Wanna raise money on Indiegogo?
I’ve been having a lot more entrepreneurs on my podcast who have successfully raised money on Indiegogo!
If you’re interested in discovering how to do the same, listen up. With this article, I want to get into some of the Indiegogo crowdfunding tips that I have for you.
These tips are going to help unlock the potential behind your product, because let’s face it.
You’ve been working hard on a prototype. You’ve been putting in your blood, sweat, and tears.
Now, it’s time to introduce it to the world so that you can get funding. Only, you gotta do it the right way, or no one’s going to notice!
Hope you enjoy today’s tips and don’t forget to hop on my newsletter.
1. Study Successful Projects
The first thing you’re gonna want to do before even putting together your campaign page is to start to study successful projects on Indiegogo and Kickstarter.
Begin to take notes.
How long is their pitch video?
What does their title emphasize?
How does their page read?
Pay attention to the emotions you feel as you’re watching the video. Study how people are interacting with their project.
This will help you to begin to get a feel of what a quality campaign page looks like. You can also contrast these with projects that didn’t raise any money to see the stark difference.
For example, taking a look at the Hupnos campaign I worked on will give you a quick idea of how a project page reads, including headlines and images.
I’d also take the time to learn about what went into a few of the projects that you admire. To get started, you can listen to a few of the episodes on my podcast, Crowdfunding Demystified.
These are interviews with REAL entrepreneurs who have raised money with crowdfunding. You can see some below:
- The Formula to Raise $54,568 on Indiegogo | Hupnos
- The Truth About Crowdfunding From an Indiegogo Employee
- How to Raise $683,767 on Indiegogo WITHOUT a Team
- Formula Behind a $151,033 Raise on Indiegogo | igloohome
It might take you some time, but listening to these shows and taking the time to read other bits of advice out there will prime you for crowdfunding success.
You don’t want to make some of the common mistakes that others make when putting together a crowdfunding campaign.
2. Create a Pre-Launch
The most important thing that you can do to ensure success on Indiegogo is to create a pre-launch for your crowdfunding campaign.
A pre-launch is designed to gather a crowd before going live with your project. It’s also meant to warm people up to you, your product, and the problem it solves.
There is a right and a wrong way to go about this. This is one of the reason that I’ve put together a formula that basically walks you through how to do this.
To make it easier, I’ll link to a video below that goes into this more in-depth.
If you’d like to get more videos like this, take a sec to enroll in my Udemy course here.
I talk about how to put together a pre-launch page here.
Fail to do a prelaunch?
Oh boy… its’s gonna be really hard to get initial funding to your Indiegogo campaign.
No joke.
That also means it will be hard to rank in the Indiegogo GoGoFactor algorithm and thus have an overall successful campaign.
3. Make A Killer Pitch Video
The pitch video is the first thing that visitors will see when they come on your page!!!
You need to capture their attention ASAP and get them watching it all the way until the end.
Thankfully, there are lots of tips of how to get together a good video. You’re going to want to assemble b-roll, different angles, and fast-speed shots that show your product in an appealing light.
You can also use some of the tricks that I talk about here to really level-up your pitch video game. These will help to enhanced the perceived quality of your product.
I think that every good pitch video starts with a great thumbnail that helps to instantly give viewers a snapshot of what this product does or who it’s for. It arouses curiosity and makes them want to learn more (example).
After you got that thumbnail down, you’re going to want to think about how to storyboard your video so that people are not only being introduced to the killer benefits, but also get a sense of your story.
It’s best to show people using your product (and in different environments). That way, visitors will easily be able to determine whether or not it’s a good fit for them.
The video is also a powerful medium for generating trust. Backers can see who’s behind the project. They can get a sense for their values, goals, and aspirations.
The story ultimately is what creates trust and makes someone feel comfortable with giving money online to someone that they’ve never met in person.
By the end of watching the video, viewers should emotionally want the product and be eager to learn more. This is when they’ll begin to look through your campaign page and also check out some of the rewards that you’re offering.
4. Come Up With Some Kick-ass Rewards
Eventually, as a creator, you’re going to have to ship out all those perks and rewards to your backers.
The perks or rewards are what gets someone excited about becoming a backer for your crowdfunding campaign.
These are the exclusive items that backers gain access to!
Take some time to brainstorm quality reward ideas. You want to make supporters feel like they’re getting a killer deal when they back your Indiegogo project.
I actually put together some reward ideas for you here.
If you’re having trouble brainstorming some rewards, take some time to review other campaigns in your category. See what they’re offering.
In addition to paying attention to what they’re offering, you’ll also want to see how they “tease” and “title” the reward tiers.
To the left, you can see how one project lists out all the “benefits” and stuff that you get at the $199 tier, which is also 13% off retail. Already, you feel like you’re getting a lot for a little.
5. High Quality Marketing Materials
Every great campaign page has high quality marketing materials. These are the assets you draw from to put together the actual page.
