Venture Beat | Chris Herbert, TrackR| March 26, 2016

After working for months to years on your great idea, it’s time to bring it to market. But where is that money for manufacturing and sales support going to come from? With the advent of crowdfunding, entrepreneurs have more access to capital than ever before, but there is a lot more to crowdfunding than just making a great video and page.

Here’s what I learned from four successful campaigns and raising over $2 million in crowdfunding:

1. Have a real prototype. This is a must for launching your crowdfunding campaign, and I don’t mean just a piece of plastic that your end product will look like. I mean you should have a functional prototype to prove the technical feasibility to your backers and yourself. As press and the public become more savvy to vaporware crowdfunders, it’s essential to show that you have the goods. (8 Things About Hardware Crowdfunding We Learned From 20 Campaigns)

2. Don’t blow your budget on the video. Many campaigns spend a lot of money on the video, but this is not necessary. It’s much more important to focus on having a clear and compelling pitch on the video rather than focus on make the video seem “cool.”

3. Focus on distribution. Focus on how people are going to find out about your campaign. It’s a good practice to map out exactly how the first 100 backers are going to find out about your campaign; then map out how the next 1,000 backers will find out about your campaign. It’s important to understand what key assumptions your team is making about the crowdfunding campaign. (Crowdsourcing, a powerful marketing tool for startups)

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4. Make sure the price is right. Don’t just randomly price your perks; make sure you are pricing to consumer demand and that your prices will maximize the revenue for each backer.

5. Add upsells. Finding new backers is hard during a campaign, but selling more to your existing backers is a much better path to success and enables your backers to invest even more in your project, which will make them even more likely to tell their friends.

6. Update me! Plan out daily updates during your campaign — and plan out plenty of content in advance. Backers want to hear from you and be involved in the process.

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