Lauren Leisk is the founder of Fodilicious, an innovative health food business disrupting the free-from market providing the UK’s first low FODMAP certified products for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and gut health, which are also vegan, allergen-free and 100% natural.
Lauren ran a crowdfunding campaign, achieving her target in under five weeks. She raised £5,000 to contribute to the development of her natural energy drinks – Fodilicious Energy Infusion Waters – the world’s first low FODMAP certified, IBS-friendly energy drink.
Read on to find out what Lauren says about her crowdfunding journey…
Our crowdfunding campaign was rewards-based, which allowed us to offer a variety of bespoke packages to our backers, which included pre-orders of our energy infusion waters as well as bundles which featured products from our entire Fodilicious range and exclusive merchandise.
Deciding the types of rewards to offer took a bit of work. We reviewed previous crowdfunding campaigns from a similar food/drink environment to understand what rewards are typically offered. We also asked friends, family and our customers which rewards options they would be interested in before we decided.
Once we had decided on the purpose of our campaign – which also took a bit of work! – we explored how much we actually required to raise to invest in our drinks production, combined with the likelihood of us being able to reach that target within the short timescale we had to organise and prepare. This helped us come to a decision to raise £5,000 which we thought was achievable within the 30-day time frame.
We also had to calculate the costs of our campaign, and to do that we looked at the costs of our drinks development project, whilst considering VAT. We also factored in delivery costs of the rewards by estimating a target shipping weight of each reward, as well as any additional costs such as merchandise purchases.
We only had 30 days to prepare the campaign and in hindsight, to really maximise the success, 60 or even 90 days preparation would be more appropriate. It’s all in the planning so I would encourage anyone thinking about crowdfunding to give yourself as much time as possible to prepare!
Our campaign ran for 30 days, which we thought due to the time of year (November) would be sufficient to secure donations/rewards orders prior to the Christmas period.
The easy part of the campaign was launching across social media, customer databases and getting PR as it was an attractive story and marketing opportunity. As an established company we already had many of these key marketing assets in place.
We planned out our marketing content in advance, as we soon learned it really is critical to have engaging content every day for our followers during the campaign. Video posts worked well, directly talking to our followers and getting them engaged and involved in our campaign. This all really helped our brand awareness throughout the month of November.
However, it wasn’t without its challenges! The most difficult part of the campaign was once we had gone out to all our friends, family, contacts and our customer database, it was tough to then secure further donations from the general public, especially as our products are positioned within the niche low FODMAP and free-from market.
Additionally, as we only had 30 days to prepare, it was really challenging to do all the prep (marketing, content, rewards package creation) as well as priming potential backers before launch to get those pre-orders in within the first couple of days of the campaign. The middle part of the campaign (the horrible “sticky-middle”!) was the most challenging, and we found it hard during this time asking people for help to back our campaign, especially on the run up to Christmas. However, we learned that the only way to get donations was to in fact ASK!
The crowdfunding campaign was a great experience. Not only was it a fantastic marketing opportunity which resulted in exclusive PR opportunities, it helped to engage our customers and followers via our daily social media updates. From a personal perspective, it really helped to grow my confidence as an entrepreneur, and to not be afraid to “ask for help” when we need it. Help is always there if you ask for it.
My top three tips for anyone looking to run a crowdfunding campaign:
- Do your prep at least 60 days before the campaign launches
- Secure as many backers/pre-orders before the campaign launches as possible
- Stay positive and focussed throughout the entire campaign… even during the “sticky middle!”
And some final words of encouragement from Lauren to her fellow women entrepreneurs:
“Women often lack the confidence to crowdfund, but have fantastic, innovative business ideas. Don’t be afraid to ask for help get your idea off the ground – just go for it”
