Your VIPs are the people who put down a reservation on your product before you launch. It’s important to treat them like… well, VIPs! Connecting creators with their VIPs helps to build and strengthen the sense of community around a product, which leads to greater community involvement and a group that’s more enthusiastic about backing your campaign. The best and easiest way to do this is through a VIP Facebook group.
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Why VIPs?
Here at LaunchBoom, we set up a VIP-only Facebook group and encourage everyone who places a reservation to join. The creators then manage this group, interacting with VIPs, sharing behind-the-scenes content, and answering their questions. This exclusive access gives VIPs insight into the product and the process. They feel more connected and more interested in actually making a purchase. The better the VIP group engagement, the better the VIP conversion when the campaign launches.
Embody your values to create trust
The three values that you want to embody as a creator are credibility, transparency, and authenticity. If you can communicate to your ViPs in a way that embraces these values, your VIPS will be more likely to trust you—and therefore more likely to become backers.
Credibility is the first and most important value for building trust. Trust leads to conversions. Nobody will back a campaign from a creator who has never successfully launched a product before if there’s no trust there. The VIP group provides an opportunity for creators to establish credibility by being transparent and authentic with potential backers.
Being credible, transparent, and authentic delivers an amazing brand experience. This leads to your VIPs becoming backers—and to them spreading the word about your amazing product and brand to others.
Embodying those three values is less difficult than you might think! If you can answer these questions for yourself, then you’ll be equipped to engage with your community on almost every issue.
- Who are you?
- Why are you doing this?
- Why are you the person to bring this product to life?
- Why should they trust you?
- Why did you choose to launch via crowdfunding?
- What does this process mean to you?
- Where are you launching (which platform)?
- How will they back your crowdfunding campaign?
Getting off on the right foot
VIP groups are at their best when they’re a thriving, bustling place with a bunch of people interacting in them. That’s great later on, but the first few people there might feel a little lonely… unless you do a little pre-VIP work, that is!
Chances are really good that you have fans of your product before you start your online marketing. Think about friends, family, and co-workers who have heard you talking about your product. If they’ve been enthusiastic about it, invite them to the group! Get them talking with each other and interact with them in the group. That way, when you invite your VIPs in, they can see that there are other interested people—and that you’re an attentive group manager and creator.
Engaging your VIPs in the Facebook group
So what does the day-to-day work of managing your VIP Facebook group look like?
The most important thing to remember is that you have a lot of control over how engaged people are. The more you post, the more people will engage with you and with each other. Remember, engagement leads to excited future backers, so keep people interacting and interested in what you’re doing!
Here are some post ideas that can help create engagement:
- Product demonstrations
- Unboxing videos
- Behind the scenes looks
- Explaining how the product came to be
- Meet the team
- Glowing preview
- Before/after
- Feature spotlight
- Trailers
- Upcoming events
- Introduction to the product and value propositions
- Project updates, product updates, or feature updates and changes
- Raising awareness of problems your product solves
- Trending meme formats with your brand inserted, or trending memes that are simply relevant to your brand
Another great way to get engagement is to find influencers who will participate in your VIP Facebook group in a meaningful way. For instance, if you’re making a board game with miniatures, reach out to someone known for painting them. Offer to send them your miniatures for free in exchange for showcasing their work in your group. If you’re launching a new kind of meditation product or home workout gear, find influencers in those spaces who would be willing to talk about using your product. Whatever space you’re in, there will undoubtedly be people who can provide value by sharing their thoughts on your product!
Get feedback
Another benefit of the VIP group is the ability to get direct feedback from people already interested in your product. You can then implement this feedback into your product design, making the product into something that people are even more interested in purchasing before the campaign launches (and far before it goes to mass market).
Ask a blend of open-ended and multiple choice questions! It can be as simple as “Which of these colors would you most want to order the product in?” That will get people to engage, and it can also inform your decision about what to offer. More complex questions like “Which features are the most important to you?” or “What will you use this product for?” will offer the opportunity for in-depth conversation about your product that can help you fine-tune or even overhaul aspects in a way that the community most wants to see.
Your VIP Facebook group is an invaluable tool, and we use one for every single campaign that we run. Want to talk about VIPs, how to get them, or any other part of the crowdfunding process? Apply to work with us today!
Want to turn Facebook into your secret weapon for crowdfunding? Check out the video below:
