The promotion of a crowdfunding campaign requires a communication plan dense and coordinated multichannel. LinkedIn not usually the first channel that comes to mind for this purpose, but this platform is not just for job search or professional networking: if used strategically, it can also become an effective channel for promoting crowdfunding, especially in the B2B sector and in any business with a strong figurehead at its center.

For crowdfunding, where trust is critical to investment decisions, LinkedIn's established professional context offers a significant advantage over platforms used primarily for personal connections or entertainment.

After talking about how to use Instagram and Facebook, today we find out. How to use LinkedIn to promote your crowdfunding campaign.

When to use LinkedIn to promote a crowdfunding campaign

LinkedIn is the ideal channel for equity, lending or reward crowdfunding campaigns With the following characteristics:

• B2B company targeting other companies

• CEO who can claim authority in his field;

• Specialist target audience

• Product or service with clearly identifiable developer or originator (one or otherwise few key figures);

• Campaign that also includes activities of work for equity.

In all these cases, LinkedIn can become a key tool for attracting investors, putting a human face on the crowdfunding campaign, and building strategic relationships with a wide range of stakeholders.

The advantages

• Selected network, where it is also easier to get in touch with the "higher ups" of a company and with good professionals.
• Lead generation as an intrinsic function.
• Higher attention threshold and fewer sources of distraction than other social networks.
• Showcase of credibility and professional reliability.
• Building a reputation for the long term.

How to set up crowdfunding promotion strategy on LinkedIn

Optimize personal and business profile

Before you communicate, you need to be credible. Your LinkedIn profile is the foundation of your promotion strategy, so optimizing it is critical to building trust and attracting potential advocates. But which profile are we talking about?

For promotion on LinkedIn, it is ideal to do personal branding, that is. Use the profile of the CEO or figurehead of the company to simultaneously promote its role and the brand itself. 

At the same time, however, the company's page, to which that profile inevitably links, must also be taken care of: it must be an equally credible and authoritative landing point, with consistent and shared content.

Make sure that:

• your profile is complete, up-to-date, and consistent with the campaign mission;

• the headline is clear and distinctive (e.g., "CEO of [startup name] - We are launching our equity crowdfunding campaign");

• the "About" section explain the project and the problem it solves and invite direct contact;

• the company profile is active and well maintained, even if with few resources: better a few well-crafted contents than dormant profiles;

• relevant keywords are present in all its parts to improve visibility in searches;

• the link to the campaign is in the summary or featured section of both the personal and business profiles.

A LinkedIn profile optimized for crowdfunding acts as a publicly accessible dynamic presentation for potential investors. The combination of a catchy headline, detailed summary, featured multimedia content, and links to the campaign allows potential investors to quickly grasp the opportunity and assess the trustworthiness before even visiting the crowdfunding platform itself.

This is especially important in the precrowd, which we know is crucial for any crowdfunding campaign. At this stage, an optimized LinkedIn profile is the driver for:

• Testing the proposal narrative with an expert audience;

• Building authority around the team and the enterprise;

• Expand the network with useful professional figures;

• Encourage personal contact to obtain the expression of interest.

Drawing up an editorial plan

Continuous communication is needed, accompanying the entire campaign journey: from precrowd to post-campaign. The goal of communication must be threefold: inform, involve, persuade. Some examples of content:

• Information pills about the industry or the problem the project solves, with infographics, reports, case studies, etc.

• Stories behind the scenes (team, values, prototypes)

• Personal stories related to career path

• Relaunch of articles that have come out in the media or on the company blog

• Official announcements (campaign opening, milestones, special rewards)

• Broader reflections on the industry and target market 

• Targeted call-to-actions tailored to the professional mindset of the LinkedIn user: as specific and non-generic as possible, e.g., "Download our investor presentation," "Explore investment opportunities by category X" alongside the more classic "Learn more about our campaign," "Book a call to learn more," "Participate in preview."

As on other social networks, it is advisable on LinkedIn to focus heavily on visual content, although text plays a predominant role here, and to experiment with a variety of formats: text with visual elements, sharing articles with commentary, infographics, videos, surveys, etc.

Outreach activities

Actively interacting with your contacts increases visibility, builds relationships, and enables valuable feedback. On LinkedIn it is possible to contact potential investors or stakeholders directly. But be careful: the strategy must be respectful, personalized and oriented toward building a dialogue, for example by following the methodologies of theAccount Based Marketing.

• Send connection requests accompanied by a short, personalized message capable of capturing interest.

• After acceptance, write a second message explaining why the reader's support would be valuable and providing a link to a landing page or lead magnet. It is helpful to mention common interests or content specific to the stakeholder's profile.

• If there is interest, propose an acquaintance meeting or send a link to book a call.

• Do not send chain copy-paste messages. Better 10 good contacts than 100 rejected ones.

• If you use the premium InMail feature, which allows you to send long messages to people who are not contacts, prepare a good pitch.

• For contact management, use a CRM with tracking and follow-up functions.

It may also be useful to join relevant LinkedIn groups to actively participate in discussions and thus increase the visibility of the profile and consequently the campaign. Authentic engagement within these groups, sharing insights and answering questions enables highly targeted organic lead generation. This saves you from mass marketing efforts and connects you directly with already partly selected individuals.

Engaging the network

Team members, early investors, partners-all can help spread the word about the campaign to their first and second degree contacts. Ask them to:

• sharing your posts;

• In turn, publish their own original content related to the campaign;

• comment and interact, increasing organic visibility.

Humanizing the campaign through personal profiles not only of the CEO or founding partners, but also of team members builds a deeper level of trust and relationality. This personal connection, fostered by authentic individual engagement rather than purely corporate communication, can be a decisive factor for potential investors in crowdfunding.

It then stimulates interaction from other users by publishing posts on hot topics that invite discussion, asking for opinions, sharing polls.

LinkedIn Ads for targeted campaigns

To maximize visibility and reach a highly specific audience of investors, the options of LinkedIn paid advertising Are powerful tools.

LinkedIn Ads allows you to:

• Accurately segment the audience (by sector, role, company size, interests, demographics);

• Promote informative content or events (e.g., webinars or ebooks);

• Collect leads through integrated forms (Lead Gen Forms).

LinkedIn offers a variety of advertising formats:

• Sponsored content that appears in the feed (useful for generating brand awareness, circulating pitches, or promoting webinars and events)
• Sponsored messaging (useful for sending direct messages to high-quality potential investors and establishing a purposeful conversation or qualifying leads)
• text ads in the right sidebar (useful for generating traffic to the landing page and acquiring leads)
• Lead Gen Forms, pre-filled forms embedded in ads to collect leads directly on the platform.

Warning: compared to Facebook, LinkedIn has higher cost per click. That is why it is worth using it only when the target audience is highly qualified and the average investment value high (typical of theequity crowdfunding).

LinkedIn's tools for identifying investors

In addition to ads, LinkedIn offers advanced tools for deeper investor identification and engagement.

• Sales Navigator provides advanced search filters (over 50) and unlimited searches to identify ideal potential investors, key decision makers, and important connections.

While organic networking relies on contacts finding the person you are promoting through his or her content or through shared contacts, Sales Navigator turns LinkedIn into an active prospecting engine to search for investors. Its precision raises the temperature of outreach activities, fosters more relevant conversations with real potential investors and higher conversion rates.

• Premium account InMail credits allow you to send messages to people outside your network, which are much more effective than simple cold emails.

• The "Who viewed your profile" feature provides information about interested potential investors.

• Premium profiles and pages have access to advanced search filters and advanced data analysis on activity results and user behavior.

When NOT to use LinkedIn (or not only)

• If your campaign is geared toward a consumer or young audience, Instagram or TikTok might be more effective.

• If your product is physical and has strong visual impact, favor image-based social.

• If the minimum ticket investment is very low, LinkedIn may be underperforming in terms of cost per contact.

In these cases, LinkedIn can still be useful for networking and positioning and to gain credibility and authority, but it does not have to be the main channel.