What we talked about
Jason Fishman: In this episode, growth marketer, investor, and podcaster Jason Fishman traces his path from action-sports consultant and Gen-Y specialist to co-founder and SVP of Digital Strategy at Digital Niche Agency (DNA). He explains how early work across social gaming and mobile ad networks shaped his obsession with measurable, scalable acquisition:and why that lens ultimately pulled him into the capital-raising arena (Reg D 506(c), Reg CF, and Reg A+).
Show notes
Today, I’m joined by Jason Fishman : a growth marketing strategist, investor, and podcaster with over 15 years of experience driving scalable campaigns across digital channels. Jason is the co-founder and SVP of Digital Strategy at Digital Niche Agency, where he has helped more than 450 brands, including over 200 fundraising campaigns, raise millions through innovative marketing. He also hosts the Test. Optimize. Scale. Podcast, where he shares insights from industry leaders on building businesses that thrive in the digital era.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the PreVetted Podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Our guest today is Jason Fishman, a growth marketing strategist, investor, a podcaster with over 15 years of experience driving scalable campaigns across digital channels. Jason is a co-founder and SVP of Digital Strategy at Digital Niche Agency where he has helped more than
450 brands, including over 200 fundraising campaigns, raised millions through innovative marketing. He also hosts the “Test. Optimize. Scale.” podcast, he shares insight from industry leaders on building businesses that thrive in the digital era. Jason’s journey span from Web3 crowdfunding and performance driven marketing.
making him a go-to market expert for companies looking to accelerate growth. Today we’re going to explore his playbook for scaling brands, navigating digital transformation, and spotting the future of marketing. Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason Fishman (01:05) Thanks, Federico. Pleasure to be here today.
Federico Ramallo (01:07) I’m happy to have you here today. So tell me, how do you get started in marketing and what drew you into this new media space so early on?
Jason Fishman (01:17) takes me back to college, business.
classes, marketing classes, gravitating towards the marketing curriculum. I found it to be the creative aspect of business and why the market leaders hold so much market share. I was infatuated, intrigued, and I actually got into my career as an action sports consultant. I grew up here in Southern California. Snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing was brought on by an agency here in Los Angeles, Hollywood Boulevard.
to work with skateboarding, surfing brands, video sharing platforms, clothing, apparel, hard goods, as well as companies that wanted to enter into those audiences at a larger level. Energy drink companies, some different entertainment and music campaigns.
was an action sports consultant. He turned into a Gen Y specialist. That’s what millennials were called back then. Gen Y, so a millennial marketing specialist, was then at a startup, a social gaming company, Brandon Entertainment. So working with large social media pages, licenses, license holders, if you will, to monetize their audience with the sale of freemium goods through social games. We had merged with an advertiser
advertising ⁓ sales company for in-game advertising and After a while worked with the owner there to build a mobile advertising network Working with a lot of fortune 500s full spectrum of different industries budget levels timelines got a good feel for what worked what didn’t work across a variety of different verticals wanted to do more in the startup space as a whole and
partnered with our COO, Tim Martinez, to build DNA, Digital Niche Agency, DNA. We began as a growth marketing firm, found fundraising, capital raising to be a common theme among our clientele. So whether they were working on a business plan to present to investors, a pitch deck, hey, can you work on the marketing section? Can you work on our growth model? Can you work on a first marketing campaign? Once that’s successful, we’re going to…
I present the results to an investor and get more capital to really grow the organization. Even being asked to participate in those investor meetings myself, I was always part of that capital raising discussion with our clients. I was then introduced to Regulation D 506C here in the US, which allows for solicitation of accredited investors, high net worth individuals, high household income audiences. With my background in advertising, was able to utilize different data partnerships to reach these individuals.
targeted ads, saw performance, raised millions of dollars, was introduced to more issuers, companies issuing shares through these exemptions, through these vehicles here in the US, was told about Reg CF, regulation crowdfunding, and had advertising live day one of Reg CF, which allows for targeting of both accredited and retail investors, essentially any adult, and used some of the same third party audiences. I’ve built my own first party audiences at this point over one point eight
million investors who have purchased shares in a REG CF or Regulation A plus, Regulation D deal. I could talk more about the exemptions, but essentially allow us to market to people online and have now worked on over 500 beyond the 450, have raised hundreds of millions through content marketing, through advertising and through outreach. But that’s been my storyline, how I fell into this area of expertise and how it’s of value to our clientele.
Federico Ramallo (04:52) Wow, amazing. Yeah, I understand that going through credited investors, there’s a lot of regulations around that. And I understand you mentioned crowdfunding, getting more regulations, which I understand where the government is coming from for saying these regulations to try to avoid bad players into the game, right? ⁓ Yeah, but right.
Jason Fishman (05:12) Yes, compliance.
making sure everything’s
presented correctly. It’s fair for all sides of the table, of course. They’re working with CPAs and their valuation on their audits. And I’ve found it to create a very level playing field for investors, for founders and offer opportunity on both sides of the table. For investors, it’s access to deal flow, access to early stage deals, growth stage, I should say. And for founders, for CEOs, it’s access to capital.
and being able to market to thousands, even millions of investors at once.
Federico Ramallo (05:44) Wow, that’s amazing. I’ve been involved in some of those processes and I see how complicated it is, right? Mostly as an outsider, as an observer, but yeah, it gets very complicated very quickly.
Jason Fishman (05:53) yeah.
Sure does.
Federico Ramallo (06:02) And as you mentioned, the created investors, those high net worth profiles, they’re hard to find, right?
Jason Fishman (06:13) Yes, but with the…
all the data that our devices hold and put out there, you can be very specific on who you’re reaching with advertising, with outreach, what content you’re putting out to further an audience down their consideration process. And as you’re seeing success with the analytics, you could determine where that traffic’s coming from, what types of content they’re engaging with before converting, do more of what’s working to replicate and even scale up and
ramp up the amount of traffic, the amount of investments that these issuers, these companies are seeing on a daily basis.
Federico Ramallo (06:48) Right. Yeah, and I think you… Right.
Jason Fishman (06:49) I’m on the marketing side. It’s the fun part.
Frontline of performance at that, but our counterparts on the legal side of the table, the CPAs, the accountants that are involved, they have a lot more paperwork. They have to make sure everything’s structured properly. For us, it’s a matter of targeting investors and taking them down marketing follows.
Federico Ramallo (07:11) Right, and I think the key word you use is focus the more focused the audience can be the more efficient the ad investment is
Jason Fishman (07:24) Absolutely. It’s about finding the right user at the right time. People who are genuinely interested with the opportunity. So you’re getting something in front of them that they’re welcoming.
Federico Ramallo (07:35) Right, right. What experience shaped your decision to specialize in digital acquisition and scalable marketing strategies?
Jason Fishman (07:43) digital acquisition, scalable marketing strategies, not mention the word investor, which I like. I could talk about that audience persona further. But early in my career, working at these marketing agencies as the millennial marketing expert, if you will, I saw amazing products.
great projects with no visibility, no eyeballs, and there was a variety of different organic channels available on top of the existing first degree network. But as I learned more about buying traffic and from very targeted audiences, opening up the traffic floodgates, if you will, I saw, hey, I can get millions of people around a specific offering.
headline announcement, a matter of a day, a few days at that. Budgets allow, of course, because it’s a cost per click, cost per thousand impressions. You’re looking at how many people are seeing and clicking and moving into the offering. But as you’re able to see a good acquisition cost, it justifies the need to buy more. And we’ve worked with
variety of different initiatives not just investor acquisition or even within investor acquisition looking at fintech looking at web 3 and cryptocurrency exchanges and different trading platforms where we can measure a cost per acquisition we could see the return on ad spend and in many cases it’s know 10x higher and it completely warrants a larger focus around that traffic channel the numbers speak for themselves and companies are doing
more of what’s working. So it’s an exciting space. The groups we work with, the individuals at the helm, they are growing in front of our eyes in many of these scenarios and it’s exciting to be part of. It’s very fulfilling.
Federico Ramallo (09:27) amazing. With all this, you know, the amount of information that each of us get every day, right? It gets more and more overwhelming, right? It gets harder and harder to, for a product or a service to, you know, to show up out of the noise, right? What are your thoughts and patterns that you found that are effective for people to show?
Jason Fishman (09:38) We’re good.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (09:57) up the noise.
