A year ago, we finalized our equity crowdfunding. dark ballad has raised over £335,000, including over £200,000 from over 1,300 black female investors.
This crowdfund has always been more than money. It was about empowering black women. It was about black women being able to say that Black Ballad is theirs and it’s a company where they helped build the table and every seat around it. Too often black women are the last thing too many companies think of, but our crowdfunding last year said to black women, we see you and we want you to be on this business journey with us every step of the way. path.
I would say that on a monthly basis, people ask me why our crowdfunding has been so successful, so I decided to write an article not only to celebrate our momentous achievement, but to help others who are considering crowdfunding to succeed and cross that magic line.
Here are five points that I think helped us have a successful crowdfunding campaign…
1. Plan for success
Our crowdfunding wasn’t won because we ran a smooth six-week campaign, it worked because it took years in the planning. We decided we wanted to do crowdfunding in early 2019. Two years before we launched the campaign. During that time, we made sure our content was consistent, spoke regularly about the number of black women we’ve paid, celebrated milestones, and maintained a high level of customer service.
Crowdfunding cannot be won on the medium, it is about showing your customers that you have a good proposition, that you value their time and most importantly, their money. By being consistent and managing our members carefully, we developed trust and our audience knew we could be trusted to work hard with their money.
2. Memes, memes and more memes
Our crowdfund was so happy. Our social media manager, Nicole George, used social media memes every time we hit a crowdfunding milestone. It helped our crowdfunding travel on social media and really got people talking and intrigued about our offering. While equity crowdfunding is serious business, you can and should celebrate each milestone in a way that’s genuinely joyful to the people you’re reaching out to, as it has helped the campaign become something to talk about.
3. Prepare yourself mentally
You need to be at your best emotionally and mentally. Crowdfunding is exhausting. Some days are high and some days are low, just like life in general. Still, for many of us, a crowdfunding can decide how you can move forward as a business and that can be an overwhelming and honestly scary thought. When things aren’t going well, you need to be able to keep a cool head, motivate your team, and believe that you’ll achieve your goal.
4. Turn on your fan power
Let your super customers explain why they believe in the proposition you offer. We asked our top Black Ballad members (and when I say top members, I mean those who have been members since the very beginning, regularly interact with our content and attend our events) to create videos not just about reason why they were investing in our campaign, but why our business was important and why our campaign needed to be successful.
It showed those who might not know our business as well, but liked our offering, that we had customers. It helped bring in others who knew us and were considering investing and helped us get seen by other potential equity investors as those clients shared the video with their own communities.
5. Be boastful
Think carefully about your USP and convey it in every message. Our USP(s) was that for nearly the past decade, no other online media company had produced content exclusively for black women, or collectively paid black female journalists the six-figure amount we planes.
Sometimes we can cut back on our accomplishments, but a crowdfunding campaign is not the time to do that. Be boastful. We continued to highlight the thousands of stories we’ve posted by black women, highlighted content and voices from the black women’s community that are often ignored by mainstream media, and bragged about the amount of money we’ve paid black women journalists, so people could see not only that we’re a great proposition, but a proposition with a purpose.
Tori Obedin is CEO and Founder of Black Ballad. This article is republished with his permission. The original is found here.
Free daily newsletter
If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Monday-Friday) email newsletter (mobile friendly).