How to Choose the Best Crowdfunding Marketing Agency (easy framework)

While crowdfunding has helped entrepreneurs raise tens of billions of dollars for their new products, the truth is: most campaigns fail.

Not because the products aren’t good, but because most creators don’t have the marketing expertise to cut through the noise and reach the right backers.

That’s where crowdfunding marketing agencies come in. These specialized firms can be the difference between a campaign that struggles to hit its funding goal and one that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars. But with so many different types of agencies out there, how do you choose the right one for your launch?

I’m going to give you a framework for exactly that.

Also, if you want to watch the video version of this article, check it out here:

Key Takeaways

1. Crowdfunding marketing agencies fall on a spectrum from “consultative” to “white glove.”
2. Your budget, time, and learning goals matter in choosing the right agency.
3. Not all agencies offer end-to-end services—some focus only on specific areas like paid ads or video production.
4. Case studies, reviews, transparency, and platform partnerships are key trust signals.
5. Use a step-by-step framework to evaluate and select agencies with the right expertise for your project.

Types of Crowdfunding Marketing Agencies and Which Is Right for You

Crowdfunding marketing agencies are specialized firms that help product creators navigate the complex world of launching successful campaigns on platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Gamefound, and BackerKit.

They are not all the same. In fact, they exist on a spectrum.

On one side, you have pure consultants where they’re not really doing any work for you, but guiding you along the way. On the other side, you have white-glove agencies where they essentially do everything for you.

When looking at this spectrum, there are three key variables to consider:

1. Cost: how much you’ll need to spend.
2. Time commitment: how much time you’ll need to invest yourself.
3. Learning potential: how much you’ll learn about marketing and crowdfunding from the agency that can be applied to growing and scaling your business and future launches.

Let’s take a look at each side of the spectrum with these in mind.

Consultative Agencies

If you go with a consultative approach, you’ll typically see:

1. Your costs go down
2. Your time commitment go up
3. The amount you learn also go up

That’s because you’ll be doing most of the work yourself. Consultative agencies are best for creators with a limited budget but high time availability who want to learn more about the crowdfunding process.

White-Glove Agencies

If you go with a white-glove approach, you’ll typically see the opposite:

1. Cost goes up
2. Time commitment goes down
3. Learning goes down

White-glove crowdfunding marketing agencies take on full responsibility for campaign execution. They’re best for those that have limited time but more budget, offering convenience while sacrificing affordability and learning potential.

What Do Crowdfunding Marketing Agencies Do?

Not all crowdfunding marketing agencies do everything.

For example, when it comes to launching a campaign, you’ll need at least the following:

• Photos taken of your product
• A campaign video created
• A campaign page designed
• A website or landing page built
• Email marketing flows created
• Paid ads programmed
• General campaign management

Most crowdfunding marketing agencies don’t handle all of these services. Some specialize in just one area like video production or paid advertising.

So if we wanted to layer this onto the previous visual, we could add another axis and it’d look like this.

At the bottom, you’d have “specialized” for those agencies with expertise in fewer areas. At the top, you’d have “comprehensive” for those with expertise in a lot of areas.

You can move this axis left or right to get an idea of how the cost, time and learning will likely change depending on if the agency is more consultative or white-glove.

Another way to think about it is that your crowdfunding campaign is like a puzzle. Agencies can help you put the puzzle pieces together. You can pay more to have one agency with broad expertise put together the entire puzzle for you. Or you can hire specialists that help you fill in a few pieces while you’re responsible for everything else.

The Essential Services to Look for in Crowdfunding Marketing Agencies

When evaluating crowdfunding marketing agencies, you need to understand which services they offer and which ones you actually need for your campaign. Below are the essential parts of every campaign that you’ll either need to do yourself or have an agency do for you.

1. Product Photography

These visual assets are absolutely critical for storytelling and grabbing backers’ attention. They’ll be used everywhere from your landing page to your campaign page and everything in between.

2. Campaign Video

This is the video that goes on your campaign page. It’s very important to get right as it’s one of the first things potential backers will see when they go to your campaign.

3. Campaign Page

Below your campaign video, you’ll need to have an expertly designed campaign page. I actually think this is more important than your video as most people won’t watch the whole video but they will scroll down your page.

4. Website

Your website is most important during the pre-launch. Ideally, you are creating a pre-launch landing page that funnels traffic from Meta ads into joining your pre-launch email list.

5. Email Marketing

Building an email list is a critical part of a successful launch. That’s why you need a comprehensive email marketing strategy to turn subscribers on your list into backers.

6. Paid Ads

Buying ads (mainly on Facebook and Instagram) is the single largest source of traffic to crowdfunding campaigns. You need to have both a paid ads strategy for the pre-launch and the live campaign.

7. Campaign Management

Once you go live, there are many things for you to keep track of: comments, DMs, updates, solicitations from scammers (unfortunately). Having guidance on how to manage the live campaign is critical.

A Step-By-Step Framework to Choose the Right Agency for Your Needs

Now that you know the different types of agencies and what the essentials of a crowdfunding campaign are, you can now figure out the best crowdfunding agency for you. Here’s a simple framework to follow.

1. List the Services You Need Help With

First, let’s look at the essentials of a campaign and audit your skills. The goal here is to figure out which areas you need help with.

For example, let’s say you already know how to take product photography and make a video, but you have no clue how to do the rest of them. So your answers would look like this:

2. Assess Your Budget, Time, and Learning Priorities

Next, you’ll need to answer these questions honestly:

• How much budget do I have to spend on agencies?
• How much time can I commit per week?
• How important is learning to me?

For example, let’s say that your answers looked like this:

In this example, you have a decent budget to spend on agencies, you have quite a lot of time to commit and you also want to learn.

3. Align Needs with Agency Type

With that information, let’s bring back the spectrum we created earlier.

Because you need expertise in quite a lot of areas and you have a decent budget, you’d likely want to go for a comprehensive crowdfunding agency. Also, because learning is important to you and you have a lot of time, you could probably move toward a more consultative approach. That’d mean you’d end up here on the spectrum:

I’ll admit, this framework isn’t perfect. But it does give you direction on how to think about what the best crowdfunding marketing agency is for your launch.

What to Look for When Evaluating Crowdfunding Marketing Agencies

There are quite a lot of choices when it comes to choosing a crowdfunding agency. But here are some questions I recommend you answer before making your decision.

1. Do they have legitimate reviews?

The key word here is “legitimate” because unfortunately, there are fake reviews for agencies – both positive and negative ones.

Make sure they have reviews on sites like Trustpilot, Google Reviews, or Clutch. The best reviews are ones where it’s clear which campaign the reviewer is from. That way you can look it up and verify for yourself.

For example, here are 2 of the 152 reviews we have on Trustpilot:

You can look up Whisker Wars and see they raised $148K on Kickstarter:

Or this one from Cypress Resort:

You can see how they raised $802K on Indiegogo:

I don’t recommend putting much weight into reviews that don’t include the name of the campaign because it’s very easy to fake those.

2. Are they transparent about their process?

An agency that’s transparent about their process allows you to verify their expertise before you even hire them.

When I say “transparent about their process,” I mean (1) them explaining how their process works and (2) producing quality content that showcases their expertise.

For example, we have super in-depth videos that explain both our LaunchBoom Accelerator and LaunchBoom Games processes.

We also create the most popular content in all of crowdfunding. Here are just some of the places we produce content (that you should check out!):

• Main YouTube channel: main channel covering all things crowdfunding for consumer products.
• Games YouTube channel: channel dedicated to tabletop games.
• Masters of Crowdfunding podcast: long-form interviews with successful crowdfunding creators.
• Crowdfunded Summit: biggest crowdfunding summit in the world.
• Crowdfunded book: best-selling book on crowdfunding in the world.

We produce all this content not only to help educate product creators but to show our process so you can verify if we know what we’re talking about.

3. Are they partnered with the crowdfunding platforms?

The most popular crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, both have certified experts – allowing product creators to know who to trust.

For example, LaunchBoom is a certified Kickstarter Expert and Indiegogo Expert.

Now being a certified expert is great, but even better is if the agency also has a partnership with the crowdfunding platforms.

For example, Jellop has a partnership with Kickstarter to provide creators with live ad support.

And LaunchBoom also has a partnership with Kickstarter where we produced an entire free course on crowdfunding called Learning Lab.

These extra layers of partnership give you more confidence that the agencies work well with the platform you’ll be launching on.

4. Have they launched products similar to yours?

Each crowdfunding agency will likely have a page dedicated to all the campaigns they’ve helped launch. Go through those campaigns and make sure they’ve worked with campaigns in your product niche. Better yet, check to see if they have case studies for products that are similar to yours.

