Case Study: Successful Crowdfunding

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En provenance du cours de Berklee College of Music

Navigating the Music Business

53 notes

Berklee College of Music

Navigating the Music Business

53 notes

Cours 2 sur 4 dans Specialization Music Business

This course shares practical tips and strategies to help you take your first step into launching your career as a musical artist. We’ll cover everything from developing your unique identity as an artist and how to lead a band all the way to planning and recording your first independent record with the help of crowdfunding. The course curriculum is modeled from the real-world experience of Leah Waldo (also known as the emerging country artist, Elisa Smith) and features interviews with industry executives, artists, producers, and engineers — all designed to help you navigate the music industry.

À partir de la leçon

Your Money

The majority of this lesson will focus on planning, launching, and managing a crowdfunding campaign. Crowdfunding is a great way to gain support for your music, but running a campaign requires careful planning and preparation. We'll also share a some tips on how to turn your band into a sustainable business.

Case Study: Successful Crowdfunding14:09

Rencontrer les enseignants

Leah Waldo
Course Author
Berklee Online

[MUSIC]

So in this segment, I am going to be joined by Rench,

who is a very talented producer in the maker of Gangstagrass.

And he's going to walk us through a very successful crowdfunding campaign that he

ran himself.

So Rench, thank you for joining us today.

>> Hi, thanks for having me.

This is going to be fun.

>> It is going to be fun.

>> First of all, thank you so much for being with us today.

And I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about why you feel like your

crowdfunding campaign was so successful?

So we've been talking a little bit about how to build a fan base, which is so

important if you're going to have a successful crowdfunding campaign.

So can you share with us a little bit about how you, over the years,

have built such a strong fan base?

>> Well, there's a few elements of that.

Part of it is that I've been doing it for a while.

So over the years you build and you try to capture, because it's easy for

people to fall through the cracks.

So building your email list is a huge thing.

If you're doing live shows to have your email list there at the merch table and

not even just sitting there, grab it and hand it to people.

Next to that is social media, building up your followers and maintaining contact.

Making sure that you're using that email list in social media to reach out on

a regular basis.

So you're sort of in people's loops and on their mind and

realeasing content and stuff for people to enjoy.

So that the next thing you do, you're not sort of coming out of nowhere after they

haven't heard from you in a long time.

>> So how many crowdfunding campaigns have you done?

>> That's the one that I've done.

>> That was the first one?

>> And yeah, I sort of saved up for it in a way.

So when you have something big and you're making a big ask,

you gotta kind of space those out.

So I really kind of saved up for a project that I was thinking okay,

this is the one that I'm going to go to the mat for, and

really make a push on asking everybody for as much as I can.

>> Great, excellent, so how did you know that you were ready to launch?

>> There's a long process, and I think that there's several stages.

And the first is research.

So once I knew I was going to do it for this project,

before even setting a timeline of when I would launch, there was the process

of just reading about other people's crowdfunding campaigns.

And what they said worked and didn't work, and looking at the different platforms,

that are Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Indiegogo, those kinds of things.

And just kind of comparing and getting a feel for what a campaign is like.

And the shape and the lifeline of a crowdfunding campaign.

And I picked Kickstarter.

And then once you're looking at a particular platform,

you can go into that platform and read people's stories from that.

They have a lot more specific things about how that particular one works.

I found that once I created an account with Kickstarter,

they had a lot of documentation and

a lot of support stuff that you could read about what's been successful there.

>> Another thing that we've been talking about is keeping your fans engaged.

And making them feel like they're on a journey with you and

a part of something bigger than just giving you money.

So how did you make your fans feel that way?

Make them feel a part of something bigger throughout and after the campaign.

>> Yeah, well, to take it back a step and

still talk about sort of the pre-campaign game.

Because that really is most of the game is won or

lost before day one of the campaign launching when it actually opens up.

You should plan on doing a month or two months, or even three months,

of preparation in terms of doing the kind of research I was talking about.

In terms of initial outreach to people that might be donors to give you a sense

of whether you've actually got some support out there that you can set

a goal over.

And then doing the research,

in terms of reading about people who may have done campaigns similar to yours.

And looking at other campaigns and things that you think, that was cool.

I like that they did x, y, z.

I can copy that.

And then writing out your entire campaign,

before you're even anywhere near launching.

Start writing out your entire pitch, the text of what you're going to do.

Think about any photos that you want to include.

Think about the video that you're going to create.

Write a script for that, and get all those ideas down in writing.

And share that with some friends and say, here's my draft of what I'm going to do,

what do you think?

Think about in a way to say your brand.

Think about what your fans are interested in.

Think about what they like you for.

Think about what's going to make them excited.

And then think about how you can really bring that together into the campaign.

So that you're giving them a sense that they're going to be part of this.

>> Can you share some specific examples of how you did that for your campaign?

>> Yeah, so people want to know as much as they can about it as it's getting made.

So if you're telling people things like, I brought in so and so to play drums and

this person to play bass, put some pictures of those people.

Put links to those people.

And then if you can take footage of the session in the studio and

make stuff that you're sharing only with campaign donors.

So the people who supported the campaign, and it's not even over yet.

But during week three of the campaign or something,

you're sending out footage from the studio, the creation, only to donors.

That's sort of things that's showing people that they're getting

the inside scoop.

So I offered at the higher donor levels to actually have

people hear the rough mixes of the album and send me feedback.

And there's no obligation for me to follow their feedback,

but it actually was useful for me to have that as a focus group as well.

So it actually, I benefited from that as well,

from getting 10 or 15 people that got to listen to the rough mixes.

And send back 90% of their feedback that I probably didn't follow, but

10% of it that I saw across five or six of the people saying something similar.

Then I knew, okay, this is something I really should address.

