Essay Example on Crowdfunding: Structure & Components of a Successful Pitch

Crowdfunding, no matter the type in question, equity, and donation-based or reward are rapidly gaining popularity, hence attracting competition for the limited backers who are willing to fund any venture they value as profitable and outstanding (Vismara 2019). In addition to the rewards that the pitcher offer in exchange for equity, the process of delivery, and the essential components of the crowdfunding pitch come in handy. Before getting into the structure and components of your crowdfunding pitch, it is fundamental to understand the information available to your niche. This knowledge will guide you through the requirements for a successful application. Crowdfunding is niche specific and hence the different platforms available for the process of pitching such as Mosaic for renewable energy, Patreon for artists, Watsi for medical services, AngelList for investors, and Quirky for inventions (Gilpin 2020). The importance of crowdfunding, such as enhancing diversity in businesses, democratizing finance, and promoting globalization, among others, cannot be realized if we miss any detail in formulating the crowdfunding pitch. From the language used, the mode of delivery, to the combination of various media to back up our ideas. Both writing and video require the pitcher to be tactical to pass the intended message.

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According to Copeland (2018), the language used in crowdfunding should ensure that you are within a communication strategy that makes your pitching simple. It should be concrete to make the idea easily identified and memorable, unexpected to create suspense for the backer's attention, gives the idea credibility, emotion to bring out the values you intend to pass on. Lastly, the language should employ storytelling at some point as most people identify with stories.

Rhetoric language is the most effective for the pitcher to achieve persuasion in both written and spoken. The main idea is to as rhetorical as possible when we want to convince, please or even convince our potential backers (Hosch and Dassen et al. 2016). When you want to make your audience remembers a past feeling of either sadness or pleasure that gave rise to your idea, using nostalgia would significantly elevate your pitch. The final assurance that may be communicated from both the choice of words and the body language is whether you possess personal strength. Doing your revision to boost your confidence and associating past success with your personality achieves this best through storytelling.

Storytelling, skill leaders have exploited to inspire, teach, and influence is the most powerful when pitching, as stated by Carpenter (2019). This gives your ideas life and guides the flow of the conversation. They help envelope your pitch within the specific theme that you are after. It is at this point that you want to make the potential investor understand how it all started. The moral in the story is the vision you have for the society in case your idea is funded. Give it your best by combining the story with a bit of media in its vast forms.

According to Kaminski and Hopp (2019), media forms are as vast as your audience's diversity. However, you could say way too much and communicate feelings, emotions, and other such factors very first in a video format. Any visual prompt you choose to go with, be it animation, graphical creations, or texts in a variety of forms, including creative presentation, should be short, and it wouldn't hurt to make them a little funny. For those who would want to know more about your creation, you could have such items as a prototype they could see, hold, touch, or experience. Having the final product is even better and more appreciated. This could be backed up by cartoons, special effects, or animations that help explain how your product or the prototype works. The power in your pitch lies in the way language and words differ in text and the videos you prepare for your presentation. The resources you choose to use demand that you become creative, original, and attractive to the end of your submission.

Regarding Shapiro (2017), the resources to use will give you a responsibility to populate your pitch with compelling and informative content. Still, you will need more than just content to ensure that your school of thought is not distracted at any point. Public research strategy helps focus the pitcher's energy towards the objective in each section of their pitch. Gradually building up towards the overall aim of attracting a backer, then evaluate the effectiveness of their pitch through diplomatic means to ensure that they still have a connection with their audience before inviting them on board. Campaigns based on the platforms we chose work well with most social media's primary function of creating awareness, enhancing interaction, and creating valuable networks for who you have a value proposition.

Regarding Kristensen et al. (2019), your value proposition entails the solution that your idea aims at introducing and latter introduce your funding target. This could be a solution to a problem your previous product or someone else's created or a gap in the market or society for the case of nonprofit crowdfunding. Be clear about how much funds you are looking for, your requirements for the same from the potential backer, how you intend to use the funds. How long you have statistically proven before the company breaks even or you start paying dividends to the backer should as well be clearly outlined. Transparency needs to be highly exercised at this point, or you risk losing an audience. The precise and straightforward combination of language and words in either text or video help show the benefits associated with the idea; these benefits should have back up data to support their validity. The expenses that are involved should be made clear throughout the production process. The product features should be as you pitch them to let the audience expect what you pitch. Backers want to know that they are not gambling and that you are sure about your idea or product. This can only be done through a display of your progress levels shown in either graphical, text, video or audio pitch, observing transparency all along.

The industry in focus determines the language and general content used. Still, the idea is to use the context of that industry to create compelling headlines that guarantee an excellent first impression. This will assure the backer that you are an expert in the field of your interest. The stage of the product development should align with the general requirements of that field. The quality of media used should be the highest quality that you can make with the resources at your disposal in that field (Gilpin 2020). Display a little information that explains who you are, your interests, potential, experiences, and motivation in line with your pitch. In modern society, the gender of the pitcher in case you are in a group is not so important. Still, most cases have seen pitchers with the opposite gender to that of a unisex audience perform better than the same sex as the audience, and sometimes, this makes no difference. In conclusion, the target market has all that you need. Customize the pitch to identifying with the interests, culture, and expectations of your target audience.

References

Carpenter, P. (2019). Transformational Security Awareness: What Neuroscientists, Storytellers, and Marketers Can Teach Us About Driving Secure Behaviors. John Wiley & Sons.

Copeland, A. J. (2018). Crowdfunding for a Cause: Rhetorically Oriented Action Research with Christian Organizations (Doctoral dissertation, North Dakota State University).

Gilpin, L., 2020. The Rise Of Crowdfunding: 10 Things To Know. [online] TechRepublic. Available at: <https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-rise-of-crowdfunding-10-things-to-know/> [Accessed 14 March 2020].

Hosch-Dayican, B., Amrit, C., Aarts, K., & Dassen, A. (2016). How do online citizens persuade fellow voters? Using Twitter during the 2012 Dutch parliamentary election campaign. Social science computer review, 34(2), 135-152.

Kaminski, J. C., & Hopp, C. (2019). Predicting outcomes in crowdfunding campaigns with textual, visual, and linguistic signals. Small Business Economics, 1-23.

Shapiro, D. H. (2017). Overview: Clinical and physiological comparison of meditation with other self-control strategies. In Meditation (pp. 5-12). Routledge.

Kristensen, Heidi Simone, and Arne Remmen. "A framework for sustainable value propositions in product-service systems." Journal of cleaner production 223 (2019): 25-35.

Vismara, S. (2019). Sustainability in equity crowdfunding. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 141, 98-106.