Adam Torres and Jason Fishman discuss crowdfunding.
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Show Notes:
What types of channels and results should issuers seek out in their Reg CF and Reg A campaigns? In this episode, Adam Torres and Jason Fishman, Co-Founder & CEO at Digital Niche Agency (DNA), explore what separates the top groups from the underperformers running crowdfunding campaigns.
About Jason Fishman:
Jason Fishman has 15+ years experience as a “New Media Enthusiast”, who genuinely enjoys planning, activating, and managing scalable marketing strategies across the full-spectrum of verticals and goals. He is an expert in digital channels including Search Engines, Social Media Platforms, Programmatic Ad Exchanges, Influencer Networks, Email Automation, Content Marketing, and Partnerships. He has held leadership roles at all sides of the marketing table: Agency, Brand, and Vendor, which explains his ability to structure unique opportunities for DNA clients.
Jason managed the Product Marketing Division of a major Mobile Ad Network who exclusively represented ad inventory for 1,500+ Print Publishers Tablet apps and worked with many Top 100 Advertisers. Leveraging traffic algorithms, Jason now takes this knowledge and applies it to scale brands with effective marketing tactics.
Since launching DNA in 2014, Jason and the team have worked with over 750 brands and deliver industry-leading results across eCommerce, Lead Generation and Digital Funding campaigns. DNA worked with over 350 Reg CF, Reg A+, Reg D, and Digital Asset campaigns that have produced 9-figures of funding.
Jason has been showcased in Panel and Individual presentations at a high volume of Tech and Marketing conferences, along with his “Test. Optimize. Scale.” Podcast. He is also committed to a number of Thought Leadership content projects for 2023/24, including the Forbes Agency Council. Jason manages a Los Angeles team with experience in all aspects of the user journey.
About Digital Niche Agency (DNA)
DNA is a full-service digital marketing agency specializing in surpassing client goals. Our team has over 25 years of experience in Marketing, Start-Ups, and Business Development. While working with clients and launching brands we have learned what works and how to implement a revenue-driving marketing strategy. Watching the digital marketing landscape evolve everyday, our primary objective is to offer the latest technologies and techniques to small to mid level businesses. With a focus on two areas, Content Development and Content Distribution, the DNA model is built for both brand value and performance. Our success is truly measured by the growth rate of our clients companies. Whether you are looking for Social Media, SEO, Content Marketing, Digital PR, Web/ Mobile Media Buying, Marketing Plans, Influencer Marketing, Instagram Ads, Traffic to CrowdFounding Platforms, Investor Materials, CPI / Burst and AOS Campaigns, Development, Video, or Digital Advertising, we know how many options there are out there and have structured ourselves so that you can get everything you need from DNA. We have relationships with the top vendors in the digital world and provide the ability to work with one partner to manage all areas of your digital brand at below industry standard rates. With this approach we want to make the process easy, so we can begin getting you more market share with our formula.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So did I have Jason Fishman on the line and he is co founder and CEO over at Digital Niche Agency, also known as DNA, Jason, welcome to the show.
Thanks Adam. Pleasure to be here with you. All right, Jason, so we got a lot to talk about today. We’re going to be talking about how to market your regulated investment crowdfund and on your campaign. And I guess before we get into that, though, going to be speaking at the Reg A and crowdfunding conference over that I know DealFlow Events is hosting.
So first off, hey man, are you excited? What’s going on there? Thanks Very excited. We’ve been involved with the event for the past couple of years. I spoke at the reggae conference last year. This year’s the reggae and CF for regulation, crowdfunding conference, the Westchester country club in New York.
That’s on June 20th and everyone who works in the space is going to be there for the most part. So definitely invite listeners to check it out. And I’ve been working in investor acquisition since 2015 first reg D filings, meaning we’re going after accredited investors, high net worth, high household income audiences, and run a marketing agency.
So were able to run advertising and I come from the world of ad tech, had some different data partnerships that I was able to leverage. , to bring the right audiences to a deal, saw success was introduced to more campaigns and was actually involved in the very beginning for reg CF that that law went into effect in in May of 2016.
So, for any listeners that are not familiar with reg CF, it Is a filing with the SEC that allows private companies to target both retail and accredited investors, virtually any adult, to purchase shares, purchase stock in their organization. They’re looked at as a public, private offerings, and , we market those campaigns.
We do so with content marketing. We do so with advertising, with outreach. I’ve worked on over 400 of these deals across reg D, reg CF, reg A plus, reg A plus, by the way, It’s reg CF, but at a higher max raise level. So on a reg CF, you can raise up to 5 million in the filing period of 12 months on a reg a plus up to 75 million all based off your offering statement, of course, your valuation, your share price, but It’s a much larger arena.
So we’ve worked on over 400 deals to date that have collectively produced nine figures of capital collectively. I’m an open book here to share any notes, any insights on how your listeners can take these same types of approaches, use the strategy, the tactics to be able to invest. Leverage to utilize digital marketing towards their own initiatives or their own rounds.
Circle, circling back to the conference for a moment. I know you’ve mentioned you’ve been there multiple years. What keeps you going back to this conference? Like what keeps you going back? Oh, it’s a beautiful golf course, an exclusive country club. Yeah. And Speaking at the event, I’m on panels with the top issuers, portals, agencies, lawyers.
It really is a who’s who, right? Like I’m not exaggerating, right? Like , it’s a place to be. Yeah, put together very strong partnerships and brought clients onto our agency client list with my participation there. So yeah it’s a can’t miss event for me. I know there’s going to be over 75 issuers that are already confirmed to be at the event.
Expect a lot more than that as well, too, but there’s also only so many groups that are filing for, you know, let’s say a regulation aid. Plus campaign. So to have so many of them in one room is a big deal. Yeah, it’s great. So , getting back to the campaigns in your expertise as you mentioned, , you’ve been here from, from the beginning of when this was, when people were even able to do this.
So , that’s interesting. What drew you to this , as a marketer? Cause I’m guessing , you’re a marketer even before this, am I correct? Like before all of that. That’s correct. I’ve been working in marketing since 2008, first on the agency side, and then I got involved with social gaming and was part of the seed capital fundraising efforts offline.
And I saw how many inefficiencies there were. I created over 75 different versions of the deck. We were successful, completed a 3 million round, but it was difficult and I could see why so many groups, you Are not able to get to that point, so that social gaming company and emerging with an advertising sales firm.
At one point, I moved over there. The founder of that company had a large exit in the ad tech space and really, , learned everything that came from him worked with fortune 500 oversaw the product marketing and sales departments over time. And got a good understanding for what worked and didn’t work across the whole spectrum of budget levels, timelines, industries.
Wanted to do my own thing and created the agency, DNA, first as a gross marketing firm. And we found fundraising to be a common theme. Among our clientele, whether it was the first marketing campaign that was going to be looked at by investors and with results was going to be scaled with capital or working on the marketing section of a business plan and investor pitch deck, even participating in the investor meetings themselves.
Clients would ask, Hey, we really like the way you talked about our growth model. Can you speak to these investors? We want to be able to close this round. So once I learned that I could use my digital marketing skill set to effectively bring on funds for the groups we were working with light bulb went off, I could see the impact that we can make and was able to then validate that with the first campaigns.
And. Do it more and more and more. It’s a, it’s not the ideal vertical for an agency to be in you know, shorter term campaigns and in many scenarios, you know, three months, four months, reg CF campaigns , it puts us constantly in the business development process. Fortunately we have a very large volume of referral partners and are introduced as a go to group in the space, but was just brought to more and more of these initiatives, and one of the things that was attractive to me was through data mining was able to put together over a million historical equity crowdfunding investors regulated investment crowdfund.
I’m part of the crowdfund professional association. I’m part of the board, and it’s a big push this year. So you really use the term RIT, regulated investment crowdfunding, and a lot of board members will be at that reg A conference. List of over a million regulated investment crowdfunding investors and being able to drive those audiences to the offering, you know, I don’t guarantee performance or anything like that to clients, but I’m able to get those audiences there and give them the best shot towards success of their rounds and in a quick manner of time.
Thanks a lot. it’s very attractive for me , for those reasons, because so many startups, mid market businesses go under, they don’t hit their goals because they’re under capitalized. So to be able to serve in this capacity for those groups is very fulfilling. Let’s talk to some of those businesses , and those entrepreneurs out there that’ll listen to this , what are some of the things that you’ve found that you felt so many businesses been in this space so long?
And some of the reasons maybe that businesses would consider this versus maybe, you know, traditional funding, let’s say , like, why is this such an attractive space? It’s a small percentage of deals that get funded. Period earlier stage, but less likely in general is an overstatement.
But there’s something to it for sure, for sure. There’s more risk earlier on. So the whole reason you know, one of the big factors on why investment crowdfunding was created is to give access to capital. For founders on the flip side, access to early stage deal flow in private markets for investors.
So, know, if you don’t have friends, family, close personal contacts that are willing to invest hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars into your business, it may be very hard to meet investors and bring on the actual capital that you need , to start a business or be able to take , your company to the next levels.
Again, speaking to the investor side, I want to show all sides of the table being a retail investor there are public markets, there are places you can go, but hearing stories about, unicorns, and if you invested , in the first round for these companies that end up taking on, , billions of dollars in their valuation, their market cap what, that would actualize, , how your investment would you know, substantially grow and what it would be worth at later stages.
So , it’s democratizing the access to capital and in deal flow across the board. Now, for founders who are listening in, if you’re fundraising and trying to figure out where to meet more investors, there are ways to solicit and market your deal online. But there are compliance factors. And if you file a Form C, and I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a CPA, you’re going to want to speak to the experts in those realms, many of which will be at the Reg A conference.
Many have been on my podcast, that’s Optimized Scale, that’s my philosophy towards growth, summarized in three words have over 150 episodes, and you can, you can see many of those experts on there but if you file a Form C, if you file a Form D, specifically a 506C, which allows for solicitation to accredited investors maybe a Reg A or a Form 1A, But those are much more in depth or scrutiny or more auditing in general.
A lot of the work that you need to do to go public. I mean, it’s a big undertaking to take a regulation a plus campaign line, for example. But if you. , work to get form C, a form D filed, would be working with a broker dealer if in regulated portal lawyer, accountant, and there’s a lot of different team members involved, but then you can work with a group like us in terms of marketing.
I also put out a, a monthly webinar series, write articles constantly in part of the Forbes agency council. Again, I’m very transparent about what we see working in the space. You can just follow our educational content and do a lot of it yourself. I may not have some of the databases, but you can, take on these tactics yourself. You can use digital marketing to solicit investors and build awareness, generate leads, generate traffic to your offering. A lot of the deals that we work on, it’s thousands of investors that are purchasing shares in the organization to fill their route. And you’re setting the valuation, you are telling the full story, you’re looking to bring on these investors, , not just for their money, but to be able to bring them in and in many cases serve as ambassadors in your organization.
Every time you have an announcement, you may see them promote different articles around user owners. And you could be marketing to your customers, to your clients, and seeing them purchase equity in your organization. So you know, all good things across the board, a lot of good resources to mention there.
And yes, it’s a route I definitely recommend. More importantly, I, look at it as a must to market. You know, we’re usually working groups that are already filed and it’s more of a discussion around how to get the right investors to their offering to make it successful. You absolutely need to market these rounds.
When it comes to the marketing side, like what kind of channels are you seeking out for , for these issuers and for these companies, , like , what have you found kind of makes , a good successful campaign? yeah, good question. So I get asked this daily and I wouldn’t say any one channel and would actually start the whiteboard discussion, the mind map around strategy.
There’s a system I’ve built called the 8 point plan. I’ve written articles about it. I have one in Forbes. I lead workshops on just this alone and find it to be , where the campaign is Discussions really take place. We’re generally doing over the course of a month 8 point plan 2 sections a week.
I’ve done it in a half day workshops 2 sections an hour. So stage 1 industry overview and competitor marketing on it. You really want to understand. The groups that are going to be targeting the same audiences as you and know, hey, this is what they’re running as Facebook advertising. This is what they’re running on Google.
This is what they’re ranking for. It’s how much traffic they’re getting for their site, their offering page, what they’re sending out as an email, who’s talking about them in the media, who’s talking about them on social media. Here are the conferences they’re speaking at. Here’s the live broadcast they’re doing.
I want to understand everything. Everything that they are activating to bring on market share and bring in the investors that you’re going after stage two. And you can see why I point to strategy first. , , you’re not shooting in the dark here. You’re seeing what other channels are working.
Yeah. Stage two, you’re putting together audience personas and marketing channels to reach them. , they’re touch points online. Stage three, you’re looking at the creative. So initial content calendar, the first ads that you’re going to take live. Yeah. As well as strategic partnerships perspective map and messaging sequence, and then in stage four, it’s projections and an activation list.
The only way to measure is with numbers. So many groups just dip their toe in the water on these campaigns and don’t really have an idea of how they’re going to bring traffic, how they’re going to bring investments, and at what points in the campaign. So, you know impressions, clicks, conversions. How many times an ad or a piece of content is going to be seen, how much traffic it’s going to drive, and how many conversions you’re anticipating out of it.
You’re probably going to need, on a reg CF campaign, 50, 000 visitors per million dollars raised. On a reg A, maybe that’s 50, 000 per three million dollars raised. But you get the idea, you’re going to need a lot of traffic, so you really want to determine where that comes from. Now once that strategy is complete, you can prioritize the channels.
generally recommend meta advertising. Especially for minimum budget levels, because roughly every dollar you spend is going to be a visitor to your offering page. We have our databases. We could set up custom audiences. There’s plenty of filters that anyone could target on these platforms. You could prospect those audiences to your offering page.
You could retarget them to bring them back. I’m going to be seven touch points or more before an investor converts. So , it’s a great way get traffic there. And consistently the best channels are paid email newsletters. So investors who are subscribing to financial publishers, email newsletters, so that they get deal flow.
If you are recommended by one of those publishers, you’re in a very good spot, but it’s few and far between. It could be months before. You’re scheduled, even if you’re selected, they may select one out of a hundred, one out of a thousand companies that come across their desk. So it’s not a thing you want to depend on.
The more social proof, the more third party validation that you can showcase in your ads. In your own content publishing across your social media channels across your content channels across the updates on your offering page the better People don’t believe what they see on the internet. So the more publisher logos anchor investor testimonials lead client customer testimonials the better what kind of separates, let’s say the top groups from the underperformers, like in your opinion, when it comes to like running these campaigns, , like , , what are the dividing factors?
Sure. to answer that question, the first thing I would do is perform some of the, your own research. This is for listeners on kingscrowd. com kingscrowd shows the results for all of the live. And historical reg CF campaigns and a great deal of the regulation aid plus campaigns. And I do report every Monday internally as of.
May 20th there were 393 Reg CF campaigns live. Now, the top 10 percent of campaigns, they raise 130, 250k or more per month. Let’s call it 200k. , that’s gonna take a while. To raise a million dollars, multiple seven figures, the full five million.
Now the bottom 50 percent of campaigns. They may not raise more than 10 K per month. So it’s the top 10 percent that are moving. The bottom 50 percent are stagnant. Believe it’s around 75 K 50 percent of campaigns. Don’t raise more than that on reg CF the top 10%, about 650 K or more. There was 7.
46 percent that raised a million dollars or more in 2023, only 11 raised the full 5 million. Now that’s on a reg CF. On the data for the companies that report for Regulation A on King’s Crowd, the top 10 percent may raise 15 million or more. The bottom 50% maybe a million or less. So, much stronger there, given a lot of those companies are looking to raise.
, eight figures, a full 75 million, so it’s still not, , pure world of success. And I point out these numbers, not to discourage listeners, but to emphasize the importance of marketing their deal. And I think it comes back to planning and strategies and determining how they’re going to hit those goals.
At least the groups that come across our desk I can tell you , that’s a present factor. And I talked about how much traffic is needed. You know, determine how you’re going to get that traffic. And don’t just count on one traffic source. Hey, we have this email list, or, you know, we’re going to work with this broker dealer to promote some stuff, or we’re going to buy some placements from a free marketing email newsletter, meaning the investors aren’t paying to subscribe to it.
You know, test, optimize, still have a variety of channels that, you know, you can count on to the amount of traffic that you need that even at a standard conversion, right? I was talking about traffic earlier, you have to drive 50, 000 visitors to your offering page. Maybe you get 1000 investors off that.
At a 2 percent conversion rate, and if that’s 1000 average investment on a reg CF campaign, that’s that’s where I got that 1, 000, 000 figure 3, 000 average investment on a regulation plus campaign. Maybe 3, 000, 000. So I got that figure The most important metric is the conversion rate. So you’re going to want to really focus on conversion rate optimization, and if your campaign’s not working right out of the gate, look at, you know, how you can pivot, , channels, and within the channels, audiences, creative, and funnels that you’re, you’re taking them down.
I would also mention that you need constant momentum and traction. Even planning it out at the beginning of the campaign of, Hey, over the next, you know, three months each week, we’re talking about a different development and we’re gonna have some, some press features. We’re gonna have some new partnerships.
We’re gonna have some new clients to point out, have some new milestones and be a guest on this podcast. And we’ll be speaking at this conference, going to talk about some new team member announcements. You need to paint a picture to your audience that this is a moving ship and it’s hitting its destination with or without them.
And this is their opportunity to get involved and to become a shareholder. Not that, you know, your growth is contingent upon them investing. And it’s really the crowd effect. Exactly. And just to end on that, it’s really the crowd effect. It’s the social dynamic at play on those top 10 percent of campaigns that are moving.
However, you can communicate that to your audience and show that there’s a line around the block do it and your campaign will be positioned for more success than one. That is, is stagnant. Amazing. Well, Jason, this has been great. I mean, I know I have some. So much more of a clear understanding of what it takes to raise funds and really just the current state of crowdfunding.
That being said, you mentioned a podcast. Of course you have your company to DNA. If people want to follow up, they want to listen to your show. Of course, we’d love support and other podcasters, or if they want to go check out DNA and follow your journey. How do they do that? Well, digital niche agency.
com. I am Jason Fishman on LinkedIn Los Angeles, Marina Del Rey, California. There’s a few other out there, but , you should know quickly based on connection, mutual connections and job history, which one’s me got to have a white shirt just to add to it and the podcast test optimized scale we’re on YouTube, we’re on all platforms.
Audio channels. And yeah, please check us out. Give us feedback. Just guess. We want to, you know, really get non fluff, you know, hard hitting actionable insights out there. And that’s what we strive for. Like you do as well. I’m really enjoying the conversation, Adam, the nature of your questions.
And this is a lot of fun to partake in. Yeah, this is great. And we appreciate you coming on Jason. And , for the audience if this is your first time with Mission Matters first off, we’re going to put those links to Jason’s show and the website, all that good stuff in the show notes, so you can check that out when this is live and and just click , click on those links to head right on over and definitely go check out his show.
We love supporting other podcasters here. And if this, again, is your first time, you haven’t hit the subscribe button yet to our show. Definitely hit that subscribe button. This is a daily show each and every day. We are bringing you new ideas, new concepts, new thought leaders, new entrepreneurs. If that sounds interesting to you, we don’t want you to miss a thing.
Daily show again, each and every day. So hit that subscribe button. And Jason Hey, , good luck on your season. Coming up. I know you can talk about crowdfunding. I’m not worried about you at all, but good luck at everything, man. I appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Adam. I really appreciate that. Thanks everyone.