Because it's clearly something that everybody's going to react

the same way to.

>> That's a very interesting strategy.

So what happened after your project was done and after the campaign was done?

>> Well, there's a lot to capitalize on in terms of if you had a successful campaign,

being able to use posts about that, to keep people talking about it.

As you do research and read about it,

you'll read a lot about post campaign strategy in terms of people that might

not have made it in during the campaign, people that find out about it later.

You can link from your now defunct campaign to a webpage on your website

that has a donation button you set up yourself.

To kind of funnel any extra people over there,

that still offer them a chance to donate.

And then the fulfillment is really a big deal that you want to think

through ahead of time.

People can easily get tripped on shipping charges by not thinking through that,

especially international shipping is super, super expensive.

And you don't want to set your donor levels and

then find out later they're actually paying that much in shipping, and

you're actually only making half what you thought you were on it.

I know once the Kickstarter fees and the shipping is done,

you're actually not left with much.

So do your research, so that when it comes time to ship,

you know that's been in the budget all along.

And have a plan for the boxes that you need.

Once your campaign is done, you can see how many people got each type of package.

But even beforehand, you can look at the packages that you're offering and

figure out the boxes that you're going to need to ship or the packing materials.

And figure out how much time you're going to need.

Just writing down mailing addresses and going to the post office.

You don't want to get tripped up on that stuff.

And have your campaign finished, and then things fall apart

logistically afterwards, because fulfillment can be complicated.

So that's just part of the equation to think through.

>> Yeah, it's funny that you mention that about the shipping costs and

making sure that you account for those.

I think the same can be said for even just the merchandise that you're offering.

I know halfway through our second campaign, which was successful,

I got it in my head like man, this would be so great to offer on Vinyl.

And so I was like, all right, let's do it, let's offer it on Vinyl.

It's like added- >> I agree.

>> To the thing.

And then of course,

I didn't like look at any of the prices before I actually added it to my campaign.

And thank God nobody had actually ordered any, because when I actually looked at it,

[LAUGH] I was like this is just not financially feasible to offer Vinyl

right now?

>> Yeah. >> Especially for the amount of money that

I was getting my campaign, or that I had gotten for my campaign.

It just is not feasible.

So I think the same can definitely be said for merch.

>> And that's something especially true of stretch goals.

If you're doing a campaign where you're going to hit your goal during the campaign

and then want to sort of give people an extra nudge,

a lot of people add these stretch goals.

They say, okay, we met our goal, but

if we get $2,000 more there's other stuff that we're going to add to it.

And you want to do the calculations you need on those to make sure that,

you may be bringing in $2,000.

But you might have just added at least $2,000 more in cost for

the stretch goal that you're adding or extra work, extra shipping.

>> So are there any kind of last minute nuggets of wisdom that you would like to

share with the learners if they're kind of embarking on this crowdfunding journey?

There's two sides to this.

One is the crowdfunding side,

which can be very difficult in terms of that crowd part of it.

Ideally, you want people to be sharing it and spreading it, so

that it sort of has a life outside of your inner circle.

And that's the really difficult part to get that to spread.

Really watch out for

people that come to you offering services to help you with that.

There's a whole industry out there of people charging you to help you get

more likes and get more business to your page or whatever.

Be highly, highly skeptical.

Once you register and start a campaign,

they're able to obtain the email addresses of everybody that has a campaign going.

So you're basically going to get spam that looks like a great deal

on bringing more traffic to your campaign.

And before you even respond to any off those, if you're interested,

first look that company up online separately.

And read reviews and be very wary before you spend any money on

outside services to help your campaign.

So if you can generate more buzz that gets outside of your circle and

spreads it to a wider crowd with social media strategies, that's great.

But the other half of it is the people that you already sort of have in hand.

And locking down the outreach to all of your existing fans,

which is a lot more work than you might think.

And it takes a lot of discipline.

So one example is before I started my campaign, as part of the planning process,

I actually started a spreadsheet of all the super fans,

friends, family members, just anybody that I could think of.

That I thought I could potentially call or email and say ahead of time and

during the campaign to say, I've got this crowdfunding campaign.

This is an important project.

And I want you to be involved, and I'm hoping you can come onboard and

give this amount, whatever you're setting your goal for them.

And you might have different groups in that list for

different amounts that you think you can target them.

And part of my schedule during the campaign was just daily calls and

emails every day.

I put it in my calendar, I put it in any kind of scheduling thing I could,

to tell myself every day I'm crowdfunding.

So you've done the research.

You've set up the campaign.

And once you launch, you should be planning on having some time every day to

sit down and think of what you're posting.

Think of what you're going to write, think of updates that you're going to do and

things you're going to send out.

And then go through another chunk of your list in terms of emailing more people,

calling more people, and doing follow up.

It's easy to let that stuff fall through the cracks.

But my list of people, I went through and I made the emails and calls and

I got through to some of them.

And got those donations and then I started again.

And anybody that I hadn't gotten a commitment from yet, and

emailed them again, called them again.

And the people I had gotten a commitment from, but hadn't done the donation yet,

emailed them again, called them.

Now is the time to actually do the thing that you committed to do.

So there's a whole lot of just disciplined outreach and follow up that

you should be planning to do as a daily basis through your whole campaign.

>> That's so helpful.

I know you really helped me between my first campaign that just was a total flop

and my second campaign where we got more than what we had asked for.

And I really think that the feedback that you gave me for

that first campaign made all the difference.

So I am so grateful that you took time out of your busy tour schedule to sit down

with us a little bit.

[LAUGH] >> Sweet.

>> Well, thank you so much, Rench.

>> Sure.

>> All right, take care.

>> It was my absolute pleasure, and good luck, everybody.

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