5. Marketing Plan
5.4. Crowdfunding Campaign
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, typically via the internet. It is like having large groups of people combining their economic power to support a product, project, company or organization they like and believe in.
It works like this: the project starter proposes the idea to be funded, then individuals support the idea with a moderator (platform) that brings the parties together to launch the idea.
To have an idea of how popular this is, in 2013, the crowdfunding industry grew to be over
$7.4 billion worldwide (European Management Review, 2014).
There are different platforms to launch a crowdfunding campaign. The two most popular ones are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. IMPCT chose to use Indiegogo where someone can basically create a campaign page, add a PayPal account, make a list of gifts or perks to give away depending on the amount of the investment and finally create a marketing promotion campaign to attract donors. The site earns a 4% fee for successful campaigns. For campaigns that fail to raise their target amount, users have the option of either refunding all money to their contributors at no charge or keeping all money raised minus a 9% fee. Unlike similar sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo disburses the funds immediately, when the contributions are collected through the user's PayPal accounts. Indiegogo also offers direct credit card
5.4.2. Strategy
IMPCT wanted to raise money to build the first Educational Daycare pilot school and created a very complete Indiegogo Campaign for this. It was a big challenge because the team needed to have many different things for it to be successful. First, the team needed to make a video.
This is 80% of it all. You need to make a good video explaining your idea clearly, transmitting the passion, communicating the need by moving the viewers’ feelings in less than 3 minutes.
This is super hard if you don’t know how to do it or what you want exactly. Fortunately one of Andres’ hobbies is to make and edit videos since he was a teenager so this was a huge advantage. It took him 47 hours to make a 3 minute video. It was worth it though in the end.
Besides a good video you need, of course, a good idea and perks. Taylor, Ann and JD were in charge of this and it was also a great success. Our goal was US$25 000 in one month.
A crowdfunding campaign is not about just making a nice page and a nice video. People think that once you do this everything will come to you and money will rain. It is a tremendous amount of work because you need to use a push strategy to get to people. IMPCT learned some valuable lessons the first week. It is not about posting something on Facebook and just wait for donations. You will get 100 likes on a post but you won’t get a penny. The secret is to make it personal. You need to convince people one by one. It takes so much time and out of three people that we talked to personally, one donated. There was no better strategy than just target people with money and influence and try to convince them in less than 10 minutes.
Another good lesson is that for a campaign to be successful you need to be able to fund at least 30% of it in the first day. So IMPCT created expectation the two previous weeks and made it.
Social media was key to communicate with followers and tell them what IMPCT was up to.
This way, the team was able to make them feel the excitement and make them feel IMPCT was also their own project. IMPCT has a very nice website, Facebook page, twitter account, Instagram account and YouTube channel.
Bloggers also helped by sharing the message and the video with thousands of followers. A
Co”. IMPCT received hundreds of entries mostly from Philippines. There were two winners and they got backpacks as prizes.
The team pitched anywhere they could. From EMBA to IMBA students or alumni. IMPCT was invited by several professors not only from NCCU but also from NTU and other universities to share the experience.
Something that really worked were the selling of t-shirts in the streets of NCCU. The team had 20 volunteers and fellow classmates who helped sell 250 t-shirts on campus. This not only gave funds but also publicity. Every day at NCCU you see someone wearing an IMPCT shirt.
Finally the last two weeks, thanks to the help of professors, angel investors and the IMBA office IMPCT was able to appear in radio shows and TV shows reaching not thousands but millions. Our representatives in El Salvador and Honduras also did the same thing and appeared in TV and radio. It was overwhelming to see how many reporters wanted to interview the team. IMPCT appeared in every newspaper in Taiwan and every newspaper in El Salvador.
5.4.3. Results
The Indiegogo campaign is now closed after raising almost
$57,000. This represents a 228% of the original goal. This success is the culmination of thousands of hours sitting in a tiny room at National Chengchi University’s; building the best idea the team possibly could and evangelizing the cause to anybody and everyone who would listen.
Being based in Taipei but having a strong network across the world allowed IMPCT to have a truly global campaign reach. In some ways this Indiegogo campaign was a way to test
Figure 15 Summary Statistics Indiegogo campaign
Figure 16 Amount raised vs. time
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Figure 17 Contributions vs. time
Figure 18 Countries by contribution
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