How Crowdfunding Platforms Promote Crowdfunding Campaigns

Crowdinvesting platforms not only host crowdfunding campaigns, but also offer tools for business owners to actively promote their offerings. 

Crowdfunding platforms use a variety of methods and encourage fundraisers to apply the available platform’s functionality to make the world know about their campaigns.

Why crowdfunding campaign promotion is needed

Investment platforms know that simply creating a crowdfunding campaign isn’t enough. What’s more important is keeping up the momentum. 

WeFunder claims that successful campaigns manage to raise 30% of the total invested sum during the first week, and 30% — during the last week of a campaign. 

Competitive crowdfunding platforms, help business owners with:

• preparing a properly-planned launch of the first and later fundraising rounds
• creating a list of people and companies who may be interested to invest in a project
• attracting reporters, podcasters and media to spread the word about offerings
• Offering tools for updating investors and leading effective communication
• helping with reporting and money management

While the crowdfunding platform’s work is unquestionable, lots of the promotion is also carried out by the business itself. However, it always starts with the campaign page creation. 

Creating a crowdfunding campaign page

One of the most effective options to announce the launch of a crowdfunding campaign is to create a page on a popular or niche-focused crowdfunding platform. Usually, investment platforms create a crowdfunding offering page that investors can access, share and talk about. Let’s have a look at how WeFunder, a US-based crowdfunding platform, was raising capital for a Joule Case project and how it all worked out.

As you can see from the image above, a typical crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder meets investors with a clear and concise title of the campaign, a video pitch and an investment button. Further, WeFunder gives a detailed overview of the project that is raising funds: highlights a problem and explains how the project is going to solve it.

This is a primary step for the campaign to take off because it leverages the existing WeFunder audience and helps to create early traction.

Offering tools for business owners to spread the word about the campaign

Once the page is created on a crowdfunding platform, the company can use it to start its own promotion campaign. Some of the possible options to advertise is to create a landing page with the fundraising announcement on the business’s website.

A business owner can create a page on the company website to announce the launch of a crowdfunding cycle. Further, this page can be reposted to the company’s and personal profiles on social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

As the most interested person, the business owner can now share the crowdfunding campaign with their own network and get some back up from the friends and family. 

A trusted source of the campaign, that is a crowdfunding platform’s promotion page, helps immensely because it tells other people that the campaign has gone through a thorough examination to even get to the publishing on the platform. 

And if potential investors want to verify it, they may do so using open data sources like SEC archives if the campaign is raising funds in the US. 

Building trust and leveraging open databases as a promotion instrument

If a company raises funds in the USA, its offering may be listed in an SEC database. This database provides all the structured data from crowdfunding offering statements, updates, annual reports, and terminations if any.

By choosing an offering, one shall consider that all information is provided without changes from “as-filed” submissions. Therefore, the SEC cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information in the database.

After an offering is listed in the database, it becomes available not only for reviewing by potential investors but also for such resources as Disclosure Quest with its DQ Promote application. Such resources enable users to share their SEC filings via their social networks and crowdfunding news websites in the form of banners, such as the one on Crowdfund Insider.

Promoting individual SEC filings as a display advertisement with a backlink to the offering is also available for a fee.

As the crowdfunding campaign gains publicity, it starts being advertised on other resources such as KingdsCrowd.

Naturally, after the crowdfunding campaign is published on a crowdfunding platform, more websites, listing directories and databases may catch the offering and promote it, leaving a good digital footprint and increasing the SEO metrics for the campaign. 

Collaborating with webinars and podcasts makers

Podcasts are a great way to promote a fundraising campaign. Take as an example Angels & Entrepreneurs with the podcast about Joule Case: there, the company founders can prepare a pitch to inform interested parties about what the project is about, its value, what problems it solves, and why it is worth investing in it.

As a result, the business attracts the attention of people who are interested in investing in this campaign. Such resources also enable business owners to communicate directly with potential investors.

Using special tools to boost the campaign efficiency

Platforms encourage fundraisers to use all the available technical opportunities to launch a crowdfunding campaign successfully and monitor its performance throughout the entire fundraising cycle. Here is what platforms advise business owners to do to boost the possibility of success.

Add a company card

The first thing investors see when they are browsing the platform is the card. Only if the card is selected correctly, an investor will move to check the offering. 

Three elements are a must to be on the card:

• Image
• Tagline
• Milestones

If you are going to raise funds for a specific product and want to give investors an idea about it, include the product in the card.

Campaign URL

Every business on a crowdfunding platform is assigned its URL. The business owner can shorten it or use it as it is to promote the fundraising campaign on social networks and other resources.

Use of tags

The use of tags (you can mention groups or forums that can support the campaign, journalists, social media influencers, or anybody who can help you by promoting your fundraising efforts) helps owners of companies group in categories to make themselves more discoverable. 

Privacy settings

Some platforms such as Wefunder enable the use of privacy settings to make campaigns visible to everybody on the network or to users with a private campaign link. Business owners who want to attract maximum attention are recommended to make the campaign visible to everybody.

Google Analytics

It is recommended to input the campaign’s Google Analytics ID to track how many viewers and visitors the profile is getting.

Ad Tracking pixels

Ad Tracking pixels measure the efficiency of ads and enable you to see where the profile of your offering is getting visitors from. That’s why it is better to enable this option, too. 

Informing the world about your business

Crowdfunding platforms recommend fundraisers to communicate consistently with their fans, supporters, and just interested people on different resources including social networks. This approach helps to create a pool of potential investors.

Platforms advise to cycle content from emails and posts on social media every other week. Updates on the funding round can be published on a weekly basis. Always let investors and the public know about perks fulfillment, a funding milestone that was reached, and don’t forget to add such detail as the countdown to close the funding round.

To keep in touch with your investors, crowdfunding platforms normally offer a comments section and a private deal room on the platform. 

LenderKit crowdfunding software for investment businesses 

If you are looking to enter the crowdfunding market and build a similar crowdfunding platform to WeFunder, StartEngine or CrowdSteet, check out LenderKit crowdfunding software. 

LenderKit offers white-label investment software with all of the features that your investors and fundraisers will enjoy. You can easily start an online crowdfunding platform using our out-of-box solutions or build a custom platform to fulfill your needs.

With LenderKit, you can: 

• enable investors and fundraisers to manage their workflows 
• promote crowdfunding campaigns on your platform 
• offer business owners all the necessary tools to spread the world about their funding efforts among their fans, followers, and people who may be interested in investing in the offering
• manage full-cycle of the campaigns
• automate transactions and reporting

Have a look at how it all works by taking a virtual tour or contact our sales team to schedule a demo of the product.