By: David Khorram
Depends upon following factors, you can come up with your CrowdFunding project and campaign development cost.
This is the cost of marketing your campaign in order to raise the follower and investor crowd you need.
Bear in mind “crowdFunding is more about networking marketing than funding” . If you know how much you need to raise, then the only question is left is how much relevant crowd you need to reach your goal
First you need to clearly know the difference between CrowdFunding Project and CrowdFunding Campaign.
CrowdFunding Project refers to activities and milestones before and after your crowdfunding campaign
CrowdFunding Campaign refers to o activities and milestones during your campaign (I.e. between 1 to 2 months)
CrowdFunding project cost can be divided to :
Fixed cost
Portal registration and transaction fee ( i.e fix gola campaign)
Portal e-commerce fee
Campaign Marketing without success fee
Advertising
Promotions
Community building
Business and infrastructure development
Email and collaboration system
CRM system
Help desk or service desk system
Database or inventory systems
Variable cost
Portal registration and transaction fee ( i.e variable gola campaign)
CrowdFunding team and consulting time
Crowdfunding rewards production costs
How much it will cost to produce
Be cautious when choosing what incentives to offer
Estimate how many incentive packages at each contribution level you will need to fulfill.
Fulfillment and Shipping charges
Campaign marketing with success fee
Administrative and other overhead expenses
Over head; Office and/or studio space/insurance/utility
Equipment and materials
Taxes
CrowdFunding project (pre launch) activities and milestones
Following is a list of items that you may want to consider. Depends what stage of project development you are in and what size crowd you have established, you may need some or all of these services :
Campaign registration, transaction and success fees;
This depends upon the CrowdFunding portal you have selected and type of campaign you wish to launch (Fix or flexible). See the comparison table at the end of this section.
CrowdFunding team / CrowdFunding preparation
CrowdFunding is team effort. You need to have a dedicated team either you have all inhouse or some or you need to find an experainace team to help you ( i.e. www.CrowdFundingMentors.com ). Again remember the crowd, an individual ( part time or full time) does not have the time bandwidth and all required experiences to have a successful campaign
A Team to assist you with your CrowdFunding project and campaign development and build your crowdfunding :
Business model
Strategy
What, when , how, what and why
Marketing strategy
Launch strategy
Community building
Campaign component strategy
Technical
Build your virtual project and campaign identity
CrowdFunding campaign inbound marketing
Tactical
How, who and when to execute your strategy and play to win you your campaign
Campaign party
Campaign pre and post publicity (4-3-2-1)
Send Campaign take off to million+ followers
Campaign moderation
%30 , %50 and %80 your funding goal milestones
Healmarry
Crowd Building contest
Backers for 2nd round of investment - Original backer program
Follower to backer convergence
Flowers and backers social media leverage
Backer to more backer convergence
Stretch goals
One(1) before campaign clouser action items
CrowdFunding campaign inbound marketing. CrowdFunding Marketing cost less than traditional outbound marketing. The Inbound marketing includes:
Create attraction:
Blogging- A blog is the single best way to attract followers to your CrowdFunding Website or CrowdFunding Campaign page.
Social Media- You must share valuable and attractive content and valuable information on the social web, engage with your followers, and put a human face on your brand. You also need to interact on the networks where your ideal buyers spend their time.
Keywords- Your followers and potential backers begin their evaluation and pre order process online ( Crowd lives in the cloud), usually by using a search engine to find something they have need or questions about. So you need to make sure you’re appearing prominently when they search for your relevant key phases
Landing Pages- You must SEO ( Search engine optimize) your CrowdFunding website to appeal to and speak with your ideal followers and potential backers. This is your main virtual presents. You need to launch it few months (3 to 6 months) before your CrowdFunding. The Landing will be heavily used during the campaign ( directed to campaign page URL ) and after campaign ( directed to e-commerce page)
SEO and PPC
Press release and Print media
Community building
Text, Picture and video content creation
Build your community:
Calls-to-Action - Calls-to-action are buttons or links that encourage your visitors to take action in your Social Media, blogs landing pages, Press release ...etc,,
Landing Pages- When a website visitor clicks on a call-to-action, they should then be sent to you main landing page. A landing page is where the offer in the call-to-action is fulfilled, and where the follower or backers submits information that you
Forms- In order for visitors to become follower or a lead, they must fill out a form and submit their information. ( 1st step conversion process)
Contacts- Keep track of the followers you're converting in a centralized database. This is one the most important CrowdFunding assets you are creating. Organizing and having all your data in one place helps you analyze your campaign potential and raise the early investors ( %25+ of your goal) before you launch your campaign
Visitor to lead, to follower, to your backers:
Visitor Scoring- Not all visitors or readers are equal. You need to be able to score each and communicate accordingly
Opt in Email- Series of email your system will send when a potential follower clicks on your call to action, fills out a landing page
Marketing Automation- This process involves creating email marketing and lead nurturing tailored to your Campaign goal and strategy
Reporting- Methods of marketing report that helps you effectively focus on your Crowdfunding campaign influencers
Campaign development
Video production
script development
Story board
Production
Editing
Content optimization ( text and backlinks)
Annotations
Transcription
Video SEO and promotion with lead catching
Distribution ( to 30+ video servers)
Content development and moderation
Campaign story (features tells, story sells)
Campaign naming
Campaign elevator message
Campaign short pitch
Campaign long pitch
Campaign pictures
Set campaign goal
Design campaign rewards
Moderation
Portal media moderation
Social media moderation ( pre, during and post )
CrowdFunding Campaign launch ( throughout the campaign) activities and milestones
Many of campaign marketing and advertising program have to to start months before the crowdFunding campaign launch. Following is a list of items that you may want to consider during the campaign :
Campaign Marketing: Intensifying your CrowdFunding pre campaign marketing and advertising
CrowdFunding team :
Issue national press releases to broadcast
Contact relevant journalists, bloggers and media outlets in your behave
Broadcast and pound 24x7 your social media platforms to create a buzz
Email market all leaders and followers and ask for more participation and story sharing
Contacting existing investor and ask for more
Moderat:
Campaign social media
Your social Media
Your marketing team social media
CrowdFunding Campaign pre launch cost estimate
Cost of team building and CrowdFunding promotion, advertising and crowd Building could be as low as %3 and as high as %15 of your campaign goal, this depend on your Funding Goal, number of your existing followers ( email addresses, social media, existing relationship with journalist, blogger and main influencers with large networks )
Costs of Crowdfunding campaign rewards , goods, fulfillment are a variable cost a calculator can be found here : http://reubenpressman.com/kickstarter/#
CrowdFunding portal cost comparison
Portal name | Portal fee | Transaction fee | Comment |
Kickstarter
Average raised 5K | Successful projects pay 5 percent of funds raised to Kickstarter, | 3 percent to 5 percent to Amazon Payments, which processes contributions.
| Kickstarter accepts only 60 percent of the 2,000 or so projects that apply each week -- and it's especially picky about entrepreneurial endeavors. Service providers, beware: Kickstarter takes projects of only an artistic or creative nature. "That's where our heart lies," says co-founder Yancey Strickler. |
Indiegogo
Averaged raised 15K | 4 percent for Fixed and variable fundraising if goal is reached. For Flexible fund raising if the goal has not met 9 percent is charged | payment processing fee of 2.9 percent.
| IndieGoGo's unfiltered approach has a downside: Entrepreneurs must share the platform with as many as 10,000 other causes and projects at any one time |
Profounder | It's free. (Some states charge a fee for filing paperwork.) |
| The pitch won't go viral. The SEC exemption that allows this kind of fundraising (Regulation D, Rules 504 and 506) prohibits general solicitation, which means investors can be only people the entrepreneur already knows, such as friends, family, and customers. |
Circleup | No fee to join or to make an investment. Companies pay CircleUp a percentage of the capital raised from the online campaign. |
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GoFundMe | Five percent of each donation |
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RocketHub | 4 percent for Fixed and variable fundraising if goal is reached. For Flexible fund raising if the goal has not met 8 percent is charged | payment processing fee of 4 percent. |
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Fundable | $99 per month during active fundraising (if fundraising goals are met) | 3.5% credit card fee of amount raised (if fundraising goals are met) |
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