hacking the Gogofactor will allow you to raise more funds for your crowdfunding campaign.
When it comes to crowdfunding, there’s a lot to consider. If you’d like personalized support, book a coaching call with me. Our agency has helped many people optimize campaigns and execute their marketing strategy, and we’re ready to go to work for you.
Not quite at the coaching stage yet? No problem. We’re got some great educational resources for you:
- Subscribe to the CrowdCrux email newsletter for weekly insights directly to your inbox.
- Visit our Youtube Channel for all the best insider tips, tricks, and secrets.
- Check out the Crowdfunding Demystified Podcast and this book for interviews with wildly successful creators who have run six-figure campaigns.
- The Kickstarter Launch Formula book and/or course that gives A to Z processes for launching your campaign.
Good luck with your campaign! We’re here to help if you need us.
