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How do I organize and prepare the marketing efforts for my raise?

Pre-Launch Week: Marketing Prep 

Before your campaign goes live, you can’t advertise the terms of your Reg CF offering, but you can prepare your marketing and conduct “Testing the Waters” (with the required disclosure) to build momentum ahead of launch. This section covers what to get ready so you have a game plan the moment you go live. 

Create your Personal Hotlist

As you are creating your campaign you should also start thinking about your personal hotlist. We recommend putting together a list of 20-100 of your close network who are most likely to invest in your campaign. Think of close family and friends who are excited about you and your company! If you want to go the extra mile--start drafting emails / times to call your hotlist so you are prepared once you go live! Get these “hot” investors involved sooner rather than later as the more momentum you have in the beginning, the more likely the StartEngine community will get involved early on.

Pro-Tip: When you make a list of your “for sure” investors (i.e. close family and friends), tell them to invest in stages. In some cases, companies experience a lull in the middle of their campaign, but you want to make sure you are getting investors all the way to the end of your offering. For example, tell the first group of your “for sure” investors to invest on the day you go live, the second group of your “for sure” investors to invest in the middle of your campaign, and the third group of “for sure”  investors to invest right at the end. This shows a sense of urgency to those investors who keep visiting your page, but aren’t fully committed yet.

Collect and prepare the contact information of your existing community

Engaging your existing community is different from preparing your hot list. Your hot list is a combination of family and friends, whereas your existing community is your current audience. Get organized and create a spreadsheet with contact information for everyone you know. Prioritize your contacts by those you think will respond to your call to action quickly. Do your best to know which people in this group are likely to reserve/invest, how much they will spend, and when they will do it. Ideally, you will be able to launch your campaign with immediate momentum. Now is the time to start drafting emails that you will send to this potential group of investors. Make sure to draft more than one email, it likely takes each person numerous “touches” before they will be an investor and you will want to reach out to your community multiple times. 

Pro-Tip: Segment your email list. When you are organizing the people in your community do so by categorizing them into similar groups (i.e. doctors, business people, customers, etc). After that, create specific and unique emails for those people to get them interested in investing in your campaign. You should send out these emails at least 2 times a week. For example, on Monday and Wednesday you will send out your drafted emails to one specific group and on Tuesday and Thursday you will send out your drafted emails to a different specific group. Remember, most people are investing based on the message of your company, not the product. Make sure to make that the forefront of your marketing.

Prepare your ad campaign content

It no coincidence that many of the successful campaigns on StartEngine also participate heavily in Facebook and social media ad buys. This is one of the best ways to help expand your audience beyond your hotlist and existing community. The key to effective Facebook ads is to test everything.  Before your company launches, start putting together different text, photos, content, etc. that you can test once you go live. If you already have multiple ideas in mind, you’ll be able to more efficiently use pixel tracking to see which of your ads is testing the best.  Then you can track which ad campaign is converting the best and increase your ad spend to that one campaign specifically!

For more information on Facebook Ads, check out this link.

Set up your pixels

Pixels are the best way to track how well your marketing efforts are working once you are live. On the StartEngine platform, you are able to track your pixels through Google Analytics as well as Facebook Pixel. Before you go live, make sure you have entered in your Google Analytics ID and Facebook Pixel ID and you understand how the tracking system works. 

Don’t have a Google Analytics ID? Sign up here: 

The Facebook Pixel ID that you provide will need to be the specific ID associated with your business account, not your personal account. 

For more information on how to set up your pixels refer here.

Prepare your Social Media Posts

Once you go live you are going to want to spread the word and these days the best way to do that is through social media. Beyond your Facebook ads, be conscious of any Tweets or Instagram Posts you want to send out. We recommend prepping around 10-15 social media postings along with the timing that you want to send them out throughout your campaign.

If you have a website, prepare your pop-ups and banners

On your website, you should include pop-ups and banners that direct traffic from your website to your StartEngine raise. Before you launch think of the best ways to set this up so that you can start directing people to invest asap!

Put together a list of possible websites and blogs you would like to be featured in  

 Start thinking about websites, blogs, and communities that you want to reach out to once live. At first, try focusing on the smaller, more “niche” blogs. By identifying these very “industry specific” blogs you can know for certain that most of the traffic is interested in the mission of your company, therefore, they are much more likely to invest.  If you want to get in contact with a PR firm in your industry and begin engagement immediately once you go live check out this link.   

Launch Week

Now that you have launched, it’s time to take your prep work and put it into action. Remember, it’s very important to get as much traction as possible in your first week to help gain momentum and engagement from the StartEngine community.

  1. Call and email your hotlist 
  2. Call and email your existing community. Reminder, you should do this more than once! 
  3. Place pop-ups and banners on your website so you can re-direct the majority of your traffic. To learn more about Pop-Ups and Banner Ads click here. 
  4. Engage the early investors! Start posting updates that will be sent via email blast to current investors, those who have clicked the “get equity” button but didn’t complete their investment, and those who have “liked your page”. For best practices on posting updates click here. 
  5. Be active in the comment section on your StartEngine campaign page by responding to investors and potential investors who have questions about your company. Click here to learn how to manage your communication.
  6. Use the materials that you put together pre-launch to start your Facebook advertising. Reach out to StartEngine if you would like us to provide a lookalike audience. If you would like more information on lookalike audiences, please email us at hello@startengine.com  
  7. Post a link to your StartEngine offering on social media and get people excited about your company and your raise. Your company has its own unique URL that you can link to in all of your marketing materials (i.e. www.startengine.com/yourcompanyname)
  8. Continue to reach out to blogs, websites, and communities that share your passion! If you decide you want to contact a PR expert, follow this link: 
  9. Ensure that your pixels are set up correctly, so you can track the efforts of your marketing. Click here to learn more about setting your pixels.

IMPORTANT: Before you’re live on StartEngine, you may not advertise your Reg CF offering itself. However, you may conduct “Testing the Waters” (TTW) marketing to gauge interest, as long as every piece of TTW material includes the required Testing the Waters disclosure. Once your company launches on the platform, you may not mention the terms of your offering in your advertising, email blasts, updates, social media, or press releases. See [LINK: Testing the Waters] and terms vs. non-terms for more information.