How to Hack the Gogo Factor and Reach Your Crowdfunding Goal on Indiegogo

No good crowdfunding strategy for Indiegogo ever started without a solid plan on how to hack the Gogo factor. I wrote some tips on how to get your project featured on Indiegogo here, but I feel this topic needs a more in-depth approach.

Before diving into how to hack the Gogo factor, let’s take a look at what this factor is.

According to Indiegogo, the Gogo factor is a proprietary algorithm that determines the rank of your campaign. You can think about it the same way as about Google’s ranking factor. The higher this rank, the higher you will be listed on Indiegogo/SERPs.

In other words, the Gogo factor determines your organic growth.

Why is this important?

Unlike Kickstarter (that has an approval process), all crowdfunding campaigns are automatically approved on Indiegogo. This means that your competition is VERY high. This also explains why only 9.8% of Indiegogo campaigns reach their goal.

You need all the help you can get if you want to reach your crowdfunding goal.

Now, if you look at the hints Indiegogo gives about boosting your Gogo factor, you learn that you need to:

• Update your campaign as frequently as possible
• Share it on social media
• Create perks that people really want

Of course, there’s more to hacking the Gogo factor than this. Let’s take an in-depth look at the advice offered by Indiegogo and at other ways to boost your campaign.

How to Hack the Gogo Factor and Get Your Campaign Featured on Indiegogo

When your campaign is featured on Indiegogo, it doesn’t just appear on the front page. It can also be featured on Indiegogo’s newsletter, which is the best way to reach qualified audiences. Let’s see how to get you there:

1. Share Your Campaign as Frequently as Possible

Even Indiegogo recommends this. And here’s exactly how it can help you:

• Social shares mean interest in your campaign
• Social shares get traffic to your campaign page
• Social shares create a community around your campaign

So share it everywhere and do it often. If you have company social media profiles and also profiles that are dedicated to the product you’re raising money for, share everywhere. And don’t forget about your personal profiles, either! Social media is very important for any crowdfunding campaign – it helps with more than boosting the Gogo factor.

Also, be sure to ask your friends, family, and backers to share your link on their profiles. The more shares from different profiles, the better your chances to boost your Gogo factor and get featured.

Whenever, you share your campaign, make sure to use your “official” link. You can always find your custom URL on your Indiegogo campaign page. Use this one, otherwise the shares won’t count towards boosting your Gogo factor.

2. Get Traffic to Your Campaign (But not Any Type of Traffic)

I received a lot of emails from people asking how to hack the Gogo factor for their campaign. When I suggest getting as much traffic as possible to it, they don’t always go about it the “right” way.

To be more precise, if you hire a freelancer to use bots to drive views, they won’t do much good for you. In fact, they might even harm your campaign.

The Gogo factor is a bit more sophisticated than that. If people (or bots) spend one second or less on your campaign page, Indiegogo will think your product is not interesting enough to keep people hooked. So it will “demote” your campaign.

Instead, try to drive real, relevant traffic. Even if you access the campaign yourself from different IPs, try to stay on page a few minutes. Click on the video, check the updates tab and so on.

A great way to get “good” traffic is a crowdfunding email campaign. Don’t just rely on your business list. Email your friends, too – they will; be curious enough to spend some time on your campaign page.

3. Getting Funds Early on Is Crucial

Indiegogo won’t tell you that you virtually have no chance to grow organically or reach your crowdfunding goal if you don’t get funded in the first few days of your campaign. But it’s true.

If you don’t have at least 2% of your target amount within the first two days of your campaign, your page will be marked as “noindex”. This means search engines will not be able to index your crowdfunding campaign page and your chances of being found via Google searches are 0.

There are a lot of reasons why crowdfunding campaigns fail on Indiegogo, but the lack of funding in the first days is perhaps the most significant on. So, before you even launch your campaign, make sure you have some funds set aside for this purpose.

You can donate some money yourself just to get things started. You can also ask your friends, family, business partners and even Facebook friends to support your campaign. Every little donation counts towards boosting your Gogo factor.

4. Get as Much User-Generated Content as Possible

Encourage people to leave comments and be sure to reply to them. Ask them what they think about your video, about the colors your product comes in or about the campaign in general. Whatever gets the discussion going is great!

User-generated content is a sign that your campaign sparks interest, so encourage it!

5. Don’t Forget about Updates

Even simple things like “we’ve reached 20% of our goal – thank you all!” count as updates. You don’t need massive changes in your product or campaign to create an update. A new photo, a new infographic or another video are all great ideas.

Ideally, you should update the campaign at least 4 times, starting within the first 3 days. This shows that you are involved and actively working to get your campaign funded. Both Indiegogo and potential backers love this!

While it’s true that not all products are cut out for crowdfunding success, it would be a shame to lose your chance of getting funded just because of a few small hiccups.

Want to maximize your chances of getting funded? Want to learn more about how to hack the Gogo factor? Get in touch with our crowdfunding marketing specialists.

 Photo source: thenextweb.com