Jason Fishman (09:59) Mm-hmm.
I like to start everything with strategy. There’s a model I’ve built called the Eight Point Plan. I’ve written about it in Forbes, I lead workshops on it, and it starts with an industry overview followed by a competitor marketing audit. In the competitor marketing audit, we’re always finding new information for a founder, a CEO, a team to look at. It tells me more about who they’re targeting.
what that conversation looks like between the target audience and the brand. And success leaves clues. We’re able to see what the target audience will be reaching out to as part of our campaign is currently engaging with on a daily basis right now. And we need to create messaging, visuals, creative that’s as strong, if not more, grabbing, engaging.
I use the word headline, headline worthy announcements, being able to showcase social proof and third party validation, being able to tell the story and with numbers, how many people have invested, how many people have purchased, how many people have used the product, maybe quotes from anchor investors, from influencers, thought leaders talking about the growth of the vertical or how unique the product is, how resourceful it is, the impact it has on the end. ⁓
user, the end audience. So it’s matter of determining what types of information, what type of content is being consumed right now, creating something that’s stronger, concise, few words, something that the audience cannot only understand, but then later become an ambassador and market to their peers around that information. So it has to be easily understood and, you know,
something that people want to share.
Federico Ramallo (11:46) Interesting.
So this is a similar question, but a little bit different. You work across 450 plus brands, right? Are there any common patterns that you notice in campaigns that succeed versus those that struggle?
Jason Fishman (12:01) Sure, you know, I try not to be the judge before a campaign starts. We have assumptions, but it’s the data that we need, the analytics, the actual measurements to be able to say, these audiences with that creative going down those funnels are producing an X cost per acquisition, cost per purchase, return on ad spend, if you will. The commonality I would say is…
the content we’re producing, the advertising creative, does it reflect current trends, current events? Does it feel like something the target audience would authentically be reading about, watching, that day?
Is it mirroring what’s moving in the stock market? Is it consistent with what that user sees on their social media feed or when viewing these different websites? That mirroring component is common on the top performing campaigns. And as a marketer, we can phrase the narrative to tap into those different topics, those different areas of interest. But there’s definitely a correlation.
Federico Ramallo (13:06) Right, right, yeah. Throughout the years I’ve been gaining more more appreciation to the marketing efforts and the marketing expertise because it’s a, my background is technical, I’m a software engineer, so ⁓ my view word is being technical is very square, know, either is or isn’t, right? It’s binary, I guess, right?
Jason Fishman (13:20) Mm.
Federico Ramallo (13:29) I don’t know, I’m just joking, but I come from a very different point of view of the world. What I notice is that it’s a little bit of art and stats. As you mentioned, you make assumptions, you build content based on specific signals that you think are going to resonate, but then you use the data to validate your assumptions. And then based on that, you move forward.
Jason Fishman (13:54) Exactly. Test, optimize, scale. Something I say a lot. Everything’s just a test till it’s validated with the performance metrics. You’re optimizing to get the best result that you can and then identifying pockets of performance to optimize towards and then looking for opportunities to scale. But it’s through that scientific method that us as marketers, performance marketers are able to really thrive and take what’s engineered to the…
full capabilities.
Federico Ramallo (14:21) Right, right. When I started doing marketing, I had a different perspective and I thought it was mostly about broadcasting to everybody what we’re doing, right? Which was a very, I don’t know, simplistic or naive, you know, understanding of the craft, right? So yeah, but that comes from my technical viewpoint of view, right? So yeah.
Jason Fishman (14:41) Sure.
The clients I work with, the founders, in some cases, solopreneurs, but even if they have a team of 200 people, still considered a relatively small company, they’ll tell me things along the lines of, hey, we only care about performance. I could tell them about the broadcasting, about the views, about the medium, about the platform, about how amazing the storytelling is inside the messaging.
But at the end of the day, the performance, results need to be there. One marketing budget needs to produce the next, at least for a company that has limited monetary resources. So it’s about small calculated tests and then leaning into it, doing it at higher levels once it’s working. It very much is accurate what you’re saying of, broadcasting channels, impressions, awareness, but…
deeper levels of that conversation of, we have it. We have the audience, but what’s that audience doing? Are they taking the actions we want them to? Do we need to build another type of digital environment? A more…
structured funnel that has stronger call to action so that we’re able to see standard conversion rates and audiences moving from one stage of the funnel, the consideration to the intent, to the conversion, to the repeat conversion, to the peer-to-peer marketing sections of that funnel, that user journey, so that we can drive more people to it, have more awareness, and see more results come out the other end.
