5) How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Campaign?

Investors can’t invest in something they don’t know about. Therefore, marketing is the key to your campaign. How to get out there and make yourself known?

Marketing is the most important part of your fundraising campaign. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again — just because you’ve created a pitch, this does not mean that investors will come pouring in. This is why it’s so important to create a solid marketing plan in advance.

Preparation is everything

Take the time before you launch to prepare all of your assets and create a strategic project plan for how you are going to manage your fundraising campaign. This will make the whole process much easier for you.

You will be well on your way to achieve a successful fundraising campaign if you already have spent time on creating a clear and compelling pitch, a video and a slide deck which stand out from the crowd, and secured a lead investor who will support your campaign. Not any less important, are the support and engagement of your community and the relationships you have already built with your potential investors.

Some of the most successful fundraising campaigns can directly relate to how engaged their community was. Companies such as Chilango and Mondo Bank started their campaigns up to a year in advance, priming their customers and key stakeholders for the launch of their campaign.

When they launched they had a huge influx of investment that made their pitch seem like an overnight success. Both went on to raise over 1 million euros through fundraising campaign.

Without those solid foundations, it will be much more difficult to make up for this with marketing alone.

Once you’ve built a solid foundation for your campaign, think about how will you reach your potential investors. Which channels to use and how to use them? We have made an overview of the most important channels to use in your marketing plan.

Personal Network

It can feel a little awkward to reach out to your personal network and contacts asking them for money as it can feel like you are begging. You never want to come across as desperate (because you aren’t!), so instead of asking for money, we recommend you ask your personal network for support.

Your personal network includes everyone from your family to your Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, and business network.

The easiest way to do this is to communicate your campaign plans with your network as early as possible. A simple email asking for pitch feedback, to share your campaign on their social media pages, and invest even a nominal figure, can open doors and opportunities that you didn’t even know were there.

This is especially the case when it comes to finding a lead investor as these people will often be found through mutual connections.

Events

Just because fundraising is primarily an online activity, does not mean all of your marketing efforts should also be online. Where possible, it is a good idea to host in-person meetings to allow investors to meet the team, see your product or service in action, and ask any questions. Remember you want to build relationships with your investors and meeting them face-to-face will help establish a connection that is hard to create online.

Not only should you consider hosting your own events but you should see if there are any events in your area you might be able to pitch at. You want to be using your time effectively, so ensure that you only attend events you know investors will be at such as local angel investor meet-ups or networking evenings.

In-person events are not always possible, in this case, you could host at least two live webinars or Google Hangouts during the course of your campaign for investors to join and ask you questions. By filming this presentation it will also give investors an opportunity to see you on camera and build your trust factor. This recording will also be available for you to use as content on your other marketing channels for people who aren’t able to join you live.

Social Media

It is important that you maximise the results of your efforts by targeting potential investors where they are likely to hang out online and also where you already have a social media presence.

It wouldn’t make any sense to suddenly start promoting your campaign on Pinterest if you don’t already have a highly engaged Pinterest audience, and it is unlikely your investors are using that channel either.

Instead consider harnessing the power of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as this is more likely where investors will be online. AngelList is also another great social platform specifically targeted at companies and investors.

When posting about your campaign on social media, approximately 80% of your content should be informative and add value, and 20% directing people to your campaign page.

Use social media to give people a behind-the-scenes look at your business and your campaign — keep your content real, valuable, and engaging.

Finally, it is important to note that social media is a great channel for building your “crowd” but it is unlikely that a big-ticket investor will come along and invest a significant sum of money because they saw your Tweet. Social media should be part of your broader marketing matrix and ultimately it will create more of a buzz and interest in your story than it necessarily will in cash investment.

Email Marketing

You should be already collecting email addresses for your list anyway within your business. These people are hot leads as they are already engaged with what you do and support your business enough to trust you with their email address.

However, in the same way, you wouldn’t go up to someone on the street and ask them for money, your first email to your customer base should be informative and exploratory instead of simply sending them a link to your campaign page and asking them to invest.

