ByOwner.com Crowdfunding Advertising Portal Fights Fraud and Crime With New Social Graphing Tool from Facebook

The nationwide classified advertising site uses  Social Graphing technology from social media networks such as Facebook.com to protect free Crowdfunding campaign advertisements

By Robert Hoskins

Here is a good example of how Crowdfunding platforms should be using social graphing technology from social networks like Facebook.com to let investors/donors research their campaign managers to see who they are and what type of friends, photos and interests they have listed on their Facebook profiles.

ByOwner.com eCommerce portal fights crime with new social graphing tool to build safer classified ads to promote crowdfunding campaigns

Most people who launch Crowdfunding campaigns do not consider advertising as a way to increase their reach, but using free classified advertising platforms like ByOwner.com, crowdfunding campaign managers can place ads in a wide variety of places to increase their crowdfunding profile’s traffic during the bottom of the “U” or lull that many campaigns experience during the middle of their campaign.

Crowdfunding platforms should note how ByOwner.com is combating the growing crime wave associated with placing online classified advertisements, by deploying a new four-step verification process that utilizes a sophisticated social graphing tool that offers buyers/sellers a more transparent process to research and complete safer classified advertising sales transactions. The same technology should be used on every Crowdfunding intermediary to let donors/investors cross tab their personal networks on social media sites such as Facebook, Google+, Linkedin and Twitter to see what contacts their social networks have in common.

ByOwner.com uses the social graph from Facebook’s API to showcase relationships between users. The social graph is a digital map of both party’s friends and how they relate to one another. It integrates information from each user’s profiles giving buyers a sense of confidence with whom they are purchasing from, and sellers will have transparency of who is their buyer.

When buyers and sellers have overlapping networks, ByOwner.com automatically displays people that appear in both people’s networks. Users can then verify a person’s identity or at a minimum get a sense of the person they are dealing with by reviewing their friends, photos, and other interests that are highlighted on their Facebook pages.

“As we’ve been building our classified advertisement posting portal, we set Google alerts to monitor news stories posted about Backpage.com, Craiglist.com and others,” said Greg Sullivan, ByOwner.com’s CEO. “The number of crime related stories we discovered was astounding from people who were robbed at gun point, raped or murdered because of a classified ad they listed or responded too.”

“If these customers had used ByOwner.com’s social graphing technology to review the each other’s profiles before their meeting, they could have avoided questionable individuals,” Sullivan continued. “Our new social graph verification system makes it easier to track and eliminate people who are posting ads for fake DNA tests, positive pregnancy tests or participating in human trafficking, prostitution, scams and other types of fraudulent or illegal activities.”

As the Christmas and holiday seasons approach, ByOwner.com offers a safe place to post classified ads to buy, sell and shop for great deals on affordable iPhones, iPads, Xboxs, Play Station 4s, cars/trucks for sale, homes for sale, rooms for rent, vacation rentals and post free job listings.

ByOwner.com is a classified advertisement posting community based in Florida that offers homes for sale, vacation rentals, apartments for rent, autos, jobs, and more than 91 different categories of products and services. Customers can place their advertisement for free or place premium advertisements on the ecommerce portal to attract buyers worldwide and is 100% free to use. Third-party classified advertising sites are welcome to upload their inventory for free to increase their customer’s exposure. Visit www.byowner.com for more information.

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How to Plan the Right Sized Marketing Budget to Conduct a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

The #1 Mistake that Crowdfunding Campaigns Make Is Not Spending Enough Money on Marketing to Reach a Sufficient Universe of Potential Donors/Investors to Complete a Successful Fundraising Campaign

By Robert Hoskins

For Fortune 500 companies in the United States, launching a successful product or service involves many months of research, product development, focus groups, and beta testing before introducing a product or service into a competitive marketplace.

In addition, successful campaigns hire professional advertising, marketing, PR and social media firms that know how to target and reach a very specific target audience with carefully engineered marketing messages designed to elicit a predetermined response rate such as making a donation or investing in a small company’s equity stock.

Front Page PR is the #1 Crowdfunding PR firm in America

Success is very rarely achieved by building a single-page crowdfunding profile  with limited company or product information and hoping that there is enough website traffic on sites such as Kickstarter and indiegogo to find sufficient donors to push a crowdfunding  campaign reach its financial goal.

This is reason that Kickstarter campaigns have a 65% failure rate and more than over 90% of indiegogo campiagns fail to achieve a 100% funding rate.

Many entrepreneurs that launch crowding campaigns are duped into working with crowdfunding consulting companies that charge $100 to do unlimited press releases or think they can be successful by asking crowdfunding PR and marketing companies to work on a contingency-basis.

Other marketing firms offer low-cost crowdfunding training programs that claim to teach novice crowdfunding campaign managers how to plan and execute their own marketing, PR and social media campaigns. The problem with all of these cheap marketing solutions is that they are offered by crowdfunding consultants with little to no real marketing experience and take advantage of entrepreneurs that do not know better. Most copy their workbook marketing materials straight out of college text books that can be bought at any book store for $20.

Professional adverting agencies, PR firms and marketing consultants that can deliver real results usually charge $5,000 to $10,000 per month for their services because they know they can deliver the marketing results that crowdfunding campaign managers need to complete a successful fundraising drive.  Anyone that charges less does so for a reason.  They simply do not have the experience to get the job done right.

Experienced marketing firms that can deliver the goods do so because they have a staff of seasoned, highly trained marketing executives with 15 to 20 years of proven, real world experience.  They also have the specialized media planning tools that cost thousands of dollars per year to use, but are essential in planning targeted marketing campaigns.

Anyone can buy a text book on how to fix cars, but without an auto shop full of experienced mechanics and the right set of tools, they will fail miserably when trying to rebuild a motor.  The same is true for people that try to plan marketing campaigns without the right set of media planning tools and professional skills that take years to learn.

In addition to the right tools and highly trained marketing executives, marketing campaigns cost money to implement.  They involve many hours of researching media outlets,  building databases of reporters and bloggers, and hundreds of hours send to pitches to the media and social media networks.  This work load simply can not be executed for free.   An important rule to remember is that it takes money to make money. The same is true when launching a successful crowdfunding campaign.

How much does it cost to conduct crowdfunding marketing, PR and/or social media campaigns? The answer really depends on selecting the target audience that needs to be reached, the number of media outlets that can effectively reach the desired target audience, and the time it takes to evaluate various media outlets and prioritize which ones will be the most effective.  This effort requires a tremendous amount of time and effort.

Media outlets also have a ton of different options that can be utilized to reach various segment that comprise the right target audience.  Most media outlets offer digital/print advertising, email blasts, direct marketing, blogs, newsletters and multitude of other marketing options that all cost money to reach the correct target audience.   They also have a masthead full of reporters that might be enticed into writing a news article for free, but pitching stories to the press also takes a considerable amount of skill, expertise and experience.

The work doesn’t stop there.  Next comes the conversion rate factor.  A typical marketing “call-to-action” can persuade around three-percent (3%) of prospective donors to visit a crowdfunding campaign’s profile.   More critical is the actual number of visitors that read through the crowdfunding profile and are converted to actual donors or investors, usually around one percent (1%).

The final question to be answered is how many people need to be reached with 3% call-to-action and a 1% donation/investment rate to meet a crowdfunding campaign’s financial goal?  And most people do not respond to the first message they are exposed to. It usually takes three or more exposures to cross the “threshold of consciousness” and be enticed into following the desired course of action; in this case making a crowdfunding donation or equity crowdfunding investment.

A simple way to figure out how much money needs to be spent on marketing is for Crowdfunding campaign managers to divide their total fundraising goal by the lowest priced perk being offered in order to determine how many donors they will need to achieve their goal.

For example, a $10,000 goal divided by a $25 perk would require 400 donors to become successful. At a 3% response rate, a campaign would need to reach a total universe of 1,333,330 potential donors to convince at least 40,000 prospects to visit the crowdfunding profile and convert 1% into active donors.  The cost to reach any given target audience really depends on the industry be served and the costs to reach them through paid advertising and PR/media relations campaigns.

The bottom line is that crowdfunding campaign managers need to plan on spending at least $5,000 per month to conduct a successful campaign.  And most of the work needs to be done several months prior to the campaign to build a loyal crowd of followers/donors who will support the campaign once it goes live.

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More Articles on Crowdfunding Marketing Strategies:

• Five Tips on How to Get Great Publicity for Crowdfunding PR Campaigns in Media Outlets Everywhere
• Planning an Effective Crowdfunding Campaign
• Planning Successful Crowdfunding PR & Marketing Campaigns
• Tips on How to Plan a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign
• Front Page PR Launches New $75 Crowdfunding Campaign Profile Evaluation Service
  
• Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo: Which is the Best Crowdfunding Site, Platform or Website to Launch a Crowdfunding Campaign?
• Broker Dealers Offered General Solicitation Campaigns to Market the Oncoming Wave of Equity Crowdfunding Investment Opportunities to the Next Generation of U.S. Accredited Investors
  
• Hourly rates for Crowdfunding Marketing, PR and Social Media Services

Celebrity Face Recognition iPhone App Now Available for TV Viewers via IndieGoGo Crowdfunding Campaign

By Robert Hoskins, Crowdfunding Press Center

Technology startup Skakash LLC announced today the launch of its face recognition iPhone app that allows users to recognize actors and celebrities while watching TV, simply by pointing the iPhone’s camera at the screen. Skakash, the “Shazam for celebrities” app, debuts in a crowdfunding campaign on the leading Indiegogo.com platform.

Bring face recognition technology from the security arena to the entertainment playground

“We brought face recognition technology from the security arena to the entertainment playground,” said Skakash’s founder and CEO Moshe Greenshpan. “We’ve identified a great need among American TV viewers to get an instant answer to the most common question – what’s this actor’s name?” Greenshpan added.

Skakash’s matching process quickly displays the celebrity’s name and biography, allowing the user to focus on the show rather than being distracted while searching for more info on Google or IMDB.

Saving the user the trouble of manually chasing the right frame, the face recognition app automatically captures the celebrity’s face from the screen.

The Skakash app is offered as a part of the company’s crowdfunding campaign. “In addition to the obvious reason of raising R&D funds, Indiegogo is a great starting point to build a community of fans and users from scratch,” explained the founder of the self financed company.

With second screen technology on the rise, Skakash has the potential to become a widely used second screen app that interacts with its users, adds value and enhances the TV viewing experience overall. A recent Nielson survey showed that 41% of smartphone and tablet owners using their devices while watching TV every day.

A short infographic introduction to Crowdfunding

A short infographic introduction to Crowdfunding

Three Models of Crowdfunding

Three Models of Crowdfunding

The Science of Crowdfunding a Kickstarter Project

The Science of Crowdfunding a Kickstarter Project