Crowdfunding Campaign Fail? What to expect and how to avoid it.

When planning to launch your first crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter and Indiegogo the most common fear is that to fail. Most of the time it's because there are a lot of misconceptions behind the crowdfunding industry and most of the time this generates a lot of confusion leading to giving up on starting a crowdfunding project. Don't let that let you down so easily, knowing the failures may help you avoid them!

Let me be clear, of course, success on crowdfunding platforms is never assured, but starting with great planning and strategy it's easier to reach a satisfactory goal.

So what happens when a crowdfunding campaign fails? And how to avoid that?

Keep reading to know more!

1. WHY DOES A CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN FAILS?

When a crowdfunding campaign fails it's frustrating, a lot of effort and time goes wasted.
It happens because the final goal is not fully met, maybe because there weren't enough backers or the communication and community behind the campaign were not that strong and well planned.

On Kickstarter mostly happens because of its way to handle the campaigns which is ''All Or Nothing'' model, basically, if you manage to fund all your goal you'll get all the money, but if the goal is not met, even for $10 to the final goal, you got nothing. All your backers get their money back, but the project is canceled. That hurts because it means that you have to start everything all over again. For sure that would serve as an experience, in order to let you understand where did you go wrong.

2. COOLEST COOLER CAMPAIGN FAIL

Well, let's suppose that the funding goal is met, and you get all the money, but in someway you fail to deliver your project. What happens?

This is not a rare scenario, it happens a lot, but don't blame it only on the ''campaign creator's fault'', in fact on Kickstarter for example, it is quoted many times that it is not mandatory to deliver the final product because they say that a backer should only back if they're interested in supporting an innovative project not just for the reward, it doesn't work like an e-commerce.

But other than having a follow of ''angry backers'' you will also get bad press, they will talk about your campaign as fake and for sure it's not good advertising for your future product or project. For this reason, it's always good to have a solid and pretty much-defined prototype in order to go live on crowdfunding platforms, in this way you'll get to calculate your expenses and the experience you need to build or create your product.

This is actually what happened to the infamous biggest crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter ''Coolest Cooler'', it went from being the most successful campaign to a complete disaster! After launching on Kickstarter and collecting $13 millions and 60,000 backers for an hi-tech refigerator, it failed to deliver all the pieces of product sold. It surely sounded like a scam and the creator blamed it on the shipping fees, after that they just put the items on sale on Amazon.

From success to a disaster, for sure this campaign did not leave a good memory on their backers, that are currently upset and disappointed.

3. HOW TO AVOID A CROWDFUNDING FAIL?

When you launch a crowdfunding campaign you got to get the best out of it.

There are so many ways to set up the right strategy for your campaign, especially starting from the pre-launch phase and that's what I always tell my clients and students. Don't underestimate the power of a good pre-launch phase it could really lift up your whole project.

First things first, be assured to have a semi-official version of your product's prototype in order to be more transparent and present everything clearly to your possible backers.

The next step is the most important: community building. Gather interested people and get their contacts through a simple landing page explaining your product, in order to make them feel involved and let them understand more about your project and your motivations about why they should back you. After that, send them newsletters and catchy communications in order to keep them updated and not lose track of what's happening around the project.

Community building is the only golden rule to follow, remember that the backers are just normal people interested in innovative and new projects and that is still the most effective turnaround to launch a successful campaign on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

So, be sure to create a community of interested people around your new product, gather them and keep these people warm and spoiled with special content about your upcoming product, in order to make them want to support you and be part of your journey.

WRAPPING IT UP

When you launch a crowdfunding campaign, especially your first one, you should be ready to be fully committed to it, giving all that you can, try to avoid common mistakes and you'll surely get the fruit of your hard work.

I'm sure that my tips made you understand the point here, you would not want to waste the potential of a good crowdfunding campaign, especially regarding a new project in the market. My job here is to make sure that you creators get on the right path, starting to build an effective and successful crowdfunding campaign!

Don't forget to stay updated for the next articles I'm going to drop and download the free e-Book now ''3 steps to success on Kickstarter and Indiegogo'' where I will lead you to the beginning of a great pre-launch phase, fundamental to start building an effective and performing crowdfunding campaign!

Ciao ciao

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