Launching an effective equity crowdfunding campaign means, among other things, establishing a structured marketing strategy capable of building or strengthening the brand positioning and reaching out to potential investors through all possible touchpoints. Among these, social media play a very important role.
Where to start when building your social media marketing plan
Social media marketing, as the name suggests, is that branch of marketing that deals with developing communication, positioning and sales strategies through social channels.
Usually, we are accustomed to thinking of social media as platforms mainly intended for entertainment or to build connections between diverse people, and we generally associate social media with a fun component.
Doing social media marketing means changing this perspective and starting to look at social media as a real business tool.
Developing a social media marketing plan for equity crowdfunding means starting from a thorough knowledge of the platforms and of the specific communication and marketing techniques to adapt them to the peculiarities of fundraising.
READ ALSO: Round after round: all stages of a startup choosing to do equity crowdfunding
Social media marketing: The Golden Rules
Let’s see what are the essential and vital rules for building a good social media marketing strategy for equity crowdfunding.
Before going into a detailed list, however, the fundamental rule is: never leave room for improvisation.
The temptation can be strong: after all, we all use social media and it can seem very easy to venture into using them to launch the equity crowdfunding campaign. Let’s say right away that the professional use of social media is something else entirely.
Identify your target audience. The concept of buyer personas – the representation of potential customers in terms of socio-demographics, lifestyle, languages, personal tastes, etc. – is a mantra in B2C marketing. However, this is a concept that you should also take ownership of when building your social media marketing strategy for equity crowdfunding.
In fact, creating representations of our potential investors will help us construct messages in the most appropriate way to fit their needs and meet their tastes.
READ ALSO – New European Crowdfunding Regulation launched
Set the strategy. As it has been explained, social media marketing cannot leave room for improvisation. Setting a strategy means putting on paper a marketing plan before starting to publish on the different social networks. Posting randomly and without an accurate strategy is in fact a huge mistake.
Setting up a social media marketing strategy implies, first of all, setting concrete and measurable goals to be achieved in a given period of time, it should include the construction of a marketing funnel in order to take into account where our target audience is in relation to the objective of the campaign and it should serve as the basis for the implementation of the content marketing plan and for the allocation of the advertising budget.
Choose the right platforms. As it is easy to imagine, social media marketing presupposes a perfect knowledge of the various social platforms. The knowledge of the platforms should be understood both as familiarity in their use and in the ability to understand the specific terminology, the potential in terms of publishing tools, the most relevant ways to exploit the planning in advertising.
The editorial calendar will help to decide in advance what, when, and where to publish, as well as serve as a tool to have a quick overview of all the creativity that is going to associate with the textual content and that can be linked within the PED (Digital Editorial Plan). Trust the numbers. Continuously measure and verify the results of the social media marketing plan. Relying on insights is essential to understand if the campaign is moving in the right direction, if we are talking to the target audience and if the spending of the budget is happening in the best possible way. Any strategy that is not supported by numbers cannot be defined as such and without numerical evidence, it can be never known if and how much the marketing campaign has actually been effective.
Social media marketing: the right platforms for equity crowdfunding
So, what are the most suitable social media platforms for a social media marketing campaign for equity crowdfunding?
Let’s say that the important thing is not to be present on as many platforms as possible, but to be present in the best possible way on the right platforms.
The variety of projects on an equity crowdfunding platform is so wide and varied that it would be impossible to draw guidelines that are valid for everyone.
We can say, however, that knowing the characteristics of each one can certainly be useful in orienting ourselves in the choice of those that are most suitable for us.
Facebook, for example, could be suitable to build and develop the community, either through the company’s official page or with a page created specifically for the launch of our equity crowdfunding campaign, or even through a group linked to the pages to stimulate interaction with our advocates and potential investors.
YouTube can be used to broadcast videos that talk about the company and its products, adopting from time to time a language that can be more narrative or explanatory, in any case, consistent with the storytelling that has been decided from the beginning to narrate the story of the company.
LinkedIn can be the ideal platform to work on the personal branding of the founders or key people of the company. LinkedIn is also the social media dedicated to business, so it can be an ideal way to establish a network of important professional relationships and communicate the product in a more ‘corporate way’.
A platform such as Tik Tok could be particularly suitable for a product that has a younger target as its focus, or to build a particularly pop brand positioning.
Do not underestimate the possibility of using this social media as a means of advertising planning for the popularisation of messages with strongly viral and disruptive communication codes.
Finally, Twitter, although less flexible in hosting long contents, lends itself very well to both brand and product communication, above all because it is widely used by those who work in the world of information and the media in general. Therefore, being able to involve the community of information operators also through social networks could be of great help to all the PR and press office activities that have to be carried out.
If you are thinking of starting an equity crowdfunding campaign SCAI Comunicazione is the ideal partner to support you in the realization of your social media plan and all other marketing and communication activities necessary to reach your goals.
