Your campaign success hinges on three key groups of people – your VIPs:

• Day 1 Backers,
• Influencers, and
• Benefactors.

These VIPs are so important, they each get their own post. This post is dedicated to your Influencers. Influencers are people with a platform to communicate with others about your project. They have a popular newsletter, radio show, or blog; they may have a large and engaged social media following. Your Influencers help you get the word out about your campaign. This becomes increasingly important the more money you want to raise.

If you’ve been to our homepage, you know that on average most campaigns (62%) fail. In this post, we take a closer look at how much money the 38% of campaigns that succeed raise.

Most successful Kickstarter campaigns raise less than $10,000. This is a reasonable goal for most artists to whom we talk (See our post on Setting Your $ Target).

To approach and get over the $10,000 hump, though, the outreach numbers start piling up quickly: an email list thousands strong, a social media following tens of thousands strong, and multiple big ticket Benefactors. This is a major hurdle. It takes time to grow an email list from 250 to 2,500 people who will be excited about your project and reasonably likely to participate in your crowdfunding campaign. This is where the Influencers come in.

An example: Let’s say you’re recording a Thrash Metal album. You have a Facebook page with 200 likes. And let’s say your uncle runs the #1 classical music radio show in the country, listened to by a million people. Let’s also say your aunt has a popular local metal blog with 2,000 subscribers, where she rates and reviews the metal shows she attends each weekend.

Your uncle may be more “influential,” measuring numbers of listeners, but your aunt is more likely to be your Influencer because she is talking to the audience that will enjoy your project. Get in touch with your aunt six months ahead of your campaign launch. Do an interview. Send her sample tracks. Ask her to do a special post the week your campaign launches. Assuming she agrees, you now have 10 times the number of people who are open to hearing your music and listening to your message.

There is no single, simple answer to the question of who the Influencers are for your campaign. But it’s worth considering now whom you know – or should get to know – who can speak directly to your target audience.

If you’d like a free analysis of your crowdfunding project, please fill out our Artist Questionnaire. We typically respond within two weeks. We look forward to hearing about your project!