We recommend sending an email out to your customer database prior to your campaign going live on the site asking for feedback. This way your customers won’t be surprised when an email comes out to say you are open to investment.

Paid Media

A paid media campaign (pay-per-click and social media advertising) isn’t for everyone, but it can be an effective way of driving traffic to your campaign page as long as you are being highly targeted with your audiences and search terms. If this is already an area you invest in heavily in your business to acquire customers, you can also leverage this tool to acquire investors.

However, it is important to note that paid media campaigns can take some time to optimise so they should never be fully relied upon and they are not essential to the success of your campaign.

Press

Just like you are selling your product to customers, fundraising is about selling your pitch to investors. A great way to do this is through crafting some clever PR to support your campaign. The PR will not only help you tell your story and reach more people who may wish to invest in your campaign, it will help build credibility.

Marketing Plan

You may have realised by now that once your campaign is open to investors you are about to get very busy!

The easiest way to avoid feeling stressed and overwhelmed during your campaign is to prepare as much of your marketing material as possible in advance. Have your emails, social media content, and press releases already prepared and begin the process as early as possible.

You should also have a clear internal plan amongst your team outlining who is responsible for doing what during your campaign. You may already use an internal planning tool such as Slack or Asana. If you don’t, we highly recommend that for at least the course of your fundraising campaign, you set your team up on one.

This will allow you to list, assign, manage, and track tasks to be completed for your campaign and will help ensure that your campaign runs as smoothly as possible.

To make it easier to keep up with the tasks and have a plan for the marketing after you launch, we have created a template. Access the template here!

The secret to successful fundraising campaign is to leave no stone unturned. This isn’t the time to think, “that will never work for our brand” because it might. And you don’t want to risk not achieving your funding goal because you didn’t do that one thing. You don’t know what will work for you in the case of crowdfunding so it is far better to use every tool in your toolbox than think, “if only I had done X”, at the end of your campaign.

Marketing Checklist

• Create all campaign assets in advance: slide deck, video, social media posts, email content, imagery, press releases, campaign plan, etc.
• Communicate with your personal network first and let them know when your campaign will be live.
• Tell everyone else including your customers about your pending campaign too!
• Ask everyone to share your campaign with their network even if they don’t wish to invest themselves.
• Add a link to your campaign to your email signature and on your website homepage.
• Update your social media profiles with details of your campaign.
• Create an internal plan for who in your team is responsible for what and create a plan for who is going to answer investor questions etc.
• Make a plan B for what to do if your campaign isn’t gaining enough momentum.
• Prepare answers for Investor FAQs

Post-Campaign Communications

Once you have been successfully funded it is important to have a plan in place for communicating your success with your new investors and thanking them for joining you on your journey.

You don’t want to be the business that takes someone’s money and then they never hear from them again, so make a commitment for when you are going to communicating with your new investors on a regular basis. This might be a simple quarterly newsletter or an in-person networking event.

This communication will help turn your investors into brand ambassadors who are willing to support you other than just financially. You want to make them feel like their decision to invest in you was the best decision they ever made.

The Funderbeam Guide for Raising Funds

In case you missed the previous chapters in our series and want to know more, check them out here:

• 1) Is Equity Fundraising a Good Idea for Your Company?
• 2) How to Create a Campaign Page?
• 3) How to Create a Video Pitch?
• 4) How to Get a Lead Investor on Board?
• 5) How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Campaign?
• 6) How to Use Direct Outreach to Your Advantage?
• 7) How to Manage Your Campaign After Launching?

About Funderbeam

Funderbeam is a platform that combines the three most important pillars of investing: Access to data, capital, and liquidity.

Raise money from local and global investors, without the usual hassle of cross-border deals. Only one new entry to your cap table.

Our vision is to provide everyone in the world with equal opportunities, whether you are building a company, or looking to fund the next big thing. What if the next Silicon Valley is not a place, but a platform?

> FIND OUT HOW TO RAISE FUNDS ON FUNDERBEAM.COM, OR WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW: