Follow this guide on how to let your network know about your investment opportunity before you go live.
TLDR:
- Outreach to your personal network is crucial for early investment. Map out your network beyond family and friends.
- The goal of outreach during Pre-Launch is to generate 10% of your target investment goal in the first 48 hours after launching your offering, creating critical momentum and "social proof." Beyond family and friends, communicate to email lists and social media followers.
- It can take several (e.g. 4-7) nudges over the course of your offering to get someone to finally invest, including a couple times during pre-launch. Schedule them out!
Who's Who in Your Personal Network?
On the day of your strategy call or right after, you should make a list of people you think would be your potential early investors. This includes:
- Family members
- Friends
- Close customers
- Professional contacts, mentors & advocates
Your personal network is the first place to start in generating investment interest because it's got the highest potential conversion rate; but who else? Let's map them out.
We recommend listing names and taking notes so you can keep track of who you've contacted and how the conversation went. When you work with a Customer Success Manager, they'll share a Potential Early Investors sheet with you that looks like this:
What to Say in Your First Touchpoint
In general, the groups above contain people you know personally but some of them might be organizations. Alumni groups, for example, might not require you knowing someone personally as much as require getting in touch with the respective alumni office. Try to personalize the message when you can but the most important points otherwise are:
- What you plan to do with the funds and why they're important to growing your business.
- What Honeycomb Credit is and why you're excited about it. Send our website if it helps.
Check out these templates!
What to Say in Your Second Touchpoint
There are a couple of points to communicate in a follow-up message:
- Provide them with your offering launch date and remind them you are looking for a few early investments to ignite momentum and ideally a "Strong Start".
- Ask them to share your offering and posts to get other people intrigued.
- Ask if they have any questions about Honeycomb or the investment opportunity.
A Strong Start means reaching 10% of your goal within the first 24-48 hours of being live. It's important because it shows "social proof" quickly that can attract other potential investors that don't know you or your business.
Whether you do a second touchpoint or not, it's very important to have additional messaging ready to go out on launch day.
Engaging Your Loyal Fans and Customers
Beyond family, friends, and social groups, there may be a number of loyal customers, partners, and followers that want to invest in your business. That's where the Coming Soon page comes in. We'll create a personalized link you can use for collecting names and contact information from those on your email lists and social media followers.
If a customer has given you permission to email them (check your POS or email clients), they are absolutely worth contacting. Regular customers may have already been huge advocates for you and your business, and your offering gives them a chance to invest in the product or service they believe in.
Similarly, letting social media followers know is important, too. Even if someone doesn't convert to an investor, they might end up sharing your message and that can sometimes be just as valuable. Just like sales, getting investment is a numbers game.
Make sure to change your bio links and add banners to your website. Work on driving traffic to your offering page by sharing both as a "story" and as a post.
Example Tasks During Pre-Launch Phase
