Introduction

Will Ford is the Co-Founder of LaunchBoom, the world’s largest crowdfunding platform. He also runs the Crowdfunded Summit, a virtual crowdfunding event which I am also a keynote at again, and that’s coming up in May 2023, and as a quick heads up, Will is offering free tickets for limited time to listeners of this podcast. Today, Will is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can use small trial marketing and sales techniques to gauge how successful a crowdfunding campaign will be, other tips and tricks along the way to a successful launch, and the story of how crowdfunding has changed over the years.

Today you will hear us talk about:

• Get the project funded on crowdfunding on the first day
• Sell the world from a prototype, and then validate that idea with real users, then use that money to fund the manufacturing
• Prelaunch is the single most important thing to think about when launching any product on crowdfunding.
• Offer a better deal to your early backers, before you even launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
• People who put a deposit down, even just a dollar, have a 30 times higher probability of converting to a paying customer on Day 1 of your crowdfunding campaign.
• Set a reasonable campaign goal that is much smaller, so that you hit the campaign goal quickly.
• Doing crowdfunding yourself, it’s far less expensive than hiring agencies for crowdfunding.
• Crowdfunding is just the launch, most people want to then scale the product business after that.
• Crowdfunding is stronger than ever.
• Learn from your crowdfunding sales to 
• The LaunchBoom community.
• Messaging, positioning, pricing for planning a crowdfunding campaign
• Build lead funnels and reservation funnels
• A/B split testing for advertising messaging and lead offers
• Using data to analyze your offer options
• Figure out what is converting best on crowdfunding
• You can’t fool consumers these days, there is too much information online, so make sure you have a great product.
• Give the backers a discount on crowdfunding vs what your retail price will be.

EPISODE LINKS:

Will Ford Links:

LinkedIn | Website | CrowdFunded Summit

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter | YouTube

PTC Links:

https://www.ptc.com/

OnShape | Creo

Mako Design Links:

https://www.makodesign.com/

YouTube | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Partner: PTC’s best-in-class software solutions Onshape: The only cloud-native product development platform that delivers full-featured computer-aided design (CAD), integrated product data management (PDM) and enterprise analytics in a single system, and Creo: 3D CAD solution that provides designers with the most innovative tools to build better products faster, such as generative design, additive manufacturing, real-time simulation, IIoT, and augmented reality.

Producer: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories.