Kathy Kraysler
ValueSetters CMO
You’ve built a killer offering page, produced a dazzling video, and launched your campaign on an equity crowdfunding platform. Now it’s time to sit back and watch the investments come rolling in, right?
If only it were that easy.
A well planned marketing strategy is crucial to a successful equity crowdfunding raise. While it may be tempting to rely on family and friends and the visitors who come across your equity crowdfunding platform’s site, the truth is your investment opportunity could get lost in the crowd.
A more effective approach is to actively target potential investors right where they are online, whether it’s through social media, search engine marketing, email, or online publications they subscribe to.
A powerful digital marketing strategy for your equity crowdfunding campaign should include the following elements:
1. Social Media Marketing (for Highly Targeted Audiences)
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow for very specific demographic, interest, location, and behavior based targeting. Do you want to target New York City residents who are over 21, earn $150,000 or more and are early technology adopters? You can do that on Facebook and Instagram. Are you only targeting US residents whose job level is Vice President or above and contains the word “Operations?” LinkedIn lets you do that!
2. Search Engine Marketing (for Wider Audiences)
While not as targeted as social media marketing, Google AdWords will help you reach a much wider audience and will allow you to target based upon search words and terms.
3. Retargeting
Retargeting allows you to show ads to a custom audience based upon their email address or a retargeting cookie you’ve placed on your site. Website retargeting requires a very high volume of site visitors each month, so we recommed email retargeting. If you have a list of email addresses you’d like to retarget to, simply upload to Facebook, Twitter, and/or Google (don’t worry - the email addresses are hashed and remain private!) and your ads will be displayed to the people they can match on their network.
4. Lookalike Audience Retargeting
To reach an even wider audiences, most networks use AI-based algorithms to build lookalike audiences whose characteristics are similar to those of the names you provided in your custom audience segment. Facebook can even build a lookalike audience based on the fans of your company’s page.
Just remember, you can’t launch your marketing campaign before your equity crowdfunding campaign goes live. That’s called “conditioning the market” and violates SEC rules.
ValueSetters offers a full range of digital marketing services. Download our list for more information.