Here are the Best Crowdfunding Agencies and Marketing Companies
So you’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign — congrats! Getting bothered by constant emails about using X service or how you should be promoting it?
Here’s a no nonsense guide on choosing a crowdfunding agency to help boost your campaign, what you should be doing and advice on the best ones.
Want More Advice on Choosing a Crowdfunding Agency? See our Guide: Crowdfunding Agency Advice: Pay a Fee, Offer a Percentage or Go for it Alone
What to look out for…
Ideally you’d want a company that shares your passion about what you’re doing and not just focus on getting paid, which is always a warning sign.
At this point it’s worthwhile noting you could just go it alone and not use any company. Michael Novotny’s post on “How To Launch a Kickstarter” is really useful from prelaunch to defining a roadmap to reaching out to his audience.
Whilst Zac Park’s “6 Steps to Launch a $1,000,000 Crowdfund” (Even though it’s from 2014) breaks down everything you need to know about starting a campaign — I’d recommend you check out and bookmark both these links.
Services a crowdfunding agency can provide:
- Putting together a press kit and distributing press releases
- Pitching and outreach
- Managing and running (Facebook) ads
- Doing Google ads to drive traffic
- Promoting to their own backer (niche) community
- Editing your video or campaign page
Questions you should be asking
How can they help? What will they do for you exactly?
What’s their success rate?
Do they get what your product is and your target market?
Do they use paid ads?
What’s their average advertising spend and ROI?
Will they take a % commission?
How can you monitor the progress of their work?
Who can you talk to directly?
The Best Crowdfunding Agencies & Services List
There’s a useful Crowdcrux list called ‘The Top 9 Kickstarter Marketing Agencies’ — which we’re also listed on. This list covers all-inclusive services from the campaign video to Facebook ads from companies like Enventys, Funded Today & Launchboom. To Facebook ads only with Jellop to paid placements on popular platforms like The Gadget Flow (Evan Varsamis).
About Hyperstarter
At this stage, it’s worthwhile to talk about what we do. We’ve worked in conjunction with Jellop, Enventys and LaunchBoom on huge campaigns.
What makes Hyperstarter different is that we work “hands on” and are an alternative to paid adverts. We’ve also got a 5 Star Rating on Trustpilot.
Our success stories range from The British Invention of the Year, Virgin Voom Runner-Up, Carlos Santana’s Shoes to the $900,000+ Neck Hammock.
Here’s a breakdown of Hyperstarter services:
- Campaign management & outreach.
- Pre-launch and live campaign work.
- Crafted pitching & product marketing.
- Contacting niche specific influencers.
- Email collection & social media.
- Fixed payment, based on rates per day.
Feel free to contact us. We’d love to speak with you as to how we can help you.
Agency Involvement and how it can cost you money
This would typically involve an agency running ads and finding out which convert best for the campaign. Here they may have a list of emails from previous campaigns they worked with, or they may use your own backer lists.
Their work involves determining the cost of acquiring signups without a loss. Usually the campaign owner is expected to cover the ad spend for this phase.
Buying Ads and jumping in the middle of a campaign
No one likes to be in a situation where they need to raise the minimum funds on a project they’ve spent a lot of time, money and effort on. I feel this is where some crowdfunding companies can take advantage of desperate owners.
Buying paid ads usually won’t work, unless you’re on a specific site targeting a certain niche market. It may also be too late to buy Facebook Ads, as it takes time to build up buzz and knowledge. Also, you need to educate your audience by explaining they won’t be getting their product straight away.
Advice for the end of a campaign
As it’s probably too late to get a feature on publications, I’d suggest using social media and more specifically Twitter to get the word out better. Target your audience, use specific hashtags, answer questions and also ask your supporters to give you a mention within their own (social) network.
Final Thoughts
If you’re stalling, need a better boost during a live campaign or have trouble to generate sales, then hire a reputable crowdfunding agency to take things over.
A lot of the time, you can get backers from the crowdfunding platform itself. If you’ve a unique product you’ll find that once you’ve reached your goal, momentum builds up and press and publicity comes about for free anyway.
There are no guarantees with crowdfunding unfortunately, by doing your research and setting up your own campaign or vetting an agency, companies or specialised consultants, you’ll be better informed on what to do next.
Want More Advice on Choosing a Crowdfunding Agency? See our Guide: Crowdfunding Agency Advice: Pay a Fee, Offer a Percentage or Go for it Alone
