Objective: You will better understand what your Backers campaign can offer supporters, and how your offering can add value to your supporters’ lives.
We talked already about what your business is offering customers in the Business Value Proposition lesson. Now we need to talk about what your business is offering your Backers! Ideally, you’ll be able to upsell a lot of your regular customer community on your Backers offering. You’ll also ideally bring in other people who you identified as a potential Backer target community in our earlier Choosing Your Community lesson.
When someone comes to look at your project on Backers, what are they getting for their money? Yes, they’re getting equity through non-voting common shares, but they should also be getting more. They should be getting a unique and intimate experience of being the earliest supporters of your business. This can look different for different businesses, but ultimately people supporting you should feel like their support is more than just financial (afterall, they’re giving more than just financial support – including but not limited to early emotional and social capital support – and so they should get more than just financial support in return)!
Figuring out ways to upsell your community on your Initial Backers Offering is critical to have long-lasting success. This community you have built are not your piggy bank, but rather potential lifelong ambassadors for your work. Giving opportunities for them to have an ongoing benefit from this enhanced membership in your community is key. You might design into your Backers rewards some of the things we discussed in the Scaling portion of the Growing Your Community lesson – elements of exclusivity (for example, behind the scenes content), community reputation bonuses (such as super user status or badeges or other ways to differentiate them from the average member of your community), and more. There are many different approaches to this depending on your community’s structure and your business, let your imagination flow.
The key is that your Backers should feel special and like more than just investors – because they are: they’re your earliest community and are giving you financial, emotional, social support, and more!
Action Item(s):
- Make a list of at least 10 potential addons your community members could receive for supporting you on Backers.
- Assess the potential costs and benefits associated with each of these – of course, the lowest possible cost (financial, environmental, and social) with the highest possible benefit is ideal! Cut anything that costs more than it benefits.
- Share your refined list with some of your most trusted community members. Are they interested? What feedback do they have? What other things would they like?
Further Reading:
Here are a bunch of rewards – many won’t make sense for your community in particular, but they should get your creative juices flowing: https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/need-some-reward-ideas-here-are-96-of-them
