Although the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform can be a great way to get more exposure for your project or product, I think that most creators underestimate the amount of marketing they themselves must do in order to start trending on the platform or to begin to get the attention of strangers.
Marketing and promoting your Indiegogo campaign is tough! There may be a few tricks to get started quickly, but the reality is that you’re going to be spending a considerable amount of time each week working to get more backers for your campaign before your fundraising duration is up.
It’s likely that you’re in the middle of your campaign while reading this and starting to wonder “okay, so how do I get the word out?” If on the off chance you are preparing for an upcoming campaign or doing some research before you hit that launch button, I highly recommend reading this article which contains some important must-do items during the pre-launch phase.
Let’s discuss some of the ways that you can get more traffic, and hopefully backers to your campaign!
1. Advertising your campaign on FB, Google, Twitter, etc.
One of the frequent questions that I get from Indiegogo campaign creators is “should I advertise my campaign on _____.” My answer almost always is, “it depends.”
Do you have an idea of the types of conversions you are seeing? By that I mean that if 100 relevant people come to your campaign, you have determined that 10-15 of those people will pledge an average of $25 each or you will bring in $250-$375. After considering your costs and that conversion ratio, it might make sense to spend $150-$200 to bring 100 people to your campaign.
Remember, the goal here is not to “profit” from running a crowdfunding campaign. The goal is to get as many supporters for the initial prototype of your product or creative work as possible and to get feedback or word of mouth marketing once you hit your goal, ship out your rewards, and your backers have that product or work in their hands.
Discovering that conversion ratio is no easy task, especially when you are running an ongoing campaign. You might have an idea of your typical conversions in the pre-launch phase from the number of people that opt-into an interested email list or buy one of your other products.
If you don’t have your conversion ratio nailed down, advertising is still a good way to bring in more traffic, but just know that there is no guarantee that traffic will convert into pledges, social shares, or backers.
If you’re interested in learning more about advertising, I’ve put together a short guide on the different types of ads that you can run and the benefits/drawbacks. Otherwise, you can check out some of these services to advertise your campaign:
- Facebook Ads
- Google Ads
- Kicktraq Ads
- Advertisements on This Website
- Twitter Ads
- BuySellAds (advertisements on blogs like our listing).
- YouTube ads.
2. Conduct PR Outreach to Bloggers and Media Sites
The goal is to find an audience for your Indiegogo campaign. Blogs, media publications, and online newspapers have a built in audience that care about particular trends, subjects, and stories.
Getting a reporter or blogger to write about your project or any product is very similar to traditional sales in business. You must convince that individual of the benefits of writing about your project, why it’s a good fit for their audience, and why their audience will love the story.
This is best communicated by having a compelling story behind the creation of your campaign that is inline with the type of content the publication is looking for. For example, one publication may care more about the novelty of the project and another might care more about the cause or problem it’s aiming to remedy.
If you’d like an introduction to PR outreach, I’ve put together an article on the key aspects of a good PR story. You can also find a few more resources here:
- Free and paid press release services.
- PR tools to consider using.
- Blogger outreach tips.
- Reporter outreach tips.
3. Promote to Communities in a Non-Spammy Way
There’s a recurring theme here! You need to find existing communities or groups of people online and interest them in your campaign. However, you shouldn’t just say “Hey check out my campaign.” That’s the equivalent of being the guy at a networking event who just hands out business cards and doesn’t really take a time to develop a relationship with others.
I know that it takes a lot of work to engage in online communities, especially when your campaign is ongoing. Ideally, this should be done before you launch.
The best way that I’ve found to promote to online communities is to first seek to understand and then be understood. Most of these communities, be it Reddit, a LinkedIn group, a forum, or a FB group, have “key members” who are influencers and there on a daily basis. Connect with these influencers, get to know them, and they’ll be more likely to help get the word out to relevant members in the community.
Another way to get people interested in your campaign is to share news stories about your project, interesting updates, or things that you’ve learned from running the project that others might benefit from. Seek to add value in some way.
For example, if you developed a new tabletop game and you’re promoting to a board game community, then share some of the things you’ve learned from making your game! Give feedback on other people’s games. Share problems that you encountered when building it and how you overcame it. These are all ways to get positive attention in the community.
After you have provided some value, you can make an ask for reciprocation. Your goal should be to get people interested in your project or at least to look at it. Don’t bring up pledging right away. First gauge whether or not they are interested in the project or if they think it’s cool.
Even if no on is interested in your particular campaign, try to get them on your website, which ideally has some kind of an email opt-in or way for them to follow you so that they can be notified of future updates and all that promotional effort doesn’t go to waste!
- Music Project Communties.
- Film Project Communities.
- Tabletop Game Communities.
- Tips on Industry Conventions/In-Person Events.
- 3D Printing Communities.
4. Social Media and Inbound Marketing
What is inbound marketing? This site has a good overview of the concept.
Basically, the goal of all social media marketing and inbound marketing in general is to first seek to delight followers and earn their attention with interesting links, content, or news. Then, occasionally, you can throw in a promotional message or “call to action.”
If you have no idea where to begin in terms of content to share, I’ve put together a guide on this topic. Otherwise, if you’re familiar with the concept, I would recommend splitting your promotional marketing between directing traffic to your campaign (video/updates/cool content) and your website (75/25 split. It’s not exact science). Your website should have some kind of email opt-in to make it easier for interested individuals to follow your progress. I use Mailchimp to manage my email list for the free crowdfunding course. It’s free up to 2,000 subscribers.
Social media is also a great tool to connect with journalists and influential websites that may be willing to write about or share your campaign in some fashion. You can stand out from the crowd by engaging with the account’s content or individual before trying to get them to promote you in some way.
Blogging is another form of inbound marketing which can be used to your advantage. In addition to sharing updates, you can also link to other websites that have been beneficial or websites in the niche you are targeting that you want to cite in some way. For example, Neil Patel, a famous blogger, has a great promotional technique for blogging, which I’ve quoted below.
“On my new blog, NeilPatel.com, you’ll notice that I have at least 100 external links per post.
Why?
Because I usually email out each of the sites I linked to with the following email:
Subject: I mentioned [insert their site name] in my latest post
Hey [insert their name],
I just wanted to let you know I am a huge fan of your work. I like it so much that I actually linked to [insert their website] within my latest blog post.
[Insert your blog post or crowdfunding campaign URL]
I would be honored if you checked it out. And if you love it, feel free to share it on the social web.
Your fan,
[Insert your name]
By doing this, you’ll gain social shares and eventually build up a large enough audience that can be leveraged to promote future posts.”
5. Paid Services and Marketing Firms
I honestly believe that the best route is to put in the work, learn to market your campaign, conduct trial and error tests, and grind it out! The other solution is to go the paid services route. There are a lot out there (these are some consultants I recommend).
Before deciding to go with any company, I would highly recommend researching every single company, particularly those that send you a message on Indiegogo. We’ve compiled some reviews on our forums (KickstarterForum, CrowdfundingForum). I’ve also conducted interviews with these consultants thus far:
In case you’d like to learn more about the paid services route, I’ve outlined my thoughts in-depth from having seen lots of Indiegogo campaigns in the past.
What campaign are you running?
Let me know in a comment below so I can check it out! Feel free to leave any questions :).
