6. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab6
• First and largest global platform
• Flexible vs. fixed
• No application process
• Great customer support
How is Indiegogo
Different
7. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab7
What are the benefits of
an Indiegogo campaign?
Raise money
Gain visibility
Gauge demand & mitigate risk
Connect with your audience
11. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab11
People Want to Give to Successful Projects
12. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab12
Launched campaigns with a pitch
video raise 115% more compared to
ones without a pitch video.
Pitch Video
• Answer the who, what, when,
where, why, and how
• Tell your story
• Keep it under 3 minutes
• Include a strong call to action
• Express gratitude
13. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab13
Pitch Text
• Plan your pitch real estate
• Show your project or product
• Provide infographics
• The more you tell, the more you sell
14. 14
Is Fortune a
Wheel?
raised
$15,453
Goal $12,000
MUSIC San Francisco, CA
Award winning songwriter Monica Pasqual, cellist
Josh McClain & drummer Pam Delgado hope you
can help them record an album.
16. 16
Is Fortune a
Wheel Campaign
Tips:
• Plan Ahead
• Crowdsource your audience
• Host events to build and maintain
momentum
• Offer perks that can be fulfilled during the
campaign
• Be able to adapt
18. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab18
Perks
Purpose of Perks
Types of Perks
Fulfillment
19. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab19
Purpose of Perks
On average, campaigns with perks
raise 143% more than campaigns
without perks.
Perks can motivate contributors
to give out of:
• Passion
• Pride
• Participation
20. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab20
Types of Perks
• Experience
• Good or Product
• Digital Good
• In-Kind
Make contributors feel valued
21. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab21
Think Fulfillment
• Do the math on perks pricing (your
time counts)
• Know how you’ll fulfill at 10
and 10,000 units
• Research international shipping
• Remain transparent with your
contributors
24. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab24
Pre-Launch
Build Layers
Campaign Team
• Campaigns with a team raise
94% more more than
campaigns that run solo
Action Team
• Friends, family, people
passionate about the project
25. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab25
Launch
Email
• Email brings in 20% more
funding than any other source
• Contributions from direct email are
34% higher than other forms
• Clear call to action
• Put up a vacation responder
• Add your campaign to
your signature
26. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab26
Launch
Social Media
• 22% of a campaign’s raised funds
come from social media
• If you don’t have a community
on social media, don’t promote
through social media
• Secure 30% before pushing
to the public
27. | Indiegogo | Indiegogo Lab27
TrackR Bravo
raised
$1,675,383
Goal $20,000
TECHNOLOGY Santa Barbara, CA
The Thinnest Tracking Device. Ever.
Welcome to Indiegogo Lab
Get food and drinks
Introduce Indiegogo team
How many of you are completely new to Indiegogo and crowdfunding?
Pay attention to the questions asked by the campaign owners in the room – you’ll have these questions one day!
Please tweet your experience at #gogolab
Bathrooms are on the 6th floor. Follow signs
Indiegogo’s mission: to empower people to fund what matters to them.
Our founder Slava Rubin, tells it best. We’re going to watch a short video created by the Kauffman Foundation which explains what Indiegogo is at it’s core. (Play video by clicking to the next slide)
That’s the gist of what Indiegogo is, but how are we different from other platforms?
Oldest and largest global platform
Flexible vs. Fixed
Open
Great Customer support
Merit-based
You can raise money from an Indiegogo campaign and ALSO:
Gain visibility
Gauge demand/mitigate risk
Connect with your audience
Hi I’m [insert name]. I’m going to walk you through how to create a strong pitch. A pitch is made up of three parts – the goal, the video, and the pitch text.
If you don’t remember anything else from this lab, remember that a higher goal doesn’t not mean you’ll raise more money. In fact, we find the opposite is true.
Which campaign appears more successful?
Correct! The campaign on the right appears more successful because it has reached a higher percentage of it’s goal.
Contributors want to give to a campaign that appears successful so you should set a goal that is attainable. Contributors are actually deterred from giving to campaigns that have raised a low percentage of their goal – we call this the green bar effect. Later we’ll talk about how to overcome this, but your goal should be smallest amount possible to still move project forward and fulfill perks
- This pitch text answers the who what when where and why of the campaign before I ever have to scroll down. I would go a step further and include this information in a concise paragraph at the top.
