Run a crowdfunding campaign

1. Lay the groundwork for your campaign

Step 1 — Ask Yourself the Right Questions

About the project: Do the people around me know about my media project? Do I have a solid foundation to build on for this funding? Can I deliver a clear and convincing pitch for my project? If you’re not sure, you can refer to our dedicated guide.

About your audience: Do I know exactly who I’m addressing? For whom might my project be indispensable? What are the personas for my media platform? If you’re unsure, you can refer to our dedicated guide.

About communication: Is my media present on social networks? Do I have a database of potentially interested people's emails? Do I have a professional online presence? Have I planned audiovisual content to showcase my project?

About the campaign: Did I organize myself for the campaign with a timeline? Did I estimate my project and campaign budget precisely? Did I think of credible and attractive rewards? Did I plan actions/events throughout and at the end of my campaign?

Step 2 — Define Your Financial and Strategic Goals

Before you start working on your campaign operationally, it is important to:

• Set the context (first campaign? What’s the latest news? …);
• Define its objectives, intentions, strategic priorities, and the reasons for encouraging the public to contribute (the benefits of contributing and the concrete impacts these contributions will have);
• Establish the key messaging points;
• Explore your instincts when it comes to communication;
• Create a tentative schedule.

You should already have in mind the main argument around which you want to direct your campaign: it is a written expression of call-to-action and campaign objectives. Ask yourself what objective your campaign pursues strategically (raising awareness of the media, sustaining a team, promoting/selling a product…) and financially (what amount do you plan to raise)? In other words, identify the major stakes of this campaign and how to prioritize them: acquiring new audiences, retaining your existing audiences, converting and/or gaining visibility.

As part of a presale/rewards campaign, it’s important to set a specific numerical goal. The idea is neither to be too ambitious nor too conservative, but to find a realistic balance between the amount or number of pre-sales needed to carry out the project and your community’s known capacity.

When setting your numerical target, several parameters must be taken into account:

• the amount you need to complete your project,
• the cost of producing your rewards,
• the cost of shipping your rewards,
• the platform commission and taxes, depending on your media status.

One thing to know about a pre-sale campaign on a crowdfunding platform: if the target is not reached within the set timeframe, all backers are refunded by the platform and you will not receive any of the contributions.

When running fundraising campaigns, it’s a good idea to informally structure your goals into tiers. The idea is to highlight the first tier and make it clear that the goals listed for the second and third tiers are still hypothetical: they can only be achieved if the previous goals are met. The message should convey that while the goal has been reached, the campaign itself is not over. You’ll need to explain how the additional funds raised will be used and make sure to clearly communicate these new goals in your updates (website, newsletter, social media, etc.).

Step 3 — Develop Your Sales Pitch

Now that the objectives are set, it's time to define the campaign messages (website, social media, email, advertisements), clarify the different messages, and refine them as you go. It's useful to be able to innovate in your messaging throughout the campaign. You can therefore alternate them by extracting and tailoring your contribution appeal arguments to distribute across different weeks: each week its own message. The challenge is to identify both the enduring persuasion factors for engagement and those specific to the campaign.

For example, you can focus on a key message from which weekly subtopics can be derived. To do this, we recommend starting with your target audience to identify the arguments that might encourage them to make a financial contribution. If you’re unsure about how to identify your target audience, we strongly recommend referring to our dedicated guide.

Step 4 — Create a reverse schedule

Creating a timeline before launching a campaign is critical for your organization. It involves:

• to establish its positioning;
• to identify your campaign objectives;
• to define your community by mapping it out (your circles) ;
• to list the objectives and reasons for your audience's engagement;
• to create a press kit;
• to list influencers and relay partners;
• to create a project page;
• to create, where appropriate, a launch and closing event;
• to build, where applicable, a website;
• of possibly creating videos;
• to strengthen your presence on social media, etc.

Step 5 — Build the campaign page

In connection with consideration

• Polish your presentation. One of the keys to a successful crowdfunding campaign is building your project page. The presentation and funding objective should be clear and compelling enough to inspire backers to support you.

• The project, name, and a call to action or hook must appear quickly. Be clear, concise, and specific. Its goal is to engage potential supporters and present the project's essential elements.
• Visual design is just as important as text. Highly visual campaigns reflect the importance of their product's visual identity.

• A project presentation video is always welcome—it helps capture attention and bring your proposal to life. Keep it brief here too, between one and one and a half minutes. Most importantly, tailor your format to your project rather than following a generic template: this is a powerful tool because it creates empathy. But don't attempt one if you're not comfortable with this medium.
• And here comes the heart of the matter: the presentation text. Don't worry, you just need to meet a few useful requirements. First, tell the story of your project: its objective, its editorial line. Feel free to narrate your media's story, its origins, explain what it's about. Include keywords that will catch the reader's attention.
• If you're launching a magazine and the media already has an audience, introduce yourself again for those who don't know you and explain the project you're starting. If you're beginning a newsletter or magazine, specify what readers will find there. In any case, introduce who is behind the project!

• Key final step: why? The purpose is to explain with complete transparency what your fundraising will be used for: concretely list what the money will be spent on.

• How should you define your rewards? Based on your financial goals and your audience's preferences and interests. The aim is to increase your average transaction value! Focus on the product—whether a magazine (pre-order or single issue) or a subscription with different terms: one issue, six months (two issues), one year (four issues), or a mix of subscriptions, single issues, special editions and products. If it's not a physical media, imagine relevant rewards: offer books by one of the authors/contributors, or an invitation to an evening event/discussion session.

• Rewards are important for engaging your future contributors because they stimulate interest and involvement. It's important to structure them in tiers, for example: 10 – 25 – 50 – 100€, because if someone was thinking of giving X euros, they'll give more if the next reward tier appeals to them.
• Don't let counterparts turn into a waste of time and money for you—focus on what's quick to send and doesn't cost too much to produce.

As part of the donation

The donation campaign page is the storefront of the campaign: all information should be displayed there: the title, subtitle, call-to-action button, progress bar (fill as of day 1, maximum target), campaign messaging, press contact(s)… In your messaging, be sure to clearly list the benefits of donating ("by contributing, you…"). Linking the "About Us" page to the donation campaign page will allow you all the more to bring your messages to life. To add concrete details (potential event, tax receipt, payment options…) and remove any potential confusion about the campaign's implications, we also recommend including a FAQ. This allows you to provide concrete information on a variety of questions.

After writing it, you need to integrate the donation appeal page. This is the technical implementation stage of the campaign.

Depending on your resources and available time, choose one of the following:

• Embed the page on your website (example from Vert);

• create an external launch page (example with StreetPress);

2. Develop the campaign's visual identity

You now need to build a visual identity dedicated to the campaign by using your media's graphic codes. To do this, refer to your graphic charter. Don't have one yet? This is a great opportunity to define its framework.

The goal is to highlight your media's editorial project and identify the campaign among the media's other publications. In the context of a launch, it should display the strong graphic markers of your project.

3. Identify the campaign's key contacts

This step is central to the successful distribution of your campaign: for your campaign to be seen and reach as many interested people as possible, it's important to communicate with people who probably already know you, but also to be able to reach out, across your network and your network's network, to people who might be interested. When a campaign launches, several levels of potential supporters are defined: these are the circles.

• Circle 0: your close circle, team members who support the project;
• Circle 1: Your core target audience (primary target audiences / advocates or partners whom you know relatively well and with whom you share common interests);

• Circle 2: These are the friends of your friends and your online community—those who follow the project on social media. This circle includes people who are more distant but supportive of you: regular or occasional readers, acquaintances, and friends of friends. In reality, these are audiences you need to retain. They are close-range acquisition targets (audiences to be acquired who aren’t the first to be reached by your media project but may find answers to their needs there / more distant advocates or partners, whether known or unknown);
• Circle 3: These are people, places and institutions not directly connected to you but likely to be interested in the project: their interests align with yours. These are more distant acquisition targets, unrelated to your main audiences, relay partners or partners.

To help you map out your contacts, you might ask yourself:

• How close is the relationship with the relay? (circle)
• What communities does the actor reach?
• Why do you want to address them (benefit gained)?
• What can you offer them (need and solution provided)?
• What request will you make?
• What channel will you use to make your request?

View Ambassadors

Once you’ve identified and contacted your advocates and ambassadors, don’t hesitate to feature them in your email and social media campaigns! Just like Zadig magazine did during its March 2023 crowdfunding campaign to launch its new format.

