"The CrowdFunding industry is growing. You can either be someone who knows all about it or someone on the outside looking in and wondering if you missed your opportunity of the century."
You're on the Right Track. Get access now!
CROWDFUNDING
CONSULTING
The reality is like
most industries with a product to sell, crowdfunding campaigns (when done well)
can be challenging to successfully accomplish without proper planning and a
diverse skill set by the person or team launching the crowdfunding campaign.
Creative types, who tend to be the predominate users of this new source
of capital, are often lacking on the communication, marketing and business end
of crowdfunding. Approximately 75% of crowdfunding campaigns currently do
not meet their funding goal. Take a look at popular platforms such as
Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and you will find many projects with seemingly great
potential that did not achieve their target goal. More often than not,
the reason they fail to achieve their goal is a solid plan, lack of campaign
preparation and insufficient knowledge about the proper steps and tasks
necessary to create the best environment for success.
The question at hand
for anyone looking to become a CrowdFunding Consultant is, “how can I become a
CrowdFunding Consultant who will give my clients the best chance of
crowdfunding success and what do I need to do be that person?”
First, you must accept
that in this profession one person alone cannot effectively accomplish all the
necessary tasks. There is no "one-size-fits-all consultant".
Crowdfunding is an industry that encapsulates many different delivery
segments. For instance, graphic designers can be experts in art, web
designers can be good at creating attractive web pages, writers can be good at
developing content for web and press releases, innovators can be immersed in
inventions, attorneys are learned in legal matters, videographers can make
appealing videos, marketing/advertising experts can be good at displaying a
product and social media experts can be good at disseminating information about
a product. Each one has their specific skill set. Some may have
more than one skill but will likely be lacking in others.
Because of the
crowdfunding wave, many individuals from various backgrounds of expertise are
advertising services about how they can get campaigns to their goal. Attorney’s
want to file your paperwork, graphic designers want to build you a website,
writers want to create catchy content and press releases, actors want to be in
your presentation video, and even those in between careers are saying they can
get it done for you. In fact, over 100,000 domain names referencing the
“crowd” in one way or another have been purchased by those looking to take
advantage of this growing industry. Some key sales pitches include: search engine optimization,
creating attractive websites and videos, press releases and utilizing social
media. Those are key tools, but in themselves are just tools, or
rather tasks, that need to be part of your overall campaign
strategy.
Having a team or
network of proven experts in various avenues readily available will make the
difference between delivering to your client a campaign that is lacking or one
that has the parts to succeed.
Our Belief:
We believe that what senior-level executives , sales and marketing (CMO, CIO, CTO, COO, CFO, President, VP, EVP and Director-level executives) crave most is know-how, and that once they have it, this knowledge is what they apply to be successful every day. We believe that with the right know-how and the new CrowdFunding Trend — and the right "know who" — you can make any opportunity happen. Being in the right place, right time and collaborating with right tools.
Crowdfunding is human will expressed in pure form. A person with a vision becomes a dream funded on a mission. It is the explosive combination of democracy and free market capitalism. It’s democracy and capitalism in action: think you have a great idea? Convince enough people and you can make it a reality. If not, back to the drawing board. It allows new ideas to get funded and to be free market tested at a lower cost, with less complexity, in less time than ever before. Experimentation has now become possible for millions that were previously excluded from having any chance for their idea to be tried.
We are confident that this simple breakthrough socio-economic tool is about to herald in mankind’s greatest era.
CROWDFUNDING MENTORS
Be a part of www.crowdfundingmentors.com and
you can become a part of the growing network of crowdfunding experts. By
being a member of CrowdFunding Mentors you can:
- Access CrowdFunding Educational
Opportunities
- Obtain instant credibility by
being involved with a known and respected professional community
- Network and share ideas with
others members who are experts in their respective profession
- Gain advantageous on-line
marketing opportunities and receive back-links exclusive to
members
- Be added to the premier
CrowdFunding Directory
- Be invited to special events
and provided with special offers
- Be a part of a lead share
program. Members in the community tend to use other members to help
them fulfill their clients needs.
- Learn how to become an
accredited CrowdFunding Mentor
By being part of
crowdfundingmentors.com, you will no longer be left in a situation of "not
knowing" who to turn to. You will no longer feel alone and left
wondering how to reach clients.
CrowdFunding Mentors
provides its members with the opportunity to shape the crowdfunding industry,
learn the details of the marketplace from peers, stay informed, stay ahead, and
the advantage of working as a global team.
Second, being a
successful crowdfunding consultant means having the knowledge to properly work
with your clients. Yes, the internet is full of information. But do
you have the time to read through countless pages about Crowdfunding? Do you
have the ability to do proper in-depth searches to find information
relevant to yourself and for your clients? Most important, are you able
to differentiate crowdfunding facts from opinions? Wouldn't it be nice if
there was one location where you would be able to learn real and relevant
crowdfunding information that you can use on day one as a CrowdFunding
Consultant?
The great news is
there is, www.crowdfundingframeworks.com
You're on the Right Track. Get access now!
CROWDFUNDING FRAMEWORKS
CrowdfundingFrameworks.com is a comprehensive Crowdfunding E-Learning System. By learning this system a Crowdfunding Consultant will be able truly answer the quesitions:
1. "What do I need to know and what do I need to do to give my clients the best chance of crowdfunding success?"
2. "How do I help my clients reach, engage, and convince the crowd to financially support their project?
This E-learning system is the culmination of over 4,000+ man hours and $350,000 of capital used in research, program development, campaign testing, and input from experts in the fields of crowdfunding, marketing/advertising, social media, intellectual property, branding, publicity, product development, and technology. Even if you are not an expert in all these fields, to be effective as a CrowdFunding Consultant, you must have working knowledge of all of them. The sytem includes access to
In your goal to become a CrowdFunding Consultant, the Top 5 things you will learn how to:
- Identify, who, where, what is your client(s) optimum target audience.
- Create crowd critical-mass before the campaign is launched.
- Validate or refute the strength of a client(s) product in relation to the wants of the buying market. This will help you help your client save money and more importantly save time.
- Maximize the use of the internet and social media to conduct proper research and gather business intelligence to reduce campaign costs, while maximizing return on efforts.
- How to develop and manage a crowdfunding campaign based on tested best practices. Avoid having to reinvent the wheel and learn through costly mistakes.
- Create individualized crowdfunding blueprints for our clients, which will outline their Strategic, Technical and Tactical campaign plans.
IS CROWDFUNDING CONSULTING RIGHT FOR YOU?
Because CrowdFunding is still in it's infancy - being in the "know" will mean the difference between having a competitive edge when carving out your niche as a CrowdFunding Consultant. CrowdFunding takes work from yourself and your clients. The good news is that you can learn it, you can master it and you can achieve the ability to earn unlimited income from it.
If you are comfortable working around computers, working with people, and like to keep up with the latest relevant news and information a variety or specific topics, than being a CrowdFunding Consultant can be right for you. Regardless of your background, skill-set and expertise, you can learn the crowdfunding frameworks system and be on your way to joining this growing industry.
CROWDFUNDING CONSULTING ADVICE
1. Understand there is no "one-size-fits-all" consultant. You have monetizable value and you have your skill-set and expertise. But you would be doing yourself and your clients a disservice by trying to be a "jack of all trades". Clients understand that one person can't do it all. The current crowdfunding failure rate is strong evidence to that fact. Your job as a consultant is to provide positive service to your clients. There are only a finite number of hours in a day. It's better to pass along tasks that others can do more efficiently and reap greater rewards, than to attempt to do it all. However, in order to sustain yourself financially, you must be able to handle multiple clients.
2. Create an airtight contract with your client and third-parties stating specific responsibilities. Crowdfunding campaign's have many steps and tasks that need to be managed, from campaign planning, pre-launch, launch, rewards delivery, post-launch and other tasks to simultaneously coordinate. Without explicit task assignments, details will be missed and tasks will not get done. Then, who's to blame if the campaign fails?
3. Stay Engaged. Yes, 80% of a crowdfunding campaign consist of the planning and execution of tasks prior to campaign launch. Once the campaign launches, the gears switch to campaign maintenance and momentum accelerator tasks. Regardless, when you are hired as a Crowdfunding Consultant, your client needs to feel your passion for their campaign throughout the entire campaign. Be prepared and have contingency plans in place to overcome potential challenges.
4. Success should not be guaranteed. This seems obvious. But unlike a physical trainer or a nutritionist, who can predict success if you follow their strategy, crowdfunding offers no such magic eight-ball. Even if you do everything right, you and your client are not the crowd and the crowd is the final determining factor.
5. Associate yourself with respected industry memberships. Like any industry, crowdfunding consultants need to validate their expertise. Membership organizations, such as crowdfundingmentors.com, serve this function.
6. To get you must first give. To get the word out about your consulting service, nothing beats words of mouth from those clients who you have served well. It may take offering your services at reduced prices or even doing some pro-bono. However, you will not only receive leads for more clients based on your hard work and effort; you will receive the recommendations and testimonials that lets others know you can be trusted.
Carl Esposti is CEO of crowdsourcing advisory firm massolution.
If you think that participating in crowdfunding simply means investing in smaller companies that launch games and devices on Kickstarter, think again. With crowdfunding volumes reaching $2.7 billion in 2012, it has emerged as a viable, scalable alternative to public and private finance across the globe.