For example, you can check out our list of crowdfunding campaigns here or go to our crowdfunding blog and filter for all of our case studies.

Speaking of case studies, let’s talk about some creators who found the best crowdfunding agency for them.

Case Studies: Successful Campaigns Powered by the Right Agency

Let’s look at three campaigns that worked with the right agency for them.

Chillshark: a $439,474 Tech Product Launch

Keegan O’Connor had a simple problem: he wanted to cold plunge from his apartment. But existing solutions didn’t work for apartment living.

So he created Chillshark – a product that turns any bathtub into a cold plunge. With LaunchBoom’s help, his Kickstarter campaign raised nearly half a million dollars.

The key to Chillshark’s success was their pre-launch strategy. They used a reservation funnel for six months before launching, asking prospects for a $1 reservation in exchange for a significant discount when the campaign went live.

But here’s what really set them apart: they called their leads. Not to sell, but to help. When someone put down a dollar reservation, the team would call to make sure the product was actually a good fit. Sometimes they’d recommend competitors. Sometimes they’d suggest the customer wait.

This approach built enormous goodwill and gathered first-hand market research that informed their entire digital marketing for crowdfunding strategy.

Biome: a $400,240 Tabletop Game Launch

Leonie was laid off in the summer of 2022. Instead of sulking, she saw an opportunity to launch her board game idea called Biome.

Working with LaunchBoom, she built a reservation funnel, drove traffic with Meta ads, and built an email list of people who couldn’t wait to buy her product. Better yet, 902 people on her email list put down a $5 deposit to upgrade to VIP. That was a huge sign of confidence that the launch was going to be successful. And when she launched Biome on Kickstarter, she raised $49,245 in one day.

The campaign ultimately raised $400,240 from 6,043 backers.

Loka Chai Maker: a $626,497 Product Design Launch

Anish Shonpal and Nikhil Shah turned their chai obsession into a $626,497 Kickstarter success with LaunchBoom’s help.

The Loka Chai Maker solved a real problem: making authentic chai at home is messy and time-consuming. Their solution featured an “infinity chai fountain” – a visually striking brewing method that captures chai as it boils over.

They built an email list of 22,000 potential backers and secured roughly 4,000 VIP reservations (people who put down $1) during pre-launch. When they launched, those reservations converted into $169,122 in pre-sale revenue.

Their campaign spent around $60,000 on paid ads, but ended up raising $626,497, yielding approximately 10.4X return on ad spend.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the best crowdfunding marketing agency isn’t about picking the most expensive option. It’s about aligning your campaign’s needs with the agency’s specialization and expertise.

Use the framework I’ve shared to make an informed choice based on your specific situation, budget, and learning goals and you’ll dramatically increase your likelihood of success.

If you want some help choosing the right one, I recommend chatting with one of my team members. Whether it’s with us or someone else, we’ll talk through your crowdfunding goals and point you in the right direction.

Crowdfunding Marketing Agencies: Frequently Asked Questions

What Are the Different Types of Crowdfunding Agencies?

Crowdfunding marketing agencies exist on a spectrum from consultative to white-glove services. Consultative agencies guide you through the process but don’t execute tasks – they’re best for creators with limited budgets but high time availability. White-glove agencies take full responsibility for campaign execution and are ideal for those with limited time but larger budgets.

What Areas Should a Crowdfunding Marketing Agency Cover?

Core services include product photography, campaign video creation, campaign page design, website development, email marketing, paid advertising, and general campaign management. Not all agencies offer all services, so it’s important to understand what you need versus what they provide.

How Do I Know if an Agency Is Legit?

Look for legitimate reviews on platforms like Trustpilot, Google Reviews, and Clutch – especially reviews that mention specific campaign names you can verify. Check for transparency about their process, platform certifications from Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and detailed case studies of past campaigns.

What Role Do Agencies Play in Fundraising Marketing Tactics?

Good agencies enhance your storytelling, visibility, and conversion rates through smart digital marketing for crowdfunding. They help with pre-launch audience building, campaign optimization, and ongoing management to ensure your campaign reaches its full potential.

How Can Agencies Support My Crowd-Sourced Funding Solutions?

Whether you’re launching on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, BackerKit or Gamefound, agencies can provide tailored support based on your funding goals. They understand the nuances of different crowd-sourced funding solutions and can adapt their strategies accordingly to maximize your campaign’s success.