Use the right tools

A few examples of tools we use daily at Médianes, the studio.

• Concept: to set up a "base camp" for your project. Note-taking, schedule, Kanban board, database, communication kit, etc.;
• Slack: for daily communication with your team (or to organize your topics if you're working alone!);
• Microsoft Excel/Google Sheets: to create a comprehensive list of your circles and contacts;
• Mailchimp/Brevo: to easily reach out to and segment your audiences based on their behavior as consumers of your media (subscribers, former subscribers, newsletter subscribers, one-time purchasers, donors, etc.);
• Typeform/Tally: to create surveys and collect information from your audience (counterparties, etc.);
• PhantomBuster: to extract your social media databases and collect data.

Implement a press and public relations strategy at the operational level

Now that you've identified your promotional networks, it's time to create content: template messages, press release, emails, media kit. For emails, you can integrate them directly into the template created for the editorial calendar defined in the next step.

Keep in mind that through media relations, you're not just addressing traditional media outlets: include notable relay contacts and ambassadors, whether through your subject matter angle or a professional angle.

• Writing a press release: Use the "funnel" approach, moving from the general to the specific. The essential information you must include is as follows: date, logo, media outlet and its audience, campaign context, objective, campaign URL, and press contacts.
• Creating a press kit: to provide an editorial team with more information and introduce the team and the topics—from both an editorial and visual perspective—one solution is the press kit.
• Develop a press kit and create standard messages: You can define in advance the standard messages to be sent personally to potential social media influencers and compile a list of press contacts to reach out to.
• Create a press kit: When sending messages to your press list, it can be helpful to include a press kit. The goal? To save time. In it, you compile everything the people involved might need (a donation page, marketing emails, links to social media posts announcing the launch, a press release, and visuals).

4. Define Your Marketing Initiatives and Materials

To launch, manage, accelerate or restart your campaign, it's important to define the marketing actions to implement and the channels—yours or external—you'll use. Online or in-person events, email campaigns, social media campaigns (organic or sponsored), surveys, petitions, posters, etc. To define them, start with your targets, their habits, and imagine the most appropriate actions.

Events to launch the pre-sales campaign, like La Déferlante, a magazine dedicated to feminism supported by Médianes studio, which organizes an online and live event every quarter for the release of each issue.

5. Create an editorial calendar

It’s important to plan ahead for your social media activity during the campaign period. To do this, you can create an editorial calendar: organize your content week by week, specifying the channels (which social media platform? Direct email? Email via Mailchimp? Brevo?) and the messaging (captions, email content, etc.). If you’re planning content for X (formerly Twitter), don’t forget to make sure it fits within the character limit set by the platform. This is also the time to decide when you’ll launch your sponsored campaign to boost your social media content.

The example from Vert (2022):

6. Track Your Campaign

Tracking your campaign’s progress is essential for refining your strategy and goals as you go. After all, a campaign’s outcome cannot be fully predicted, so you need to identify where it’s working and where it’s not (channels, formats, audiences, etc.).

Email open rates, newsletter engagement, social media engagement rates, page traffic, number of pre-sales/donations per week, number of contributors/donors… All these metrics should be examined closely to gauge campaign effectiveness.

7. Thank your contributors

It's important to thank your contributors and donors to maintain your relationship with them and build loyalty, whether during the campaign or after it ends. This includes dedicated posts on social networks and dedicated emails. Some media outlets have also implemented interesting ways to display their thanks, like Vert and StreetPress.

8. Evaluate the campaign

Take time after your campaign to analyze the results in light of the objectives you set. To the extent possible, and depending on the tools you have, try to read the figures:

• What were the financial results of the campaign: Was the goal met? What was the average donation/contribution amount? When were the most lucrative times?
• Was the campaign successful in terms of community engagement: did the number of subscribers/readers/registered users increase? Is this increase significant relative to your audience’s user growth rate?

This is an important time to draw lessons and optimize any future campaigns: Was the sponsorship campaign launched at the right time? Was the schedule followed?

9. Our Educational Resources

The Médianes team has prepared several practical resources to help you apply what you’ve learned from this guide to your own project:

• To define the guidelines for your campaign and build your campaign page ;
• To develop the creative brief for the campaign;
• To identify its target audiences;
• To develop the editorial calendar;
• To stay updated on emails.