There’s no doubt that things are tough right now. Really tough, in fact. The Covid-19 pandemic has put an incredible strain on all aspects of our lives, be they social, economic or otherwise. It’s understandable that for many - companies looking to raise funds and their potential investors - it feels like it’s harder than ever to do investment crowdfunding.
However, the point here is not that you should forget about crowdfunding altogether, more that you need to adapt and update your approach to reflect what’s going on in the world. As Rand Fishkin notes, “The world — the whole world — is experiencing this crisis all together. When you send a tweet, write an email, publish a blog post, run a webinar, broadcast or amplify anything right now, you’re sending that message within the context of the Coronavirus outbreak.”
And though there has been a considerable slowdown in several key industries, most notably hospitality and travel, others are positively booming. Internet traffic is up a colossal 50%, Amazon is reportedly making $10,000 a second, Zoom has gone from 10 million to 300 million daily users, and Shopify is now reporting “Black Friday levels of traffic every day”. It’s clear people still have the will to spend their money, the key is finding the way to best engage with them.
To help you contextualize your capital raising efforts during Covid-19 we’ve put together this list of resources on campaign communication. Everything is specifically designed to ensure your message is relevant and in line with what is going on in the world right now, and we've focused on materials and techniques that will help you engage with your potential investors remotely, seeing as meeting in person is out of the question. We'll start off with one article, and continue to add more resources and information to the list over the next few weeks.
This guide contains a step by step checklist that will help you come up with clear, concise and effective messaging for communicating your campaign. It’s based on a pitch by Zuora, described by messaging maestro Andy Raskin as the best he’s ever seen! Simply download the form and complete the five exercises.
Once you’ve mastered your messaging you need a way to present it to the world in a digestible format. Hence why we created this resource - a five step plan for creating a pitch deck.
Email is a key part of any crowdfunding campaign. In fact many marketers cite it as their top channel for revenue generation. But being such a popular medium also makes it a double-edged sword - the average person gets 121 emails a day! With this guide you’ll get clear cut advice on how to make sure your campaign launch emails stand out from the crowd, with examples from successful campaigns we’ve had on our platform.
Where better to start than with webinars? Webinars give you the ability to meet with hundreds of potential investors all at once from the comfort of your own home. They also give investors the opportunity to ask questions directly to you, and to get to know the people behind your business better. This helps to increase engagement and to build trust between your company and potential investors, a crucial aspect of any capital raising campaign. This first guide we've put together covers all the basics you need to know - what content to include in your webinar, how to promote it, and all the practical details to ensure a seamless broadcast. It comes with four practical, hands-on checklists covering:
For this guide we’ve brought in some PR pros to help us out. The team at Mind Meld PR have written this guide covering public relations 101. It covers where to find relevant journalists, how best to approach them, a template for writing press releases, and a list of tools and additional resources to boot.
Taken together these five articles will help provide you a great intro to comms 101 for capital raising. If you have any additional questions by all means get in touch, and if you'd like to speak to one of our team about running your own equity crowdfunding campaign just let us know - we'd love to hear from you!
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