Crowdfunding has become one of the most popular and trusted ways of raising money. Since crowdfunding got its start in the US, most crowdfunding PR promotions only target audiences in the US. In recent years, however, crowdfunding has gained traction around the world.
This is why international outreach is a vital part of every PR campaign we run at The Crowdfunding Formula (TCF). Over the years, we’ve gained a lot of insight into region-specific crowdfunding tactics. This blog shares with you our best practices when it comes crowdfunding in international markets outside the US.
Rules of Thumb For Cross-Border Crowdfunding
During the first week of the crowdfunding campaign, the PR outreach from TCF targets the US. Once we have a list of countries that show the highest engagement with our crowdfunding campaign ads, we move on to international outreach. From here we create a list of the top five target foreign regions based on our findings.
The first step in targeting international crowdfunding audiences is research. To begin, we translate the targeted keywords into the primary language of each five countries on the list of potential markets. We then use these keywords to reach out to American media outlets and journalists. To make the research results more specific, we use Google's advanced search tool.
Google's advanced searching tool allows us to narrow the research to articles in a specific language and region. For example, if we want to see articles that appeared on South Korean websites, we set Korean as the language.
We store all relevant information in our database. We also translate our outreach pitches and press releases into the common language in the targeted country. This way, we get the best results from our outreach to journalists outside the US. Personalization goes a long way to in getting an enthusiastic response from our points of contact.
International outreach is a great way to introduce your campaign to a new market, but it’s not without challenges. For example, the Japanese journalists we tried to contact had no listed contact information Turns out, most social media sites are banned in Japan, making it difficult for us to reach out.
When foreign journalists aren’t on Linkedin or Twitter, we instead visit their publisher’s website and send the pitch there. If the campaign is interesting and relevant to the website, it will definitely be published, and the results can be astonishing.
For example, we used this tactic on our crowdfunding project named "Banc Mask." The campaign information was sent to Japanese media through a contact form, and after being successfully published, it went viral in Japan and ultimately raised $20,000.
Influencer Marketing For International Crowdfunding Campaigns
How do US crowdfunding campaigns cultivate an audience in Europe, Australia, or the APAC regions?
When crowdfunding campaigns look to promote their offerings, they first think to promote themselves in their own country. For example, it's very convenient to promote your idea via influencers who appeal to your audience.
But if you want to promote your product or service worldwide, you need to do thorough research and use different strategies to attain your goals.
For example, when doing advertising worldwide, sometimes, besides the local country, the tracking and analytics also show us some activity from Europe, Australia, or APAC. This becomes the first hint for us to understand that we can target a relevant audience elsewhere. Thus, we listen to the data and decide to be active in that specific region as well.
When we start the process of influencer marketing, we look through all the data, analyze the results we've got from specific countries, and then start research on influencers from those specific countries. Below are some key rules to keep in mind when finding influencers based on their location.
Conduct research using keywords in the native language
When researching influencers in a specific country, it is crucial to use keywords and hashtags in their native language. This will make the process of finding influencers easier and will save you more time.
Most influencers create content in their native language even though they may have an international audience. Maybe they do translations, but the biggest part of their content is in their native language.
Write pitches in native languages
After thorough research, the next step is reaching out to journalists, influences, etc. to get the deals you want. Most content creators will feel flattered if your outreach is in their native language, even if they know English well. So, translating your pitches will increase your conversions.
Ask content creators to share content in their native language
It looks more organic when an influencer represents your product or service in their own language. This way, they can engage people and it won’t feel inauthentic or promotional.
How do you manage crowdfunding communities that are all across the globe?
You may ask yourself if you'll be to keep up with all the crowdfunding communities across the world. The only logical answer is, that you must keep them engaged, entertain them with new ideas and deals, and in the end, they will become loyal customers.
It is also a great idea to engage in long-term collaboration deals with the influencers you work with. Ask them to regularly post and remind their followers about the products or services.
How to Identify Top Crowdfunding Campaign Markets For Advertising
Crowdfunding has recently achieved a significant level of popularity that has also strengthened the startup ecosystem. The success of crowdfunding campaigns rides on the power of their working marketing strategies.
Statistics show that 52% of crowdfunding backers are in the US. This means that the rest are out there in the wider world. If you want to achieve a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign, consider branching out.
Before you launch, make sure to do the proper pre-launch advertising. This includes steps like collecting leads and engaging in email marketing. After finishing your pre-launch, you can start the project launch.
Don't rely on guesswork to guide your targeting. You have a hidden weapon in Google Analytics. This tool lets you see which audiences, interests, and locations align with your project. When you see that a specific country performs well, start thinking of strategies to target that audience in that country.
In this image, you can clearly see that the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, and France convert better. Thus, those countries need special attention and custom strategies. What can we do?
Let me bring you the example of Blanc Mask's campaign, where we noticed that people from Japan converted better than elsewhere. This was when we knew that Japan needed a more personal approach. We took our best creative and copy and translated it into Japanese, and adjusted it all to the Japanese market. On top of all that, we researched Japanese cultural items, fashion, hobbies, and interests to help drive the success of the Blanc Mask campaign.
Google Analytics gave us you more opportunities to dig deeper. Besides going through countries, we used GA to target specific cities. In Blanc's case, we targeted Tokyo, Kanagawa, Aichi, and Kyoto separately.
Now let’s talk Facebook advertising.If you don't use the full potential of lookalike audiences in Facebook, you lose a great margin of your advertising profit. Don't forget to upload your email lists and create retargeting audiences as the lookalikes of customers who are your buyers or other potential buyers. This can help you to find more similar lookalike audiences.
Recommendation: Use 1-5% lookalike audiences in different regions. The audience will get broader and it’ll become harder to get new conversions.
Furthermore, when you bring this much traffic to your webpage, you also need to use varied strategies to convert people who have viewed your webpage and haven’t converted yet. For example, both ad retargeting or email marketing are effective. Be sure to experiment with different messaging and creative assets as you re-approach prospects. This way you’ll be able to identify what converts best in as little time as possible.
Another good strategy when retargeting is to narrow your retargeting audience by location, language, or interests. Look at FAQs, forums, and blogs that your audience reads to learn their pain points, then address these needs in your messaging to drive the best results.
The rules and tips mentioned above will help you improve your crowdfunding campaign results and enlarge your target market. If you don’t go global, who knows what potential you’ll be missing out on? When targeting foreign markets, be sure to advertise and conduct outreach in the native language. Use tools like Facebook lookalike audiences and Google Analytics to help. Experiment with your creative asset and copy to find what converts best. And of course, work to develop a strong working relationship with the content creators who will help you reach your audience. These are the best practices for how to expand your crowdfunding campaign into foregin countries.
The Crowdfunding Formula (TCF) is the leading crowdfunding PR & Marketing agency in the world with a proven record of successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns.
