Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Crowdfund Marketing

Neal Schaffer: 0:04

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business, Neal Schaffer. Hey everybody, this is Neal Schaffer. And welcome to another exciting episode of maximize your social. I'm actually here if you've been following me on social and invited as an influencer to attend Cisco Live this year, it's at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, an amazing event with 25,000 Physical attendees, 200,000 online attendees and really a showcase and best practices for event marketing that I look forward to blogging about very, very soon. But the people that I've met here have been amazing, not just the attendees, but obviously, there's a group of influencers here, I'd say there's about 25 of us and we've had sort of a behind the scenes look. And one of the gentlemen that if you've been involved in social you probably know I've known the name we've engaged in social never met. And when we started talking, I'm like, you know, he has some pretty important not necessarily important information for every but an interesting perspective and an interesting niche that probably a lot of people listen to the podcasts, if they knew existed, we'd be really, really interested in it. So without further ado, let me introduce you to today's guest, Peter trapasso Peterson. Hi.

Peter Trapasso: 1:22

Hi, Neal. How you doing today?

Neal Schaffer: 1:24

I'm doing awesome. Peter, in one sentence, how would you describe your role in the world of social media?

Peter Trapasso: 1:31

Oh, right. Now I'm focused on helping crowdfunding campaigns, Kickstarter, for you heard of that one, get a little bit of extra kick in there promotion, as far as the marketing side of things go.

Neal Schaffer: 1:42

Pun intended, you know, it's a Cisco event. So it's very tech oriented, a little bit low key. And we'll try to add a little bit more excitement here. But yes, it's about kick in. It's funny, because I went to an author marketing conference about a year and a half ago. And I was telling this to Peter. And it was the first time where they were talking about all the different marketing channels out there. And they brought up Kickstarter or crowdfunding as a marketing channel, not as a way to raise money, but as a way to help spread the word to a unique community about your product. And I was really excited to hear that Peter actually does this for a living. And it's helped a lot of companies. And people do that. And I think it's very relevant for the listeners, this podcast. So Peter, what types of businesses what types of people? What types of products would be best appropriate for, you know, Kickstarter campaigns? Or is it really relevant for any business?

Peter Trapasso: 2:25

I'm glad you asked that. I think it's actually a segment of businesses that tend to succeed. And Kickstarter would be those that have things like technology, including apps, sometimes it might be companies that are making handcrafted goods. So you know, leather goods, belts, wallets, things you might find on Etsy, but can be scaled up.

Neal Schaffer: 2:47

Okay, so apps, so something you can get into a Google Play Store and iTunes Store, as well as things you can get into Etsy would be the two sort of verticals that you see most most successful?

Peter Trapasso: 2:57

Yeah, those are the ones that I tend to see winning versus those that kind of start and then maybe have a fanfare, but you know, Peter out and don't really get to that finish line of funding.

Neal Schaffer: 3:08

So it's not just about the the product concept, the product design, the product idea, it's about what is going to be the distribution channel, if you're successful, and making that link upfront. And if you don't have that link, it's going to be very challenging. Is that basically your perspective?

Peter Trapasso: 3:21

Oh, definitely. And one thing that I've noticed is the ones that connect best, the ones that get get the funds and get the brand out, there are campaigns that really touch the heart of the person that's paying attention. And then I've noticed once the hearts been touch, then the while it seems to open up and you know, the funding happens, rather, otherwise, if you can't reach out and touch somebody in that way, you have to really, maybe try a different venue.

Neal Schaffer: 3:49

Awesome. So I've never done crowdfund marketing before. If that's a term I should use, I don't know. But I'm just made it up. Why should I, let's say my business falls into one of those two categories. And I guess if you're an author, and you could put a book together as an app, or a podcast together as an app, which a lot of people are doing, it falls into one those two verticals, what are the advantages of me utilizing crowdfund marketing as part of my entire marketing, you know, program?

Peter Trapasso: 4:14

That's that's another excellent question. There's a crowdfunding campaign that I actually became a backer of they got their funding very recently, as in the past week. And I actually found them through a post they did on Copyblogger, where they described their experience with Kickstarter and crowdfunding. And the way they went about it is, I think, a textbook example that anyone should look at if they want to get involved. Tell us the steps. Were listening. Okay, so they did a lot of pre work. So before launching, you're in a thing called pre launch and you need to do your planning. You need to put together your tribe and that would be friends, family, people that would be very interested in what you're trying to raise money for. So you need to do that first and the same time you need to start building your social circle. Since typically you start with accounts that are just focused on this crowdfunding campaign from zero and build them up, and once you have them to a good level, then you're getting closer to actually launching and making the campaign public on Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

Neal Schaffer: 5:16

Oh, great advice. So you know, built up a tribe, a physical tribe, as well as a virtual tribe. What is sort of best practices in I've seen crowdfunding campaigns and social where they're just blasting, hey, you know, give us money, or they're savvy enough to do like a Twitter search. They know I'm talking about something with a keyword. And then they'll say, Oh, if you're interested in that, you may, you may want to invest in our Kickstarter are the follow me on Twitter, I follow back, they send me automated DM, hey, check out my Kickstarter. And I'm assuming none of these are best practices that you'd recommend, obviously, but what would be, you know, give us one or two best practices as to companies that are looking to utilize Kickstarter, and they're starting social media accounts from scratch for the campaign, of how they can do it in a very authentic and transparent and genuine way, while still meeting their Kickstarter goals.

