Getting investors interested in your equity crowdfunding offering is a lot tougher than most entrepreneurs realize.
It’s not like investors are going to start pouring in once you launch and you’re magically going to get funded. You have to put in the work to market the crowdfunding page, spread awareness, and get investors.
Thankfully, if you’re strapped for cash, there are some tools out there to make the process MUCH easier.
In my last article, I outlined some of the steps that you absolutely must to follow if you’re going to successfully raise money online. This post will cover some of the tools that you can use to automate some of the outreach.
1. Boomerang
You can use Boomerange to do a few different things, including scheduling emails to go out at a specific time, getting reminders of when you need to follow up on an email, and write emails that have the highest chance of getting a response.
Their new “respondable” feature takes into account subject length, word count, question count, reading level, positivity, politeness, and subjectivity to determine how likely it is you’re going to get a reply to your email.
I think the tool is most powerful for setting reminders to follow up with specific investors, journalists, or influencers. The app will tell you if the email was not opened, if your link in the email wasn’t clicked, or if you didn’t get a reply.
This is a great tool when you’re doing individual outreach to build relationships that could turn into investments, media hits, partners, or advisors.
2. Leadpages + AWeber
This is a deadly combo for your pre-launch when you’re building an email list. Leadpages is a very simple tool to set up a conversion-optimized email capture.
Of course, I recommend that you have your own domain name and website, but very often marketers will set up a unique landing page apart from their main website to test traffic conversions.
You don’t want to send all of your traffic to your homepage leading up to the launch of your equity crowdfunding campaign. You want to send it to a landing page where you can measure conversions to an email list or other type of call-to-action.
LeadPages will tell you how many visitors you’ve sent to a particular landing page and the conversion rate to your email list. You can then A|B test landing pages or change around the wording to see how that impacts your conversion rate.
For example, I run KickstarterForum.org, a website with over 6,000 users where creators can ask questions and connect with other creators who are interested in Kickstarter and building a business around their passion.
I set up a very simple page to give you an idea of what the analytics can look like for your campaign. This page is simply designed to direct users to the forum’s registration page so that I can get an idea of conversions.
The other tool that I’d pair LeadPages with is AWeber. AWeber makes it super easy to manage your email list, send out newsletters, and stay connected with your subscribers. The great news is that it’s also free up to 500 subscribers (at the time of writing).
AWeber handles all of the list-building functionality and gives you data on open rates and conversion stats. It will also give you some cool graphs to show you how your campaigns are progressing.
To give you an example, I’ll share some of the basic stats from my personal blog, where I talk about books I read, conclusions I’ve come to in my life, and some of my business realizations. I don’t really market my personal blog at all, so it’s much smaller than all of my other websites.
3. Email Hunter
Email Hunter is one of many apps that you can use to get the email address of the webmasters of websites that you come across.
I’m not saying that you should spam these webmasters, but if you’re looking to do cold outreach or connect directly with bloggers/journalists, this can be a very useful tool.
Also, if you’re trying to connect with influencers, this tool can also be useful so that you don’t spend hours and hours looking for an email address.
I’m all about saving you time, money, and headache!
4. BuzzSumo
Going along with the theme of saving YOU time, BuzzSumo is an amazing website for finding influencers and seeing what types of media stories are trending for various topics.
I think that BuzzSumo is a great place to start when you’re trying to build up an audience with content marketing, but it’s also a great way to develop story angels for when you’re reading out to journalists.
Not all of the information with all of these tools will be 100% accurate, which is why it’s important to have a multi-tiered approach. For example, I put in the term crowdfunding and CLEARLY I should be one of the top influencers (hahah just kidding), but I’m not listed.
5. Angel Capital Association
While not a software tool, the Angel Capital Association is a great directory to draw from when building relationships with Angel Investors.
Keep in mind that with a Title III equity crowdfunding campaign, anyone can invest in your startup, but you’ll still need bigger investors who can put larger sums into your company to make the fundraising process easier.
You can use the directory to find groups and events happening in your area.
6. Wistia
I use Wistia for my online courses because they’re a great tool for tracking analytics on your videos and also having specific call-to-actions. Basically, it’s a marketers dream.
For example, you can use the heat-map feature to see which potions of your pitch investors are skimming over or are re-watching.
You can also set up specific call-to-actions like asking for an email address before someone views the video pitch.
Don’t get me wrong, I also use YouTube to share videos online, but I find that Wistia is a much better tool if you’re hosting a video on your own website and are looking for more in-depth analytics.
7. Buffer
I’ve talked about Buffer a lot because it’s my go-to-tool for automating my social media profiles, like my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
You can use Buffer to schedule all of your social media posts ahead of time, along with getting data on who’s viewing your posts, clicking on the various links, and engaging with your content.
This is very powerful because it then allows you to tailor your social media posts going forward and focus in on certain types of language or messages that are resonating with your followers.
Buffer has helped me grow multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts to thousands of followers. I’ve also recently started using it on my new Instagram, which is now seeing about 30 likes per post and at the time of writing is nearing 3,000 followers.
Bonus: Press Release Websites
Press release are a great way to get your story out into the media! I’ve put together a list of some of the top websites out there that you can use to reach out to bloggers and journalists. Hope it’s helpful!
