I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Danielle Towner and wanted to share some highlights from our chat, as I think they’ll be relevant to a lot of people who want to start or grow their fashion brand using the preselling method. If you’re not familiar with the preselling method, this is one of my favourite ways to launch a fashion brand as it helps you to fund your production and get valuable data on your customer’s preferences. Danielle and I spoke about using crowdfunding as method for launching a business and how to market your brand on social media. As owner of Dream Work Creatives, LLC, Danielle has the opportunity to use her gifts of business development and creative expression. She has a passion for helping solo entrepreneurs and small businesses make their dreams work through marketing and creative strategy. Danielle’s digital marketing services have helped countless businesses build their brand awareness and online presence using social media marketing, website design and content marketing.
Crowdfunding vs Bank Loans and Investors
(Vicki Wallis) You’ve used the crowdfunding method yourself, do you prefer it to working with investors or bank loans or something like that?
(Danielle Towner) Well at the time, I decided to use crowd funding to pivot that into what I have now. But when I first started, I was young. And, if you know anything about business credit, sometimes maybe you don't have that established business and lenders are less likely to work with you. So that's one of the reasons that I decided to take that (crowdfunding) route.
As far as if I prefer crowdfunding over pitching to investors, I would say, absolutely. Now you have to do what works for you, but I kind of compare it to like, your business is your baby. Right? So, looking at an investor is like that kind of nagging mother-in-law who, you know, she means well, and she wants to help to take care of and nurture your baby. But sometimes she may take it a little too far and you know, just overstep her boundaries. Now that's not the case in every situation, but sometimes you want to think about how much of the company they want to retain ownership. Okay. And how much creative control and how much of a voice that you want to maintain within your company, whether you're owner of the company or partner, you want to think about those.
Danielle Towner
Put in the Work
(VW) And I guess one of the differences between this sort of investors and then doing the crowdfunding method, when you're selling to customers you have got to do a lot more marketing up front. What would you say to people that have this impression of, oh, I've just got this product I'm just going to put it on Kickstarter and it's going to sell amazing and just leave it. There's obviously a lot of other steps in between. So what do you think is the main thing people don't really realise about a crowdfunding campaign?
(DT) Well, you have to do the work. It's just like any other part of your business. You have to put in that work. And the crowdfunding platform is there to help. So once you put your product out there on the platform, you need to be promoting it everywhere and digital marketing is a huge core of every business right now. You need to think outside of the digital part too. I sent out messages. I reached out to people. I promoted it on social media. I made my calls. Do it consistently and put it in front of people more than once, because they may not have seen it. They may have gone through their day and forgotten about what you told them. You need to follow up. Like, don't feel like you're pestering them until they tell you, you are.
(VW) That's such a common fear. People think that you're pestering them in some way. But the reality is you see everything that you do. Like every post that you write, every email you send, you read it, it's unlikely that a customer or potential customer is actually going to see, you know, even half of what you do.
(DT) Right. Exactly. And like I said, they will tell you, you know, if you're bothering them. Otherwise until they give you a no, or they “say leave me alone”, continue marketing until your campaign is done. Think more about what your goal is and how you're going to help.
Which Platform to Use?
(VW) Do you think there's a particular platform that is especially good for promoting these kinds of campaigns? Or is it a case of the more places you can be the better?
(DT) Well, I wouldn't say the more the better. I would think concentrate on maybe two of your strongest and then the others be secondary. Like definitely put it out there, but go really hard on those two that are your strongest platforms. Now, if you've already been promoting your product or if you've already been promoting on social media, you should easily be able to tell by looking at your analytics who's engaging. And other than that, I would say look at your audience. For instance, LinkedIn, you know that a lot of these are professionals on that platform. So there may be other businesses who wants to invest in another business and they can relate to that. So that may be a good one. Put in the work because it takes a lot to build that engagement.
If you're, you know, wanting something with video, you might want to look at TikTok. It’s fun and engaging for certain age groups and it may be something that you can create a very different creative campaign and use video for that. Instagram would be another good one because you can reach out to different people other than your followers. Even if you have a small following, you can get more engagement and more people learning about your campaign.
(VW) They’re the first ones to look at. Where most of your engagement is, it’s going to be really dependent on your particular niche.
Marketing in Advance
(VW) Is marketing something that you think we need to be doing quite far in advance for a presale or crowdfunding campaign? I have people ask me like, oh, I want to launch this brand in like two months, which it scares me a little bit because I feel that it takes a lot longer than that. As a professional marketer, can you get campaigns together that quickly or would you rather do it much further in advance?
(DT) Well, when I did my campaign, mine was in about a month. But if I, you know, looking at it as a learning period I’d say don’t create your product in silence and then start talking about it when you’re ready to launch. If I could go back, I would have definitely spent much more time. If you’re even just thinking about crowdsourcing as a funding source or pre-selling definitely taking more time to get people interested in your products and spend time building that audience and walk them through the process of what you’re working on so you already have supporters when it's time to launch.
(VW) I think the more momentum you can build over time, sometimes it can really help and yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but would you say the higher the price point of the product, maybe the longer in advance you need to do it so that there is that time to build the know like and trust factor?
(DT) Absolutely. Absolutely. The higher, the price point, the more risk people feel that they’re taking. And the more information that you want them to have. And like you said, building that momentum over time, I'm putting the information in front of them more than once and just building that trust factor and letting them know that you're going to be around.
Make a Plan
(VW) You've shared some amazing tips, thank you! Is there anything else that’s important for marketing that we’ve missed?
(DT) I can’t think of anything. We’ve touched on a lot of things! Just make sure that you take the time and carefully plan everything out. I know that there may be an urgent need to get to the next place in your business, but everything works better with a plan. Even if it doesn’t all go as planned, you have something to go back to and say, these are my goals and this is where I am.
(VW) So important. I must admit when I started my first business, about 10 years ago now I was just too excited and I dived right in and it was just such a bad thing to do. I was all over the place. So yeah, goal setting is really important and yeah even if you don't reach that particular goal, at least you have some direction for the months ahead.
So for people that are a little bit daunted about marketing and want to get some outside help from someone like yourself, where can they find you and what kind of things can you help them with?
(DT) Well, I can definitely help you with putting together a creative campaign or your crowdfunding or setting everything up online. Like I said, my specialties are website design, and then the marketing services, content marketing, social media marketing and copywriting. When you reach out to me, I have a free consultation that we can talk about and see what you need.
Thank you so much to Danielle for taking part in this interview, I really appreciate it! If you’d like Danielle to help you with any of the topics she’s talked about, you can find her here;
Website - https://dreamworkcreatives.com
Instagram - https://instagram.com/dreamworkcreatives
Facebook - https://facebook.com./dreamworkcreatives
Pinterest - https://pinterest.com/dreamworkcreatives
Pickleball outfit inspiration……