When promoting your pitch, think about what marketing usually works for your business and adopt the same approach to promoting your raise. Keep it simple, and focus your time and effort on the things you know work well for your business. If something hasn’t worked in the past, there’s a good chance it won’t work for your crowdfunding campaign.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are our marketing must-haves:
Email your network
Email has proven to be the most effective channel for driving traffic and most importantly, investment. We strongly recommend you send the following emails to your network of customers, LinkedIn contacts, and business associates:
- A warm-up email to ensure your crowd is aware the opportunity to invest is coming soon. Here’s a great example from POD Point, which raised £1.5m in its latest round on Crowdcube
- Follow the warm-up email with a launch email once your pitch has opened to investment on Crowdcube, with a direct link to your pitch. We’ve found that less direct calls to action, such as ‘Find out More’ or ‘View Pitch’ are more effective than ‘Invest Now’ in emails to prospective investors
- Keep your network up to date with the raise with well-timed updates that coincide with key pitch milestones, such as when you hit 50%, 75% and 100% of your target. Make sure it’s clear in these emails that there’s is still chance to invest. Again, here’s another great example from POD Point
Promote the raise on your website
Referral traffic from your website plays a vital part in promoting your raise and it can help turn your customers and advocates into investors.
- Make it clear to everyone that lands on your website that you’re crowdfunding on Crowdcube and that they now have the opportunity to invest and own a stake in the business.
- Whether you do this through a banner, a link in your navigation or even a pop-up, it’s up to you.
- Just make sure a clear message is visible on your site, and that people can access your pitch on Crowdcube with just a click or two to find out more.
Converting customers to investors can deliver long-term benefits to your business, so it’s well worth engaging them as part of your crowdfunding campaign.
Promote the raise on your social channels
Your social network can be an effective and low-cost way of promoting your raise to a broader audience. Whilst we don’t suggest you flood your social channels with messages about your raise, it’s worth planning in a series of posts to coincide with key milestones in your crowdfunding campaign. For example, when you launch on Crowdcube, when you reach 25%, 50%, 75%, 90% and beyond, as well as last chance to invest posts in the lead up to the pitch closing to investment (we’ve found this works best in the last 24 hours).
You should also actively engage with people who are talking about your raise on social channels, thank them for their support and investment, and encourage them to share your pitch with their contacts.
Don’t forget all social posts (even Tweets) need to include ‘Capital at Risk’.
Want more information?
Having helped hundreds of businesses raise finance, we’ve built up a wealth of knowledge and expertise. We’ve consolidated our collective crowdfunding wisdom into our top tips to help ensure you join our Funded Club. You can check out our full guide to promoting your pitch, here.
