Assess your current situation 

Before you plan your approach to promote your crowdfunding campaign you need to know how your current audience consumes your content. Conduct a brief analysis on the current state of play with your day to day communications. Look at aspects such as:

Overall Project Objectives 

Define what you want to achieve with your content and communications during the campaign. This should align with the overall objectives of your Seedrs campaign, converting x% of your users or community into investors, for example.
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Communications Objectives 

Define your external and/or internal communications objectives. Start by answering these questions:

These objectives should be created as SMART as possible, that way you can really focus your efforts to then achieve those objectives.

The following are examples of communications objectives:

Drive awareness of your crowdfunding activities across your social network in a range of dynamic and refreshing ways

Achieve an accumulated amount of likes, comments and shares that equate to 15% of the total size of your online community

Gather the investment interest from at least 5 potential investors on the back of your communications 

Ensure reach and engagement of crowdfunding related posts does not drop more than 25% from pre to post campaign
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Target Audience  

You need to ensure that you are communicating with your target audience in the most effective way. If not they are less likely to engage with your content and less likely to convert into investors. To communicate with them in the most effective way you first need to ensure you know who the target audience of your communications are. You can make a start by answering the below questions:

Describe your target audience in a way that seeks to explore their:

You should end up with something like this: "Current customers of our business, who tend to be female, aged 30-50 with children" 

The more refined the target audience description, the more precise and effective your communication will become. Broad descriptions such as the “general public” are less likely to lead to a successful communications campaign than a tightly defined target. The more thoroughly you understand your target audience(s), the higher the probability of communications success. 

When going through this process there are two groups you'll want to consider:

Primary Target Audience – These are the key persons/groups you communicate to directly. You can have more than one primary target audience.

For example: Current customers of our business, who tend to be female, aged 30-50 with children 

Secondary Target Audience – people of less importance who you wish to receive the communications campaign messages, people who will also benefit from hearing themessages or people who influence your target audience now or in the future.

For example: The sophisticated investor, highly affluent, male, aged 50+
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Key Message per Target Audience 

You should now have at least one fully defined target audience that you wish to target. Now you should set out what key message you want to get across to each audience. Answer the following questions about that audience to better understand the aims of communicating with them. 

Examples of a "result" could be on of the following: 

Communications Mix  

How do you want to get the message across. Whether you’re preparing an 8, 16 or 32 week communications plan, what tools will you need to use during this timeframe? Your choice will depend on what you want to achieve, the level and type of message you want to communicate, and the profile of your audience.

Press - Press release, Radio, Opinion editorial, Features

Advertising - Print, Radio, Television

Print - Brochures, Posters, Letters, Leaflets, Scientific reports

Public Relations - Event/Stunt, Endorsements, Telephone calls, Conferences

Online - Social media, SEO/PPC, Website, Tagged visual assets, Multimedia, Email Newsletter, Direct mail

A dynamic combination of this communications mix opens up many different touch points with your community and potential investors. In terms of being cost-effective and driving extensive reach, digital marketing can prove pertinent in delivering important campaign related messages and energising your network. 

Promotion 

Once you've decided what your communications mix will be, you need to determine how you will promote your crowdfunding campaign. Essentially, what owned media and assets can you optimise to spread your message?

Promotion may need to be done on two levels, internally and externally.

Could you, for example, integrate your website to include a tab which informs your network about your crowdfunding journey? Could you refine your SEO and engage in PPC to then help encourage traffic to your website? Essentially, how many paths can you lead back to your crowdfunding campaign. 

Budget 

Set aside how much you would like to dedicate and spend on promoting your crowdfunding campaign.

Being as cost efficient as possible is crucial during this stage, so prioritise which areas of your communications mix will be the most effective and better achieve your set targets.

Your budget will stretch further for instance through prioritising social media channels, but these decisions should always be made in terms of effectiveness. If £500 on a newspaper ad is going to drive more investment interest rather than fed into social media, then the newspaper could be the better communication channel. If you've assessed your target audience as described in this guide, you should have a solid idea of which channel is best.

Timeline 

List the key dates - what do you need and when. 

Describe each key event or activity that will need communications (incl. launch of a report, forum, conference, etc.).

Being on Brand 

Being yourself and representing your brand in the right light is imperative. How are you going to ensure that your communications will be on brand?

This means being consistent with your logo, fonts, images, colours, and "on-brand" with your key messages, making sure you are writing in the right vernacular across platforms. All this will combine to communicate the sort of organization you are – active, passionate, and dedicated to what you do and your crowdfunding success. 

When communicating with your audience, decide upon the value you want that message to have. For example:

Are you portraying yourself in the light you want to be seen in?

Does the message show your passion for the cause? Does it show enthusiasm?

Is it convincing? Does it highlight your commitment for the cause?

Is it delivering results? How well does it show you’ve achieved your objectives?

Keep in mind that your message does not need to include all of the above. In other words, you don't need to reflect every single brand value in each message you send.
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​Evaluating your success

Evaluating your success is the final piece of the puzzle, allowing you to work out what is effective, what is driving results and what needs adjusting. This is through a combination of tracking and following your results, mapped against the objectives and outcomes you want.  

Continually review the effectiveness of KPI’s, asking yourself if other KPI’s could help tell a better story of progress. Even run feedback sessions with your community and ask for reviews when in the right setting.

A good checklist to see whether your communications and content strategy was effective:

Measures for this include: