The most important aspect to writing your pitch on Seedrs is to create a compelling story that draws people in and educates them as to why you believe your company is going to be the next big thing.

When setting the scene and creating your story think about the following elements:

• Who your target audience is and the tone in which you’ll speak to them
• The most compelling aspects of your business
• The reason you set out to create your business
• The main use cases of your product

Once you have set the scene, the aim is to make the investor’s decision to invest in your business as quick and simple as possible by providing an overwhelming amount of evidence that it is on a successful trajectory.

The key things to include, if possible, are:

• Financial success (e.g. revenue). This is a key validation for an investor, it shows you have a product or service that meets the needs of your market, who are prepared to pay for it.
• Total number of users, and growth rate of user-base. This validates the traction that you have in your market and how much that is increasing. Coupled with the first point you can build a powerful story.
• Key clients or partnerships. If you are working closely with a well established brand, this validates that they see a value to your product, which helps build the picture for the investor of the total value of the business.
• Press inclusions and awards. This is a great way to include third party sources of validation for your business.

The final element that needs careful consideration is what you are going to do next. Where are you going to get to with the funds that you raise, and when are you going to get there.

It’s really important to be realistic and to keep it fairly specific. It’s incredibly likely that you’ll be raising follow-on rounds in the future, whether through Seedrs or other means, therefore it’s vitally important to have a body of happy shareholders you can call upon to help.

By setting the expectations here and then meeting them (or hopefully exceeding), you’ll keep them on your side and they’ll be more than willing to help you achieve your goals.

You’ll want to consider:

• When will you need to raise again. For example, “we’re aiming to achieve the following things in 9/12/18 months”.
• What will the business look like at that time, and how is that different to now? (i.e. how many users/how much revenue/other key metrics have increased in the time frame you set?)
• Explain about the bigger picture. Once you achieve the above things in the time frame you set, what next?

When you’re talking to shareholders following your campaign, you can refer back to these goals in your communications to them. How close are you to achieving them? If they are not relevant anymore, why not? This lays the foundation for a great relationship with your shareholders, and that will allow you to get far more from them than just funding.

Email marketing is one of the best ways to leverage your community. Your subscribers have already chosen to hear updates from your brand – via email, you can direct them straight to your campaign page to consider the investment opportunity.

Consider the other emails you send too – could you add a campaign banner to Order Confirmation emails? Do you have partners who could promote your campaign in their newsletters?

Get creative and leverage email marketing to attract as many campaign views as possible!

Email templates (with risk warnings)

EU Email templates (with risk warnings)

Your social media activity can be divided by:

• ‘organic’ – when you post on your social channels without putting any budget behind it – and
• ‘paid’ – when you pay to boost a post or pay for social media advertising to promote beyond your follower community.

Both can help you leverage your community for your fundraising campaign!

Organic social should be used to create awareness and buzz around your campaign. Posts across your accounts like Instagram, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok will reach your already engaged followers, who are likely to be interested in the investment opportunity.

Paid social should be used to extend your reach on social media, targeting your key audience with factors like audience interests, demographic, location and previous website visitors to leverage a community that, whilst they may not already know about your brand, would certainly be interested in what you’re trying to achieve.

Your online hub is the perfect place to tell visitors about your crowdfunding campaign.

Think about the user journey for finding out more, and how you want to track that user journey all the way through to your campaign page on Seedrs.

Via your campaign dashboard, you can download the code for the widget that will promote your Seedrs campaign seamlessly on your website homepage.

Read more on using your Website Content

Use webinars or live events to invite the core members of your community to hear about your campaign live. There are different types of events to consider:

• Online webinar: a chance to present your pitch and include a Q&A
• In-person event: if your community is mainly local or in one area, it could be a good idea to present your campaign in person!

Think about why your fans would want to come to this event – is it a chance to meet you, to meet each other or to learn about more about the campaign?

Every time you post a campaign update, your campaign followers, investors and leads get an email notification, so it’s a great way to maintain momentum during your campaign.

Investors love seeing your positive news and are more likely to invest if they can see your company is performing well.

Best practices:

• Funding milestones (75%, 90%, 100%+).
• Positive media coverage throughout your campaign.
• Any big customer wins (that you can talk about). Important deals or partnerships (that you can talk about).
• Highlight investment from notable investors.
• Events you or your team will be attending where investors may want to come and meet you.
• Timing milestones informing investors of when you’ll be closing your campaign.
• Positive business developments (for example, if you’ve announced profit or made a key hire during your raise).

Every Seedrs investor that views your campaign can ask you questions in the Discussion Forum. Potential investors can ask questions by creating new topics, or request further information, such as business plans or financial information, that is not available in the campaign by using the Documents tab.

You will be notified of each new topic, comment or document request by email. It’s crucial you answer investor questions politely, promptly and extensively to ensure you not only make a good impression, but so that investors can see that you’re open and honest. Building trust is crucial as it’s a big request to ask people to believe in you enough to put their money on the table.

When you are viewing the Discussion Forum on the platform the questions will be split into different topics, and each topic will be ordered by most recent activity. The topics with the most recent activity will appear at the top of the page. To post a reply to a question, click on the “Add Comment” button and type your response in the text box. You are also able to supplement your answers with .pdf, .jpg, .png or .gif files if necessary. Please be aware that any additional information you provide will not be reviewed or approved by Seedrs.

Once posted, you are unable to edit your answers, so be sure to review and double check any posts.

Best practice for answering investor questions:

• Be timely with your responses. Check in at least three times per day to catch up on messages.
• Don’t give away your secrets. Offer to meet investors offline or speak to them on the phone if you don’t want to disclose information publicly.
• Ask for their email address so you can follow up directly.