For any entrepreneur, one of the first stumbling blocks to come across is how to find funding for your project. You probably look for business loans or sell equity in your company to venture capitalists. However, both of these options have significant potential drawbacks. Luckily, there is a third option available — crowdfunding.
One of the most popular platforms to conduct crowdfunding campaigns is Kickstarter. Here is a guide on how to launch a successful campaign to make your business idea a reality.
Market Research
To ensure that any Kickstarter campaign is successful, you first need to conduct extensive market research. You need to ascertain if your idea is original and analyze any potential regulatory issues.
If it is an original idea, next, you need to investigate if people want to buy and use it. While Kickstarter itself is a good way to discover a product’s commercial viability (if people fund it, people will buy it), you should still conduct a significant amount of research before going through all the work of setting up a crowdfunding campaign.
Be Descriptive
To be successful, you need to sell people your business idea. This means that your description on Kickstarter must do more than just talk about the nuts and bolts of your product. The description needs to draw people in and help them imagine a world in which they use it and find it useful. Written words do this to an extent, but other media is also helpful.
This means including high-quality images of product prototypes and any other designs you have — without giving away unnecessary intellectual property.
Creative Backer Rewards
Part of what differentiates sites like Kickstarter from other crowdfunding models is the unique approach to rewarding financial backers. You set your rewards as you like, but you need to get creative. Set multiple funding tiers. For example, one tier offers the chance to get advance orders on the finished product, another offers the chance of involvement in the product development process, and another has opportunity to receive well-designed company merch.
People have more interest in things they have not seen before. Consumers do not go on sites like Kickstarter to look for ‘normal’. Instead, they want something new and exciting, like the company Mercator, the London based design studio responsible for the space-inspired Nominal pen.
Keep People Updated
Kickstarter is a great crowdfunding tool to keep people excited about a project. However, this requires continuous input from you as the company’s founder. Keep updating people on the project, whether those updates are positive or negative.
People pick Kickstarter projects in part because they give an otherwise unparalleled amount of access to the development of an exciting product. So, follow through on your side of the promise and keep them involved through the ups and downs of starting your business.