These assets can include things like:
- High resolution images
- GIFS
- Explainer videos
- Comparison charts
- Production timelines
For example, with the Hupnos campaign, we made sure to include the “benefits” on many of the product images to remind backers what they were getting when they bought in.
In addition, diagrams and moving illustrations were used so that it’s easy to see the value of the product, how it works, and how it attacks the core problem that it solves.
Basically, the less thinking and digging that a backer has to do, the better. Make it super simple for them to see exactly how your product works.
Of course, you should also have great photos of people using the product in different environments. This helps remind visitors who the product is for. It makes it easier for them to imagine themselves enjoying the benefits.
6. Budget For Your Launch
It’s crucial that you set aside a budget for your campaign launch.
This budget will go towards things like:
- Pitch video filming/editing
- Prototype creation
- Creating marketing assets
- Hiring coaches
- Buying books/courses
- Doing FB and Google advertisements
Numbers will vary, but I’d say that you should budget at least 10% of your fundraising goal to go towards these materials.
I recommend that all creators start with the education phase. Pick up a book. Take a course. Hire a coach.
It doesn’t have to be me. Just find someone that you find to be credible and that can help with this project. Someone who can give you real answers to your questions.
This will make sure you’re on the right track. After that, you’ll be putting money into the creation of your video (unless you do it yourself) and gathering emails leading up to the launch.
I talk more about this in my book, the Kickstarter Launch Formula. If you’d like me to individually review your project, give you feedback, answer your questions, and lay out a strategy, you can book a coaching call now.
7. A Campaign That Converts
It’s not enough to just put together a good looking page that looks professional.
You also need this page to convert lurkers into backers of your Indiegogo campaign.
Aside from hiring a professional like me to do this for you, you could also study examples out there and follow some of the tips that I put together.
There is a crowdfunding trifecta that I like to follow when putting together projects. It goes as follows:
- Is there a big promise?
- Are there clear benefits?
- Is there logical justifications to the promise?
Let’s break these down quickly. A big promise is basically the future that you’re promising for someone who tries out your project.
For example, let’s explore the Better Back project, which raised over $1 million on Kickstarter.
The promise with this project is very clear. You’re going to get perfect posture and you don’t have to work for it. The name also works into this promise. You’re going to get a “better back” without having to work for it.
As you go down the project, you can clearly see some of the benefits that this product conveys.
It starts with some of the high-level benefits that you get above. It shares what the product does. It simply says what the product does for you, how you use it, and how long you use it.
Next, it gets into some of the hidden benefits that you might have noticed about the product.
These are things like it doesn’t require technology, it’s light weight, it has knee comfort, etc. Basically, the team is communicating about the hidden benefits by using an easy-to-read diagram. They’re not writing pages and pages of copy.
Next, the team even goes more in-depth into highlighting some of these key benefits that you’ll get when you become a backer.
Now… if that’s all there was, you probably wouldn’t believe the team behind this project.
I mean, yeah, it sounds great, but where’s the PROOF? That’s where the third part of my strategy comes in. You gotta provide logical proof and justifications that support your grand promise.
The team basically does this through testimonials, media mentions, and diagrams that illustrate how this product adjusts the position of your spine.
They are showing before and after images to demonstrate how the product works and thus why it will fix your posture issues. These are what help make someone say “aha, okay, I see how this could work.”
It allows someone to make that logical justification that all these grand promises and benefits will actually be had once they are finally able to try the thing out.
8. Assemble a Team
All great things were created by teams of people.
From Apple products all the way back to the pyramids, grand works require teams of people and leadership.
If you wanna raise six or seven figure, you’re going to need to assemble a team of people that can help you out with the launch of this project.
I’m talking about people who can help you plan, execute, and grow this fundraiser. People who run FB ads, do press releases, put together the page, etc.
It’s SOOO much work to do it alone. It will sure save you a lot of money to do it on your own, but you’ll be extremely limited in how much you can raise and how quickly you can execute.
Take the time to reach out to a few people in this industry who can help you. Check out my FB group and ask questions or on KickstarterForum.
9. Rank in GoGoFactor
If you’ve never read up on GoGoFactor, then now’s the time.
Here’s a great article that goes through GoGoFactor and how it works.
Basically, this is the way that Indiegogo chooses to feature projects. It’s how projects become trending on the crowdfunding website.
This is what you’re gonna want to master if you want strangers on the website to support your fundraiser.
Thankfully, there is a strategy behind this. I talk a bit about what you need to do to prime the pump and get some initial funding in my free course here. I go a lot more in-depth in some of my other products, but this is a good intro.
10. Keep Raising With InDemand
My final tip for you is to keep raising with InDemand. It’s a no brainer really.
After you run a successful campaign with Indiegogo, you can enter their InDemand marketplace and keep raising funds.
This is a great way to leverage the momentum of your crowdfunding campaign. You’ll keep raking in backers even after your project has finished.
There are also a ton more benefits to using InDemand.
I hope that you found this overview to be helpful when it comes to putting together a successful Indiegogo campaign.
If you’d like more tips and advice, you can join my weekly newsletter down below or reach out to me directly.
