Crowdfunding Agencies: are they worth it?

Should you hire a crowdfunding agency to launch your crowdfunding campaign?

Today I decided to start the article with a question. A big question, I’d say...

Because this topic is very controversial and, most of all, I heard a lot of people wondering about that. But while people out there are just thinking about it, a lot of my clients, instead, had to go through really tough times.

Well, I wanted to embrace this topic from the moment I started to hear my clients complaining about trusting and hiring an agency and finding themselves losing thousands of dollars, with no results.

This is what I'm going to talk about in today's video up here, but if you don’t feel like watching it, just read the following article to find out the best way to approach agencies for your campaign.

PROS AND CONS ABOUT CROWDFUNDING AGENCIES

The topic is pretty complex, and it can have some pros and cons.

Some may wonder if it is worth to hire a crowdfunding agency and let them run their campaign. If you ask me, the main problem about that is the knowledge asymmetry. What do I mean by that?

Crowdfunding agencies have a lot of expertise and knowledge in the field, in order to support their clients through all the different phases of a crowdfunding campaign. Most of the time, clients don’t have a clue about what to do, and that’s where ‘’knowledge asymmetry’’ stands. Clearly one of the two parties, in this case, the client, don’t have the knowledge to solve an issue or create an action plan. And that’s where the agency steps in, they know something their clients don’t, they offer their know-how and expertise.

Clients are going to hire the agency and let them manage everything, running the whole campaign from the pre-launch to the actual launch. All of that, paying a conspicuous amount of money.

What we could expect from now on, is that the campaign will be successful, but the reality could be slightly different. In fact, not every campaign managed by these agencies will reach the crowdfunding goal... Why?

There are two main issues: knowledge asymmetry and agencies business model.

1. KNOWLEDGE ASYMMETRY

If the client who hires an agency, doesn’t have a good knowledge of the whole crowdfunding process, the different phases, and tools to get the job done, it will be hard to control the outcome of these entities, and supposedly, the result could be a disaster.

Keep in mind that there’s no one that could care about your project more than yourself , since you’re in charge of your own success, you will need to get well prepared to run a successful crowdfunding campaign. After making up your mind, at least a little bit, you could hire an agency or specific professionals to execute what you already planned.

My warm suggestion, in the first place, is to invest time and money for your own knowledge, training yourself, and learning all the crowdfunding process and phases in detail. Then you might find some difficulties, or still uncertain on how to carry out some particular things, you could consider hiring someone to support your crowdfunding launch.

In this way, you will have full control over the process and the outcome, and this is the only way to be sure that you won’t waste money on agencies or professionals.

2. AGENCIES BUSINESS MODEL

Here we go, the second point to understand the ‘’behind the scenes’’ of unsuccessful crowdfunding run by an agency is to know their business model.

Some of the agencies in the market tend to gather as many clients as possible since they will charge them upfront without evaluating the sustainability of your campaign and the efforts to make your project successful.

This behavior is totally dangerous, because, of course, these agencies won’t have enough time to dedicate for every one of their clients, and they’re going to launch their campaign with very basic stuff and promote it via ads in ‘’autopilot’’ mode, then they will evaluate the ones running better with fewer efforts and keep working on those, compromising the success of the campaign.

As I always tell my clients, every project needs its special treatment and a complex go-to-market strategy that needs a lot of time of preparation.

CROWDFUNDING AGENCIES: WHEN AND HOW?

When do I recommend using agencies?

As said before, I suggest contacting an agency only if you have a clear idea of the whole pre-launch and crowdfunding launch process, then I mostly recommend using agencies to run ads and PR shoutouts during the campaign launch to get an extra boost. But this is the very last step of a long process of preparation and community building that I suggest you handle in the first person since that are the most fundamental steps in order to success with your campaign and backers.

In this way, the outcome of their work will be measurable and you could pay them based on the sales generated by their ads or PR strategy, in this case, I suggest you pick up agencies that already have run ads for similar projects, in this way they will be already skilled in converting people in that field.

CROWDFUNDING AGENCIES WON'T BE ENOUGH

Within said, this approach cannot be your only strategy to generate backers over the campaign, in fact, you need to build a solid community of people interested in your project before the actual launch in order to convert them into backers once the campaign is live.

This is the most important step to take when you decide to run a proper crowdfunding campaign for your project.

Keep in mind to don’t trust agencies who don’t take into consideration a proper and solid pre-launch community-building strategy before the launch of your project. A legit and valid agency will run a screening phase of all the client’s applications and work only with a limited amount of them, to be sure to deliver the best outcome.

Easy and professional.

If you want to be sure to understand more about a proper crowdfunding launch but you have no clue, I’ve got you covered! With my crowdfunding pre-launch manual called: 3 steps to success on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo

It’s gonna guide you through the right strategy to follow in order to build a solid and warm community of potential backers for your project you can grab it for free by visiting the link.

Make sure to check out my video and subscribe to my channel, to stay updated on fresh new content I’ll drop here!

Ciao Ciao

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