Funding Sources Crowd Funding
Funding Sources Crowd Funding is the new revenue resource for businesses large and small.
Advance sales campaigns to get funds to produce your CD or another project now rely on Crowd Funding. Crowd Funding is a meaningful income stream when done right. And Crowd Funding is not for everyone even though everyone seems to be using it.
The success of a crowd funded campaign ultimately depends on your relationship with your crowd, fans, friends and relatives-those who support your endeavors. The larger the crowd base, the more successful the campaign when you’ve built and nurtured your relationships well.
Here is where most campaigns fall far short of their expected and desired outcome. Your crowd is not really large enough to sustain your goals. You have not truly engaged your audience to the point that they will support your career when they are point blank asked for their money.
The successful campaign and artists, (Amanda Palmer) for example, spent far more time building a huge and loyal following many years prior to launching her now famous Kickstarter campaign.
Too often, artists I know or hear about, decide that their career needs a cash infusion and the way to get it is to launch a crowd funding campaign. Then a great deal of time, effort and money is spent creating copy, making videos and designing gifts or incentives. When the campaign fails or falls far short of the goals set, the artist feels frustrated and even more disheartened about the career direction.
No matter how great the crowd funding campaign or how clever the gifts and the videos, without a really loyal and well developed fan base, the campaign will falter.
If you intend to integrate a crowd funding campaign into your future plans, the four considerations you must focus on are:
- Who is your target audience?
- How large is your audience?
- How well have you developed your relationship with them?
- What are the best marketing strategies to reach your intended audience
Without really understanding and nurturing your relationship with your audience members and how to market to them, your campaign may suffer.
So before signing up on with any crowd funding service and assume your funding goals will be met, consider the following:
- Have you really done enough outreach to develop a loyal fan base?
- Is your fan base large enough to be asked to participate?
- Is your project important enough to them and resonate with them to want to support you in your efforts financially?
- Is a crowd funding campaign the very best method of raising the funds needed for enhancing your career.
- If, yes, then what are the best methods to reach them and drive them to the crowd funding campaign page: video, audio, written copy through email campaigns or social networks? Again, you need to really understand your audience to best reach them.
- Have you set realistic campaign goals? If you want to reach your financial goal, then don’t set the bar too high. If you have a large project requiring big money, why not break up the campaign into smaller parts of the project and set achievable dollar goals for each section with its own campaign and theme. This way you’ll have a far better chance of getting financial backing for parts of the project as you need it and lessen the chance of not reaching the overall amount desired and risk losing it all. Perhaps some parts of your project are perfect for crowd funding and other parts might be best serviced by using some of the other funding sources mentioned in this series.
Now there are many crowd funding services from which to choose. Some allow you to keep any funds even though you haven’t met your full goal and other do not. Some take a percentage of funds raised. Some charge a fee to set up your campaign. No matter which service you find works for you, be mindful that your fans are your fans because they love the work you do. They signed your lists because they want to attend your shows and experience your art. They may not be inclined to financially support your business other than by buying tickets to your shows or buying your merchandise. You may need to find other ways to support your business when crowd funding is not the method of choice for your audience.
When you work on the above suggested list to build and nurture your fan base, your career and your business can’t help but grow. Eventually, a crowd funding campaign may work well with your enhanced fan base.
Have you had successful crowd funding campaigns? To what do you owe your success?
Leave me a comment below or on the Performingbiz Success Strategies Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/PerformingbizSuccessStrategies.
I can’t wait to hear about your success.
Now, Thanks to the band Curfew from the UK for providing the Biz Booster theme music, “Future Dance.” Check them out at www.curfew.co.uk
And for more career boosting tips, articles, books, resources, tele-seminars and online courses, visit me at Performingbiz.com
