You may or may not know that recently I went through a rough patch. In the first six months of this year, I lost my partner of four years, my grandmother’s home (which had been in our family for 60 years), and my pet child, the notorious Mr Scruff.
Stick with me, though, because I guarantee I’ll make you feel good by the end of the article.
However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.
Stephen Hawking
When I had to move out of Grandma’s home—and move fast!—I launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the moving costs.
Here are three lessons I learned from doing so:
1) Completed is Better Than Perfect
Seth Godin teaches this. No one cares about your ideas. They only care when you ship something. If you have a blog, publish content. It’s better to launch something and then adapt it based on feedback rather than getting something to a point that is theoretically perfect. Reality snaps theory. Any theory will need to be changed to match reality.
I launched the crowdfunding campaign before I was ready.
And it worked.
2) Relationships Trump the Law of Exchange
Money goes to those who have earned it. To make my appeal attractive, I offered 7 services to donors. Of these, only one was popular (a personalised reading list, where I recommend books you’ll enjoy and find helpful). The other offerings were great value—my copywriting services at half the usual price. No one wanted them.
But people continued to donate.
When I offered something to the donors, a common response was, “Pleasure mate, no need to give back. Hope all goes well for you.”
Likeability is one of the key factors in success. It’s a foundation for relationships. Without relationships, life is meaningless. People donated because of the relationship I had with them.
That is a powerful piece of knowledge.
The purpose of a business is not to make a profit. It’s to start a profitable relationship with a customer and keep that relationship going for as long as possible.
3) Place a Positive Spin on Your Story
When it comes to downers, my story has all the elements. But people get enough bad news from the mainstream media. Don’t add to that mess through your social media posts (or your crowdfunding campaigns).
When I showed my initial campaign to one of my American Writers & Artists Inc. teachers, Gary Hennerberg, he said my story needed a positive spin. To be precise, I needed to show how people donating would help me transform from the darkness of yucky circumstances into the light of new hope.
There are a bunch of marketing lessons packed into the points above. Please comment below with what you think of them.