Ask the audience the answers to: who, what, when, where, and why
Put the meat of the information “above the scroll” just like a newspaper’s most important information is above the fold
Make information easy to reach with infographics and pictures
Sell your project and project
Be genuine!
Videos are important!
Campaigns with a video raise 115% more versus campaigns with out a video.
Average contribution is 12% higher for campaigns with a pitch video.
Contributors want fast and easy information
-read fourth paragraph out loud of example text in picture
- This pitch text answers the who what when where and why of the campaign before I ever have to scroll down. I would go a step further and include this information in a concise paragraph at the top.
Ask the audience the answers to: who, what, when, where, and why
Put the meat of the information “above the scroll” just like a newspaper’s most important information is above the fold
Explain how you weren’t moved to give until you saw the picture of the mural and were moved to give
You can never have too much information in your pitch – just make sure it’s easy to read with infographics and pictures
Sell your product/project
Share your campaign basics
What worked in your pitch text and video
Campaign experience
Video tips
Who is the campaigner?
Why is she raising funds?
What do you get in return for contributing?
Great, so we learned in less than 3 minutes the who, what, when, where and why of this project. Be sure to answer these big questions quickly –How would you describe the campaign owner?
-Really own your project. Start building hype before the launch.
-Reach out to audience before-hand to see what services are there. You have a friend willing to donate their time for a video/photo shoot, editing, etc. (talk about how video was made and how we paid the videographer with PayPal funds after the first day).
-A beginning, middle, and end event helps to bring excitement to your project and involve your audience. Can manage and maintain momentum
-Offering perks that can be fulfilled during the campaign. Capture these experiences and make updates to have better audience involvement
-A campaign is an organic living thing. Pressing the “go live” button is the scariest part. Once the campaign is live you’ll need to be able to adapt and strategize based on the audiences reaction. Comment on Bruce’s “you put water in the cup, it becomes the cup…” analogy
Now that we have discussed how to create a great campaign through your pitch and perks, lets talk about how you are going to run and promote your campaign!
A perk is something you give back to a contributor to say Thanks! Having perks in your campaign is an opportunity for you to get creative! Just warning you, I’m about to throw a ton of examples your way, and I know it’s a lot to take in. My hope is that some of these examples will stick out and inspire you when you’re creating your perks.
People contribute to your campaign out of passion, pride, and participation. The best perks tap into these three reasons and further encourage your audience to become contributors.
This specific perk is from the Mission Cheese campaign. Mission Cheese is located on Valencia St. If you’ve been there, you may have seen this mural of sheep. Look closely, and you’ll see that the sheep are made of names. The campaign team offered to incorporate your name into the mural if you contributed a certain amount. The perk allows you to show off your participation and passion for the project, and you’re proud of it. You can take friends to Mission Cheese and show off your name!
While you technically don’t need perks, you’re much more likely to be successful with perks, and your contributors are more likely to be happy.
Campaigns with perks raise 143% more on average than campaigns without perks. And we find that the most popular perk price is $25.
Perks are really powerful as well because they enable you to gage your community’s interests, and engage your contributors by asking what perks they would like to see. Perks can be added and removed throughout your campaign, which is a great mechanism for encouraging contributions through limited time offer perks, or determining what perks work best or don’t.
So what is a perk?
You can generally break them up into 4 categories:
Experience: an event such as a concert. The perk can be tickets to your event, and then you can encourage further contributions at the event itself. It can be recognition on your FB page, mural, or plaque. It can be an opportunity to volunteer with your nonprofit or volunteer to help create your project. A perk can also be a chance to participate in your project, such as working on a film set!
Example of recognition: I contributed to this campaign. They found every contributor’s profile picture on Facebook, and added this crown and tag to their image. They then posted all the new images as updates, and invited me to make it my Facebook profile pictures. I could show off our pride in contributing, and also show off my participation.