Peter Trapasso: 6:00

Sure. One thing that I found is that you should lead with what your big idea is not please donate. I mean, it's getting pretty saturated out there. As far as all these different campaigns. And as you mentioned, people are kind of, you know, getting a little bit numb to all these requests. So if you think about it more as a startup and a product, lead with the big idea, what are you trying to do, what are you trying to sell, then if it connects with people, then you know, the funding will come. And on top of that, you also want to leverage not just your core supporters, your tribe, as I called it, but also you want to have them become people that can spread the word to those that they know that might be interested in helping as well. So you amplify the effect from maybe 300 people, you start out with 2000s.

Neal Schaffer: 6:49

Very interesting. So comparing crowdfund to social media marketing or email marketing, what do you see as the benefits and disadvantages comparing it? And I understand that, obviously, if you do crowdfunding, you utilize email and social as part of that. But what do you see as the advantages and disadvantages? In other words, I have a budget, I don't know if I'm going to use it on email, or social, or, you know, a crowdfunding campaign, what would you do to convince me that the advantages of using that money in crowdfunding far outweigh the advantages of those other mediums or other channels?

Peter Trapasso: 7:20

Well, one thing is, is it's red hot, I mean, crowdfunding, you're hearing about a lot right now. So that kind of helps your your cause as long as you present it appropriately. So I would leverage and ride the wave, as it's, you know, coming out there. But as far as analytics, they're not very well developed. So as far as tracking beyond that bottom line of how much have you raised, and you know, how many days you have left in your campaign? There's not a lot out there. Whereas with email, and social, it's more developed, and you have a lot more quantitative measures you can use. So you need to keep that in mind. And, again, consider things beyond just the bottom line for what are you trying to achieve at the outset? Do you want just to raise money? Do you want to also get your brand out there? And, you know, it's, it applies best to even established companies? If this isn't the first thing you've ever launched the first product, the first service, I've seen established companies with plenty of money doing crowdfunding campaigns, because they realize the marketing benefits. It's not just about raising money.

Neal Schaffer: 8:24

What are sort of the user bases? So if you look at you know, the numbers Facebook, 1 billion users, you know, LinkedIn, 300 million Twitter 400 million and Google Plus what have you, Pinterest, Instagram, what would you estimate to be the user base of people? And I guess we could say, like a Kickstarter, because you do have a user profile, and you can't connect with others. But I guess we could consider it a social network, right? What would you say is sort of the volume in terms of users or participation in those communities that are focused on crowdfunding,

Peter Trapasso: 8:48

I could probably give you $1 amount of the total industry, I think, between 2012 and 2013, it doubled in size, I think it went from something like two and a half billion to $5 billion total size of all campaigns, not sure if that's the ones that were funded, or just the ones that were were launched, but I'm assuming those dollars were actual dollars raised. So as far as the number of people, there's there has to be 1000s. Kickstarter, far and away is the largest right, I would say, maybe they're even 50% of the market, followed by IndieGoGo and a bunch of other ones,

Neal Schaffer: 9:24

in terms of the campaigns that you've worked on, or seen in terms of number of users that have like donated any feeling for some of the big ones that you've seen?

Peter Trapasso: 9:32

Yeah, I think if you get in the hundreds of backers, or funders, you are big time. Wow. So if you can get to that level, then you made a dent and you have to assume that everyone's given at least $1.

Neal Schaffer: 9:46

So I mean, if you look at it that way, and if you have an email list of 10,000, and you get a 30%, open rate and you get a 3% click rate, and how many of those actually convert is probably less than 1%. If you get 100 people converting for whatever amount It is or whatever call to action you have on Kickstarter, you're actually, when you when you look at the email marketing equivalent, it's actually pretty impressive when you're talking about 100 or 200 people that actually sign up and donate money.

Peter Trapasso: 10:10

Yes, I think so. And again, part of part of its the novelty, but also it's an effective use of social media as far as getting the word out, and also leveraging email marketing. So these things that already exist, you're just repurposing them for a new campaign.

Neal Schaffer: 10:27

awesome, really awesome information. Peter, anything else you'd like to add for companies that are considering, you know, anything that we didn't talk about that you think they should know, visa vie crowdfund marketing and our social media?

Peter Trapasso: 10:36

Sure, definitely do your homework. And I can't stress that enough. I've seen enough campaigns that maybe started strong and just didn't make it to the finish line, or, you know, surprised us. But less and less do I see ones that surprise me and make it all the way through. So the ones that do best are the ones that have certain elements, one thing is called an explainer video, so make sure your explainer video is strong and clear, and looks very professional, as well and leverage your landing page. So whether you're on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, or what have you, make sure your landing page is completely filled out and definitely look at other ones that have won ones that have made their funding and reach out and talk to them both within the area that your product and service falls into. And also ones that just seem to, you know, done really well, people tend to be very friendly. And I think they'd be more than happy to help you out.

Neal Schaffer: 11:26

That's all awesome. So Peter, I mean, as you can hear, Peter is obviously a very intelligent, yet articulate, transparent, really good guy. He also comes from the tech industry like me, in fact, he was at Sun Microsystems, and I work for a Java company as well. So we're having a fun time talking about, you know, the tech industry. But Peter, how can people and obviously, if you if you have any question about any of this content about crowdfund Morgan, Peter is, is the person that you need to contact. So Peter, how can people find you online and in social? Yeah, the

Peter Trapasso: 11:52

easiest thing to remember is just Peter trip. So that's my account across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, you name it, as well as my website, Peter pascoe.com. You can easily contact me that way as well.

Neal Schaffer: 12:05

Awesome. Thanks a lot, Peter. Appreciate your being on the show. And wherever you're on the world today, listening to this podcast, make sure that you make it a great and social day. We'll talk to you next week. Hopefully next week. We'll have some more interviews from some of the great people I'm meeting here at Cisco Live. Bye bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com make it a social day.