How to Launch a Successful Indiegogo Campaign
I had the ultimate privilege to support an Indiegogo campaign that my friend and longtime mentor, Dr. Julie Pham, Founder of CuriosityBased, launched last year to self-publish her book, 7 Forms of Respect™. In 18 hours, she hit her entire campaign goal! Yes, you read that right...her goal was to raise $10,500 during a 60 day campaign and she achieved it in ONLY 18 hours. Her campaign currently shows that she raised over $23,285 with 344 backers.
I interviewed Dr. Julie, so you can learn all about her campaign and grab some of her tips for launching a successful Indiegogo campaign of your own.
When did you have the idea to start an Indiegogo campaign?
The year before, my friend sent me the Indiegogo campaign for the daughter of her friend who was raising money for her self-published book. I thought it was such a smart way to get funds.
What do you wish you had known before you and your team started working on the campaign?
I wish I had known how clunky the Indiegogo payment system was going to be. If I had known, I would’ve written some kind of warning about how people really have to check if they got their receipts or not. I had quite a few people who thought that they had paid, only to find out their order had not gone through.
What were the biggest contributors to the success of your campaign?
I had heard that the Indiegogo algorithm would get triggered in a positive way if I could get 100 pledges within the first 48 hours. I created a list of 120 people who I thought I could ask for money, and I personally text messaged them two days before the campaign to ask them to make a pledge within the first 48 hours.
I noticed that all the other book campaigns started at the price of their e-book, which meant that people had to give at least $15 or $25. For me, it was more about getting pledges and maximizing engagement. So I created a $5 gift level. The only perk they got from me was a thank you email.
I treated social media as a way to amplify my message, but not to drive the sales. To drive contributions, I had to make a direct ask. And then once people started seeing that it was climbing, they wanted to give. I took a picture of my super surprised face six hours into the campaign, when we surpassed 100 pledges. People really appreciate the candor.
About 90% of my sales came from my network, not from Indiegogo’s search tool, even though we were proud that we trended on Indiegogo for three days.
Brittany also created super clear images for each perk level. That was totally her idea. So in the image, you could see what you get. You don’t have to read the text. All of the other book pages just had pictures of books and more books.
Example of one of the perk designs:
What was the behind-the-scenes of the marketing and outreach to your network?
About two months before the campaign, we did research on other similar book campaigns to see what they were doing and what we should do, and what we want to do differently. It seemed really important to have a video, so I invested in that. Brittany created a lot of great collateral and graphics to push out.
We had written the email campaign to keep asking people for contributions every few days for that first week. We had no idea that we would make our goal within 18 hours and a lot of the text was irrelevant.
Why did you end up choosing Indiegogo over other crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter?
Indiegogo lets you keep any money that you raise, whereas Kickstarter it’s an all or nothing. You raise your goal or you don’t.
If you could start over and do one thing differently, what would it be?
I would’ve still used Indiegogo over Kickstarter. I’m really excited to use Beavrr, which helps people raise money from their friends and family and it takes a much lower fee and percentage. It is just coming out now. So much of my funding came from people I know, so it kind of feels like I was just giving money to Indiegogo to administer my campaign instead of advertising it to new audiences.
If you’re using Indiegogo to promote your business book, you really have to do a lot of the promotion, unless you’re already well known.
What word of advice would you give to someone interested in launching their own crowdfunding campaign?
Make sure you let people know that you’re doing it. For months beforehand, whenever I talked to someone, I would let them know that we were doing it and I asked them if they would be willing to make a contribution or would buy a book when the time came. You have to start with asking people you know.
Pick up your own copy of the 7 Forms of Respect book, available on Amazon. If you’re interested in learning more, or want to get the 7 Forms of Respect in your workplace, look into the digital course for your team!
Are you interested in launching your own crowdfunding campaign? Contact me at bd@brittanydanyelle.com for help with creating the graphics for your campaign. We can help make your contributor perk levels stand out and create social media and newsletter promo content.
