By Evan Varsamis, an NYC-based entrepreneur and founder/CEO at Gadget Flow, as well as co-founder of Growthfire and CreatorClub.
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A failed crowdfunding campaign can be demotivating, but with a little bit of effort, you can rise up the ladder again. Every failed crowdfunding campaign offers a lot to learn from.
Before relaunching, you need to consider whether it was your product concept or the way you presented the idea that didn’t work. Go through the comments and emails you received to figure out what drove people away from your campaign page. Along with this, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself before planning a relaunch.
1. Did you conduct proper industry research before launching your campaign?
2. Did you promote your campaign enough during the entire crowdfunding phase?
3. Did you respond to the queries from viewers on time, or were your response times irregular?
When you have your answers, you’ll know where the problems were so you can improve your crowdfunding relaunch. Now, once you decide to relaunch your failed campaign, what are the next steps?
1. Announce to your existing viewership.
First and foremost, it’s important to announce your relaunch to your viewers, including your email subscribers, social media followers and previous campaign page followers. You could do this through a simple email and a social media post. Be very specific about what went wrong and where you are trying to improve.
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2. Improve your product.
If the issue was with the product itself, improve it after conducting surveys. If you think your product isn’t up to the mark, it’s always better to get feedback before relaunching. Conduct a survey with your existing follower base and figure out how you can improve your overall product quality for the relaunch. Once you do, work on the newer version and specify its new features on your updated campaign page.
3. Specify communication methods outside your campaign page.
When your campaign fails, you must have a communication channel open to your existing backers so they are able to reach you personally whenever you relaunch. This will help you not only retain existing customers, but also get that instant traffic to your relaunched campaign page faster than usual.
4. Consult industry professionals.
If you didn’t do this last time, make sure you consult industry experts this time around. Join forums to evaluate your campaign and ask how you can make things work when you relaunch. These experts will not just help you plan your campaign from scratch, but also promote it in the right places for more traffic.
5. Replan your budget.
If you didn’t spend enough on advertising the first time, reconsider your original plan. A strong advertising strategy will help you achieve your desired traffic and is much better than doing no ads at all. If you aren’t confident in your advertising strategy, I recommend working with a social media advertising agency to make the best plan for promoting your campaign.
6. Restructure your reward system.
When you are planning a pledge reward chart, it’s always essential to consider backers from all kinds of economic backgrounds. This will ensure you get the maximum amount of support from all your potential backers instead of targeting only those with high-budget pledging capacity. As a result, climbing the ladder of success for your campaign will be easier than expected.
7. Check out other successful crowdfunding campaigns.
When you do industry research, I advise looking into other similar campaigns to determine what made them successful. Gathering all this information will help you as you relaunch so you don’t make the same mistakes once again.
Having said that, campaign failures have a lot to do with the product. With the correct marketing strategy, you can avoid a second failure. All you have to do is rework your existing strategies and research to more effectively promote your campaign.
