Starting a fundraising campaign on Spreds requires time, preparation and a lot of self-involvement. To help you do that, here are a few tips…
Preparation is the key to success!
The first step is the campaign preparation – a fundamental step which includes a lot of elements:
- Create a plan: this plan will be your guide in terms of actions and communication during the campaign.
- Define your objectives: what do you wish to accomplish with this campaign?
What about finances?
- Prepare your financial plan, which will be made available to investors on your online profile.
- Find a co-investor: not only is it important to diversify your sources of funding, moreover, it will contribute to the credibility of your project.
- Make a list of all the potential investors within your network (friends, family, colleagues, clients, fan, etc.).
What else can you do?
- Prepare your investor pitch: this is the pitch you will deliver at the launch of your public campaign, during Spreds' Jungle Bells event. This pitch must be clear, concise and not last longer than 5 minutes.
- Prepare your social media: create pages dedicated to your campaign, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Those are really useful and performing tools to promote your campaign.
During this preparation, you will be asked to develop your profile on Spreds' website. A couple of hints to do that:
- Do storytelling: when you present your project, it’s important to tell a story, to explain how you came up with the idea, to show who you are, to use some emotion, … It must catch your readers’ attention and make him/her relate. Your story needs to answer 3 important questions: why launching this project, how you’re going to implement it and finally, the “what” – for which you can gather numbers and graphs to support your say.
- Create a presentation video: short (2 minutes maximum), in which we can find the main elements of your project, the problem it solves, why you are doing a campaign and how you are going to use these funds, etc. Don’t hesitate to present your team to your investors.
The first step towards funding: the launch of your private campaign
Once the preparation is done, here comes the time to officially start the private phase of your campaign:
Once the preparation is done, here comes the time to officially start the private phase of your campaign:
- Create a private event to launch your campaign to your network. It’s a great opportunity to present your project and to motivate your contacts to invest.
- Start to communicate with your potential investors to ask them to invest. Call them individually if you can.
Time to get in touch with the crowd: heading towards the public campaign
After a successful private campaign, it’s time to launch the second part of the funding, the one that will mobilise the crowd.
To optimise this step, here is some practical advice:
- Take advantage of the launch of your campaign during the Online-Offline to meet and convince future investors.
- Keep contacting your social network: especially with personalised emails.
- Communicate with the members of the crowd: to do that, you’ll need to communicate on a large scale - you’ll have to make use of the media, blogs, social media but also…
- … create an event! It’s a simple and friendly way to meet potential investors, to connect personally with them, to allow them to ask questions, etc. You can organise several small events to reach a maximum of people.
You can also:
- Be active on social media: don’t hesitate to post every day (at the same hour), to post pictures, updates, to ask your friends to share your posts, to publish your presentation video, to create a hashtag and share it, etc. And, don’t forget to include your Spreds profile link.
- Answer investors’ questions: from the beginning of the campaign, some investors will have questions for you. It’s important for you to take the time to answer them.
If you follow our advice, you should be on the right track!