Indiegogo Allows Firms To Mirror Crowdfunding Campaigns On Their Own Sites

Indiegogo launched a new feature that enables companies to embed crowdfunding campaigns to their own websites.  Indiegogo Outpost allows companies the freedom to run their own campaign as well as use the crowdfunding as a platform simultaneously.  Companies won’t have to choose between them.

“As Indiegogo and the crowdfunding industry have evolved, our campaign owners have become increasingly savvy and through their feedback, we’ve discovered that some have wanted the ability to run campaigns on their own websites, with their own customized branding and established audience,” stated Indiegogo’s CEO, Slava Rubin.  “Indiegogo Outpost will give these individuals and companies the crowdfunding experience that works best for them and offers the resources that many want to help them raise as much money as possible.”

Crowdfunding platforms, like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, give companies a large audience, a brand they can identify as well as many marketing tools.  On the other hand, it also means that most of the campaign traffic will be directed to a third-party as opposed to the company’s own website.  But this could be a positive aspect because third-party platforms have a strong network of interested donors to choose from.  Indiegogo says they have over 9 million visitors each month.

However, in reality, most campaigns don’t reach their goal because of strangers.

“Internal studies have shown that the success of a crowdfunding campaign is predominantly driven by the support of friends and family — both financial support and support for ‘spreading the word’ about the campaign…Any company that is capable of leveraging social capital will be able to benefit from this form of financing. Crowdfunding is friends-and-family funding on steroids.” stated Kevin Berg Kartaszewicz-Grell, who created a report for research firm Massolution on crowdfunding.

To be precise, companies only achieve crowdfunding goals if they already have strong support from their own network of donors; this means they wouldn’t need a third-party platform in the first place.

Indiegogo’s idea is to make it possible to do both.  Then companies don’t have to choose.  It might be unusual to split fundraising efforts but if the goal is to raise a lot of money, this is as good an approach as any.

[Image via graphis]

SOURCE: http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/07/indiegogo-will-now-let-companies-set-up-mirrored-campaigns-on-their-own-sites/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29