Monday 8 February 2016

Can crowdfunding work for confectionery?



Candy Kittens is the latest confectionery company to set up a crowdfunding campaign in a bid to raise £300,000 to pay for an above-the-line marketing campaign, helping it to grow to £2.5million by 2017. Launched in November and running until March, the company is using Seedrs as its online platform. Not a new idea, but a rather interesting idea, Hotel Chocolat is possibly the best know confectionery company to harness the idea of crowdfunding.
But take to one of the 500+ crowdfunding platforms now online and you’ll see a huge collection of campaigns competing for attention. We took a peek at crowdfunder.co.uk and identified 1,144 food and drink projects – many of which related to confectionery. Is this going to become the savvy way to build your business or will it not stand the test of time?
Interestingly, the very first crowdfunding project to make use of the internet was set up by rock band, Marillion in 1997. They could not afford the $60,000 cost of their tour and managed to raise it from lots of willing Americans, prepared to pay their bit online. 19 years later and the creative method to find funds has grown legs and become a significant business in itself.
So if you’re wondering about setting up your own crowdfunding project – perhaps you want to build your confectionery brand or expand your confectionery retail business – how should you go about it? Here’s a few key considerations before you go any further:

1.     Know who your audience might be. Key crowdfunding participants include those aged 24 to 35, men and high income earners. If this fits with your plan, you might be lucky. If it doesn’t, you might be less successful with this route.
 

2.     Know your brand. It might sound silly but many people don’t. What does it stand for? What are its USPs? What is it not? If you need some help to develop this, now would be a good time to do that.
3.     Ensure that you have a good story. People buy into stories, so make sure that you can tell yours well. Again, if you need help with the copywriting, please do so. Get passionate and emotive so that you get your target audience on board.
 
4.     See what others are doing. There are no end of examples to view online, so take some time to see what works for you and what doesn’t. Also understand who you might be competing with in the same time-frame.

5.     Do a pre-launch and get talking early. Don’t simply rely on a crowdfunding platform. Use your own marketing strengths to communicate with your target audience. This might be your customers via email or even in person (if a confectionery shop for example), or perhaps your social media network. Consider PR in your local area.

6.     If it doesn’t work first time, try again. Don’t give up, it might have been bad timing or you might have got the message or target audience a bit out of kilter. Review your results, seek some advice and try again.

So we leave you with (hopefully) a thought provoking idea to raise the funds you might be after. It might not work for everyone, but looking at the growth in the market and the companies giving it a try, perhaps you ought to take a closer look at crowdfunding too?

www.sweetretailing.co.uk