Good or Product: a physical object, swag, t-shirts, or the actual object you’re creating with your campaign funds. Most people think of perks as a physical object. If you have these objects, you should give them out as perks. Sprayable Energy raised $170 k by pre-selling their spray individually or in packs.
Digital Good: book download, song download, subscription to a newsletter, insight into project’s progress (such as blueprints). Making physical things is complicated, but digital perks are easy. For example, The Exploratorium wanted to create a Living Innovation Zone on market and they offered a digital sketch of what their LIZ would look like. This is part of the sketch above, and now you can go to Market Street and see their creation.
In-Kind: This is where you ask your network to offer perks on behalf of the campaign. So in-kind perks can be access to exclusive places, dinner with a celeb or influential individual, tours, or teaching a special skill. This doesn’t have to come from your network—if you know something cool, share it too. I have learned archery thanks to a perk, and Josh has actually offered martial arts lessons as a perk too, which I’ve claimed. So now you can tell that I like to claim perks that teach me how to harm people.
Another cool example, featured here, is from a recent campaign called Help the Honest Politician Crash The Most Expensive Senate Race of All Time. Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the iconic Obama Hope poster, donated posters and shirts with an original image of the Honest Politician in the same style of Obama’s poster. This perk was very popular for the campaign and helped bring in thousands of dollars in contributions during its last few days.
I’d like to take a moment to reiterate that it’s important to add unique, creative, and even funny perks. People get excited to receive something one of a kind.
Now that your head is brimming with perk ideas, there’s one other thing you should keep in mind: fulfillment. It takes a lot of time, money, and energy. So you want to be prepared. When pricing your perks, do the math- add up not only the cost of the items and shipping and the amount left over for the campaign, but the cost of your time, too. Know how you’ll fulfill at 10 and
10,000 units. One of our favorite examples is of the Angry Video Game Nerd campaign, which offered a personalized thank you video in return for $10. 1421 people claimed this perk. That meant that yes, the campaign owner had to record 1421 thank you videos. Luckily, there is a way to limit the availability of each perk when you’re writing the description on Indiegogo, so you don’t end up spending every waking moment making thank-you videos.
Finally, research international shipping! Indiegogo is proud to be an international platform, and you may find out that your idea really resonates with folks from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. Ensure beforehand that you calculate how much it costs to ship a thank you card, t-shirt, or product around the world, and factor that into your perk price. And if you’re not able to support international shipping, that’s fine, just make sure you clearly indicate that in your perk description and campaign’s pitch text.
Now that we have discussed how to create a great campaign through your pitch and perks, lets talk about how you are going to run and promote your campaign!
Having a plan is very important
Running a campaign is time consuming and is a lot of work
Planning ahead will reduce some of your work during the campaign
The more you plan out how you will run your campaign the more likely it will be to succeed
Helpful to divide your promotional plan by timeframe
Let’s start with your pre-launch promotion
Your prelaunch is about building out your layers of support
Start with your team
Expand to your inner circle
Goal is to not leave your campaign up to chance
Gaining 30% of funding in the first few days is important for establishing early momentum
Once your campaign is live, how do you promote it?
Email has the highest conversion rate on our platform
This is why it is important to build out your layers before
When you launch let your inner circle now that you are live and give them a clear call to action
You can also be creative in your use of email to reach a wider audience
Use a vacation responder
Or add your campaign to your signature
Social media is the next best promotional strategy
It has the second highest conversion rate and on average accounts for about 22% of the funds a campaign raises
Some people get nervous about social media
Ask do I need to be on all of the platform?
Our advice is pick your strongest platform and stick to it
Or the place where you think your audience is most likely to be
If you don’t already have a community on social media don’t try to promote through it
A campaign that did a great job of maintaining active engagement was LUUV
LUUV is a stabilizer for your GoPro or other action cameras so you can take shake free footage
Instead of telling people how awesome their product was, LUUV showed them
They posted regular video updates of their product in action
Their audience could see and feel exactly what the product would do
Shooting these videos also had the benefit of promoting their campaign offline
By going to skate parks where their target audience hung out they were able to generate buzz and excitement about LUUV
Leaderboard model
Bathroms are on the 6th floor – follow signs
Break into discussion groups
We will send you the slides and resources to read