What is the best marketing tool to boost our documentary crowdfunding campaign? FB paid boosting ads? Google AdWords? Other?...

Hi! So I'm a snarky business coach helping startups and enterprises internationally.
First my snarky thought:
Many novice entrepreneurs and or aspiring crowd funders wait until the campaign is live to commit any effort to the project - the reality is that you should always prepare ahead of time and do your due diligence so that the community is built before you truly need them {live campaign} I hope this answer helps future campaigners and get going in their marketing before it goes live.

Now the advice:
I don't know if you want to spend money to get money, specially from a crowdsourced fund. I would avoid any paid ads.

Go to instapage.com and create and account, quickly draft 1 or 2 landing pages that show a funny story about the guy (no insult intended) make it funny or make it sad (one of the two) but make it engaging. Test both sites (they are free and go live for free)

Promote the bounce pages through twitter, instagram, facebook and quora
1. twitter is where the general urban sarcastic and information driven community is - target them with simple did you know, still have time to, learn about the funniest com. ever
2. instagram - post pictures. change your profile page information to display the campaign link. {never use links on the posts themselves} after a while you can "revive a post" by going back and you yourself posting comments - comment should be hashtags.
3. Facebook - people are the to hangout and could care less about your campaign (generalizing) so instead drive awareness about the guy and links to the landing pages. Don't mention funding. Get the readers out of the lazy environment...then ask/convert.
4. Quora.com is agreat to address the community directly. Those of us who are there are there to purposely engage. Feel to share your stories/the guy's story and the links to either landing page A or B.

*let the landing pages A/B do the asking or suggesting to donate, dont do that on your posts.
*before posting do your homework and write down the hashtgs that are being used by the people who would most likely end up donating or being touched.
For this, sometimes it helps creating a persona... what they wear, what they eat, where they hangout (including social media) what jokes they might like.. (post a joke)...
do this right away and hustle it over until weekends end...
By the end of the weekend you should have enough data to know if this was worth and keep pushing it...

If you want implement this simulatenously with another approach.

Best of luck.

Humberto Valle
Twitter @OfficialUnthink
http://Facebook.com/iwillunthink

Hi!

I think Facebook ads would work for you the best. In general, Facebook ads are amazing at building awareness among key target audiences, so I'm sure it can help you achieve your goals. AdWords rely entirely on searches for different keywords, so you won't be able to run a quick campaign.

What I'd start with is using the Audience Insights tool (http://www.facebook.com/ads/audience_insights/) to find the most precise and relevant interests for the target audience. I can tell that you can use 'Patrice O'Neal' as an interest for your targeting, so that's already great. However, it's a small audience (~40k in the US), so you will need to find some additional similar interests (Facebook is telling me that 'Jim Norton' and 'Opie Radio' could be close too?).

Next, it will depend on the country where you want to do the promotion. If it's the US, your costs will be the highest - the US is the most expensive location. So you'll need to check your results by different demographics in the Ad Reports. I'd also probably go by choosing exclusively Desktop News Feed and Desktop Sidebar ad placements, as I doubt people would be actively sponsoring projects on mobile.

So that could work amazingly well to reach that audience, raise awareness, and get them to contribute.

Some additional ideas: I'd really think about whether you can produce any viral type of content. If that's a documentary, maybe you can have '10 facts no-one new about...', 'secret photos of....', 'the hidden truth of...', 'List of XY best jokes of...' (or something along those lines) and create an article on that. Then, I'd push that to StumbleUpon and Reddit, and also use their advertising platforms to promote it. They don't offer as precise targeting options as Facebook, but you never know what could catch up and spread virally.

If you'd like me to help you with Facebook ads, give me a shout and I'll be glad to assist you!

Best,
Adomas

Hey There,

I think really its more about the target you want to reach for the documentary. Social platforms are great because they do provide the targeting options. Personally, I would try promoting to your intended demographic via Facebook, and Twitter.

Try making sure that you target people that align with interest in comedians, arts, documentaries etc. Narrow down your demographic as much as possible. This will help to ensure that you get people that will actually want to fund your campaigns vs. wasting ad dollars on showing impressions to people that wont click.

I would start with advertising on Facebook, and then eventually move to Twitter ads. It's a great place to start for paid advertising.

Thunderclap is a great companion for your crowdfunding project. Hit the ground running by building the community before launch and activating your supporters when your campaign goes live. It's a great way to plan and keep track what is happening with your campaign.
Read more here: https://www.filmsourcing.com/crowdfunding-toolbox
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath