Making Your Crowdfunding Project Stand Out

Making Your Crowdfunding Project Stand Out

Oladapo Bamidele (April 24, 2024) —

Project crowdfunding has very quickly become the backbone of the creative indie community, allowing niche or unconventional projects to come to life. Creators are able to bypass larger investment groups looking for mass appeal and instead take their ideas directly to the people who would be most excited for them. If you’re starting up your own crowdfunded project, however, it does mean that you are likely competing with thousands of others to get noticed and funded. Here are a few tips on how to stand out.

Extra Value

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Your first stop should be playing to the oldest rule in marketing: people like free things. With that said, it’s not as simple as throwing in random goodies. You can look to online industries for inspiration here, particularly online casinos. They know their customers well, so when they make a special offer, it’s a carefully chosen one their customers want. For instance, players coming in for a specific wheel spin game are going to appreciate daily free spins with bonus rounds on that same game.

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In the same manner, your extras should be tailored. Are you crowdfunding a film? You could try getting some custom posters made for the production to match the genre. Crowdfunding an album? Throw in some live tickets if possible. Just make sure your funders are going to find the extras appealing.

Spread The Word

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There’s nothing like word of mouth to advertise anything in the indie world. Social platforms like Instagram or Reddit are the new tools for creating a buzz and that’s something you’ll want to harness for your crowdfunding. With that said, it goes beyond just maintaining a social presence.

Things like researching similar projects and their social activity can be very helpful in planning your own, and planning will absolutely be needed. It doesn’t need to be a full corporate scheduled post layout, but some overall system is important. Rule number one though: be honest and clear. The moment people think you’re being sneaky or underhanded is the moment that could sink your project.

Show, Don’t Tell

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The golden rule of writing for books and movies turns out to be important elsewhere as well. There are countless creative projects put out for crowdfunding that have failed because they’ve only described their idea without anything tangible to show. It doesn’t matter what medium your project uses, it’s critical to produce at least something to prove to funders that you’re able to create what you say.

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For instance, if it’s an indie film, get on your smartphones and grab some friends to produce a basic trailer or prequel. Even if your project isn’t the ‘found footage’ style, it will be an appreciation. Musical projects would benefit from having a track record in some manner, and artistic projects can have rough work. If you have previous projects to show off, this can be invaluable as it shows a track record.

The most important thing to remember is to be realistic with your attempts. Asking for a million straight away is going to be a tall order, so think carefully and do what you can with as little as possible!

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