Often the last thing you discuss when creating your crowdfunding project is the thing you should discuss first.
Your crowdfunding title is just as important as your video when it comes to promoting your campaign on social media. It’s the thing that will peak the interest of potential backers, and it will probably get repeated in the media if you get any.
It’s the thing that entices your audience to click the link, view the video, and back your campaign.
There’s no real data on what makes a good crowdfunding title, so I’ve done some research. I’ve looked at the top 20 funded projects on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, PledgeMe and Pozible right now, and I’ve broken down what they’ve done. Learning what works can help you plan the best possible title for your own campaign.
The dataset referenced in this blog is available as part of the Crowdfunding Copy Bundle on Gumroad. It has looked at the top 20 most-funded project campaigns on the top rewards crowdfunding platforms in Australasia as at 1 May 2016.
Word Count
The average word count of the crowdfunding titles was 5.275 words.
The mean (that’s the one used most often) was 4 words.
You want to keep it short: well over 50% of the sample used 5 words or fewer in their crowdfunding title.
Structure
I broke each crowdfunding title down into an overall structure. Here’s what I found.
- 74% of campaigns include the name of their product (sometimes that is the name of the movie or book they are making) in the title of their campaign. For 22% of the projects, the name of their product IS the title of their project.
- 40% of campaigns include some kind of description of the product in their crowdfunding title. For example, “The Veronica Mars Movie Project” includes both the title (Veronica Mars) and a description (movie). Others get more descriptive – The Everyday Messenger follows up the product name with the description “A Bag For Cameras & Essential Carry”.
- Other important elements of an effective crowdfunding title include your company’s name (24% of projects sampled included this), calls to action (10%) and verbs (12.5%).
A call to action (“you decide”) or a verb (such as “help”) offer an instruction to the viewer that involves them directly in the project. These types of titles were particularly popular on the platform PledgeMe.
The most popular crowdfunding title formats are shown below.
Hyperbolic Descriptions and Promises
Some products claim to be “the greatest”, “the coolest”, or “the World’s first” – these are what I call hyperbolic descriptions or promises.
Nearly a quarter of the projects surveyed (23.75%) included some kind of promise or hyperbole that acted to increase interest or excitement, and provide an extra layer of confidence to the backer.
Grammar and Caps Lock
Some campaigns use grammar, some don’t. Some use all caps in the title, some do not.
Only three projects used a full stop at the end of their crowdfunding title – the same number as those who ended their title with an exclamation mark.
A little over 50% of the campaigns surveyed used a colon or dash between the Product Name and the Product Description, or some other form of simple grammar.
15% of campaigns used caps in at least part of their campaign title, though only one used entirely caps.
Takeaway points
Your title needs to be short. If you can do it in 4 words, awesome, but try to stay below 7 if you can.
Include the name of your product and something that describes what it does.
Adding some kind of promise or hyperbole won’t hurt either.
Adding a verb that helps to tell people what to do (e.g. “Help [Company Name] bring [Product Name] to life!”) seems to be more effective for community projects, rather than products.
If you’d like to see the raw data used to produce this post, it’s available within the Effective Crowdfunding Copy bundle on Gumroad.
To find out more about writing effective crowdfunding copy, check out this post on writing your description, or our crowdfunding copy tips.