After surveying more than 350 active crowdfunding platforms, including IndieGoGo, CrowdCube, Symbid, and Gambitious (full site directory at crowdsourcing.org), and completing an in-depth analysis of market trends, research firm Massolution has identified five major crowdfunding developments for 2013 and beyond.
1. Niche platforms
As crowdfunding platforms try to benefit from market differentiation, niche-, industry-, and sector-specific platforms are emerging.
Platforms offering reward-based crowdfunding see an especially high value in serving a common niche or industry. Examples include platforms focusing on video games, recording art, performing art, real estate, food and beverage, fashion, journalism, and more.
While it’s smart for a new platform to choose a specific niche simply to differentiate its service, there is another big reason why this trend is likely to prevail—it helps build a repeated crowd on the platform. Having crowdfunders visit a platform, not just because they have been invited onto a specific campaign, but because the campaigns appeal to their tastes, is extremely valuable.
#2. Locavesting
In her 2011 book, Locavesting, business and finance journalist Amy Cortese describes how “a revolution in local investing” is emerging and that crowfunding is boosting it. This year, we are going to see increased momentum in this revolution because many new crowdfunding platforms will actually specialize in locavesting.
It’s been over a year since President Obama signed the JOBS Act, but legislation is stymied in the hands of the SEC.
However, at least four states – Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia and Kansas – have taken the initiative to allow crowdfunding for business loans. Crowdfunding platform Rebirth Financial is specializing in locavesting and offers intrastate, lending-based crowdfunding. Although Rebirth’s offerings are open to anyone within state borders, successful campaigns have so far been driven by very local support – all the way down to the customer-base level.
#3. Enterprise crowdfunding
Large enterprises and associations have begun to look into crowdfunding and how this tool carries new potential for their companies, including raising social profiles, market testing, and spin-ins of entrepreneurial ventures. The perceived benefit is not the additional funding itself, but the democratization of specific decisions that would otherwise be made internally in the company.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) represents the interests of more than 85,000 member architects across the U.S., a sector that has been hit particularly hard by the recent financial crisis. Recently, the AIA published a report examining crowdfunding’s potential as a new source of capital for residential, commercial, and industrial infrastructure projects.
Crowdfunding shows significant promise for attracting investors to smaller projects and getting them off the architect’s drawing board. In this case, crowdfunding will be used to spur community support and financing for an assortment of infrastructure ventures that would ordinarily have difficulty finding money due to their smaller size.
#4. Crowdfunding economic development
Major development banks and similar institutions — including The World Bank and The Inter-American Development Bank — are seeking to leverage crowdfunding for economic development. Crowdfunding’s social profile and its strong connection to micro-finance are the main drivers.
Crowdfunding has historically been embraced by philanthropic ventures, especially for donation-based crowdfunding and interest-free lending. The models naturally merge with micro-finance because the funding needs are very small, and individual donations or loans are likely triggers of funding success. The next step for crowdfunding in this particular space is the evolution and scaling up to economic development at the macro level.
The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank is currently exploring the potential of crowdfunding in Latin America, and how crowdfunding can be used to improve small businesses and bring financing to entrepreneurs who have less access to it. In Latin America, crowdfunding is just gathering momentum with about 40 online platforms, including Crowdfunder.mx and Idea.me, established over the last couple of years.
Platforms in the areas of solar energy, education, and urban development are expected to be the most promising in this region.
5. LIVE crowdfunding
The final trend that we see emerging in the crowdfunding space are launch-party events at the initiation of campaigns or LIVE crowdfunding expos. Besides creating media attention and offering a great marketing opportunity, LIVE Crowdfunding taps into an investor need that is hard to come by through the web: exclusivity.
Exclusivity in access to new products or deal flow can be a triggering factor in itself, and LIVE crowdfunding augments online crowdfunding with exactly that.
This October, the CrowdfundingRoadmap is hosting its second Global Crowdfunding Convention and Bootcamp, this year with its first ever LIVE Crowdfunding Expo, where anyone will be able to participate in donations- and rewards-based crowdfunding campaigns right on the spot.
All attendees will need to do is simply walk up to the booth!
In addition, if entrepreneurs are unable to attend the event or are launching their projects after October, CrowdfundingRoadmap is offering them the opportunity to showcase their crowdfunding pitch videos on the big screen at the expo, with a designated QR code, to help them get in front of potential investors and industry influencers.
Crowdfunding represents a breakthrough in how businesses and local projects are funded and disrupts centuries-old financial flows. While 2012 was the year of acceleration for the crowdfunding markets, these new developments above will fuel its growth for years to come.
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/22/5-ways-the-booming-crowdsourcing-ecosystem-is-changing-in-2013/#ZKQjqUlrJ0zYKFwj.99
