Updates, highlights, and what matters about Crowdfunding in Armenia

Campaign and create a community around your campaign long before you launch 

Doing work on engaging potential funders to get them interested in your campaign before launching can significantly improve your chances of success. Indeed, campaigns that 'cold start' and don't do any engagement or marketing before the first day of launching often struggle to reach their funding goal.

The value of having an existing community of potential funders to tap into on day one of your campaign is best illustrated by when people with an existing fanbase venture into crowdfunding. For example, when famous American entrepreneur and author Seth Godin launched his campaign to crowdfund his book project 'the Icarus Deception' he reached his target of $100K within 3 hours, because of the huge interest from his global fanbase.

However, less famous entrepreneurs also have the opportunity to create high levels of interest around their project before launching, by using mailouts, blogging and other social media platforms to promote ideas sometimes as early as six months before launching.

Tapping in to your existing network of friends can help create the first buzz around your project. Equally, if you can't get your friends excited about your project pre-launch, then that will be a good...

...with a short and engaging video pitch! 

Crowdfunding campaigns succeed both because they propose products that people would like to purchase but also because they appeal to people's passions and interests.

So, while it's important to communicate to people what they get out of it, make sure you tell the story of why you are passionate about making your project a reality.

As Lee Moyer emphasises, 'the movie is key' to doing this. Using a short video to communicate your idea is the best way to get your pitch across to the crowd as it enables entrepreneurs to put a face on who is behind the project and give a taster of what the project will look like in a format that is easy to share.

Lessons from Kickstarter show that projects with a video component succeed at a higher rate than those without (50 per cent vs. 30 per cent). There are lots of guides on what makes a good crowdfunding campaign video however the main insight from Moyer is to 'keep it short', as potential funders often wont engage with videos longer than three minutes.

Source: Nesta