One of Moth to Flame’s favorite things to do is help other startups and small businesses raise money through crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a powerful tool to connect directly with your market and develop relationships at the early stages of an idea or product. Below are a few successful crowdfunding campaigns we’ve helped businesses with.

Modern Fuel raised over $200K with Moth to Flame

Partake Foods raised over $30K with Moth to Flame

Freeloader raised over $30K with Moth to Flame and went on to be featured on ABC’s hit show, “Shark Tank”

We really enjoy working with companies at this crucial stage because we feel that this is when you can see the greatest impact, a make or break period between something becoming a reality or not. We know because we went through the same process ourselves, raising money for our first feature film, Funemployment. The crowdfunding campaign literally determined whether we would be able to make our film. The success connected us with supporters and fans we never knew we had, showed us the market viability of the product, and gave us the ultimate filmmaking learning experience. Quite simply put, the Funemployment Kickstarter was life changing for everyone on the project.

In reality, the overall package is what ensures success. Doing a kickstarter or Indiegogo is A LOT OF WORK. It is not just the crowdfunding video or the physical campaign page itself that will ensure your success, but everything that leads up to the launch of the campaign, to the actual time the campaign runs, to the final push towards the end of the campaign. Using one of our successful clients, Partake Foods, here is a case study on our rules for running a successful crowdfunding campaign.

We love using movie terms to illustrate specific examples. Running a successful campaign is a lot like the release of a movie. Before the release of any successful film, let’s say “Star Wars,” you probably see “Coming Soon” teasers and trailers starting as early as years before the release of a film. This marketing content builds up so much anticipation, that on the day of the film release, people cannot wait to see it.  You have to do this for your campaign.

With Partake Foods, for example, we created several short teasers for the campaign containing a short recap about the product and a call to action to look for the details of the campaign on the date of the launch.

Anticipation is built in multiple ways, not just through video content. Product photos, factual infographics, team information, are all things that can help create awareness for your campaign launch date and should be planned ideally at least 1 month in advance of your launch.

Spreading the message yourself about your campaign is a lot of work and limits you to specific networks. Luckily, with social media and so many online platforms it is a lot easier to have a greater outreach. We suggest to all of our clients to co-market with other supportive non-competing brands that target your same market. For Partake Foods, we identified that the product, healthy allergen free baby foods, would be used by parents from a specific income bracket that frequent health related or parental blogs. As a result, Partake Foods partnered with Babble, Hastag Vegan, Little Hoboken, and more, who all shared and featured the campaign materials on their blogs and social media channels, which drove new audiences to the campaign.

The best part about co-marketing is that you are using other established and hopefully extensive built-in networks. And usually it is free and does not require a lot of work, just a simple establishment of relationship. These co-marketing sponsors often are looking for content to share with their audiences, so it is mutually beneficial, especially if you include their logo and information on the campaign too.

A strong campaign page and video are requirements for a successful campaign. This is your resume, your investor’s pitch. Though not always the case, in general professional looking videos perform much better and encourage engagement. With so much content online, it is easy to overlook a campaign video if quality such as sound and lighting are not up to par.

Your video represents the image that you want to present to the world. If it looks unpolished, people are critical and will assume you are not serious about your product and about fulfilling what you set to do.

The video should answer all the high-level questions about your product. Some of the topics that should be included:

1. Purpose/Mission
2. Problem that the product solves
3. How does your product/idea solve your problem better than everyone else
4. What about your company/team will ensure a successful execution of the campaign deliverables
5. Timeline for your plan of action (i.e. when you plan to launch the product, etc)

The video itself should ideally include subtitles and captioning. According to wired magazine, at least 41% on Facebook watch videos without sound.  Several other sources actually state a higher percentage than 41%.

In general, I believe campaigns that showcase the founders typically do better. Putting yourself in your video helps to increase trust and credibility, especially if you are great in front of the camera and generally a likeable person. Now, not everyone is great in front of the camera, which is understandable. Don’t worry, there are many ways to cheat this. Maybe you just have to simply say hi for part of the video and the rest can be imagery and voiceover.

If you want your company to appear bigger than It is and if part of the selling point is looking like a big company and not you, then doing a branded video without yourself may be a better route. It really depends on your goal for the video and your target audience.

The campaign should be as visual as possible. Most people do not have the attention span to read long paragraphs about your product unless they are truly invested in your campaign. Visually breaking up the text with photos of the product, infographics detailing statistics that your product solves or the problems the world has if your product doesn’t exist, photos of your team members, of the rewards. If you are unsure what your campaign should look like, a great rule of thumb is to look at our very successful campaigns and see what they are doing. Here are some visual examples of what we did for Partake Foods campaign page…

For the campaign itself, be careful about your giveaways. Make sure it is not something you are spending a lot of extra money on. Campaigns that build upon the product or idea you’re raising money for are the best. All of it involves KNOWING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE. What would they value that doesn’t translate to a cost to you. You want to retain as much of the funding as possible because if you aren’t, then what was the point of the campaign to start with?

Giveaways that involve the product you are promoting or digital giveaways that help people feel involved in the project are great. Having a novelty item that one of your sponsors give to you for free in exchange for marketing, is great because again it costs you no money. Partake Foods partnered with YumBox and gave away a bento box with their giveaways.

Finally, a big rule of thumb is to try to recycle content in as many different ways as you can, this will give you the biggest bang for the bunk and help to reduce time spent. If you are using a photo in your campaign, use that same photo on your facebook marketing, etc. If you are already shooting 1 video, use small clips from the video to create teasers, etc

Hopefully, we helped to give you some useful tips! Raising money for any idea is incredible and we commend you for that.