Federico Ramallo (16:14) My first approach of lack of focus was like, if you have a candle in a room, it lights everything. But if it’s not focused, have candelas, right? You have a lot of brightness in a single point, right? Once you focus it, you have a lot of brightness in a single point, right? So it took me a while to figure that out.
Jason Fishman (16:35) Yeah.
Like I said, I worked with these projects with no visibility, stuff that I thought was groundbreaking, but with no one on the other side taking in that information, no awareness. So once you learn, hey, I can buy traffic, I can earn it, but I need to make sure that the response on the other side is producing the results at the right levels to then have enough capital coming through, enough revenue, enough activity that
capital can be opened up to do more of this marketing and take on more of the mind share, the thought leadership, the traffic to take on that market share. It showed me, hey, you need to have these very direct response oriented, these performance focused channels. And then as that’s working, we can now take it to the next level.
Federico Ramallo (17:25) Right, yeah, I can see how that could happen you mentioned something interesting that the budget of one budget, you generate revenue for the next budget, right? ⁓ Whether it’s quarter, whatever, yeah, because after a cycle, then if you have not generated results, then they’re going to cut off the next budget, right? Yeah.
Jason Fishman (17:37) Mm-hmm. Very true.
And it’s a game and you have to test different things out to play off your candle analogy. If the candle is showing us a bookcase with all different books, hundreds of books, lots of information. Okay, now I’m assuming the audience is going to get into that bookcase, open up a book, find the information, determine what they need to do next.
If I have that candle pointed towards nothing other than a contract, okay, there’s a call to action. But a lot of people are going to be turned off by that. Hey, I don’t want to just sign. I don’t even know what looking at. What is this contract? I have to find something that is engaging enough, yet simple, and with an easy, clear call to action.
So I can get enough of a response to have more people walk into that room with that candle pointing at that one engaging, let’s say, poster with a phone number at the other side. Or maybe it’s pointing towards a digital device. And they press one button, and we’re only asking them to do one thing. And they move forward from there to do the next thing. And there’s enough of a draw so that they want to see what’s on the next side. It’s irresistible to them.
what you know a good content marketing program would consist of and advertising can then bring millions of people to that same environment.
Federico Ramallo (19:14) I I’m trying to ask a question about how do you measure the demand, right? Because if there’s no demand, then all the marketing efforts are not going to yield any results, And of course, I’m talking in a very extreme case, But how do you, you mentioned that you’re doing a competitive audit, right?
maybe that’s where, but how do you analyze the demands?
Jason Fishman (19:44) Well, as an agency, we’re working on behalf of brands. Those brands have objectives, have goals. So it’s more along the lines of how do we find the right audiences and take them down the right funnels to produce enough of the conversions to hit the goals, to substantiate the need for more marketing. The demand itself…
There’s a variety of tools available to us as marketers to look at search engines, to look at social media platforms, to look at analytics and how much traffic is arriving at different websites today, different apps, different podcasts, different media. So it’s more of finding the right audiences.
that are in market, if you will. Sure, by doing so, if someone asks me tomorrow, hey, I’m building a business plan. I want to really know there’s enough of a demand for this product. I’d probably start with search tools.
and do some different keyword research to be able to see how many people are typing in these queries, these words to be able to get more information. You do the same with social media and look at how many people are talking about different keywords on social platforms, hashtags, social page followers, what have you. I could look at the advertisements. Those pages are running as well too.
If company is repeating something enough times, could tell it’s working for them, otherwise they wouldn’t be putting the resources towards it, both time and human capital at that. There is a footprint digitally that’s laid down by these audiences.
I believe you can then market many different types of products with the same type of storyline to be able to create a demand. Oftentimes we’re reaching people that don’t know they’re looking for an investment opportunity or a given product. I could tell by their interests and behavior, they’re going to pay attention to it based on other types of content they’ve consumed, but it could be overlapping genres. doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the exact same. But there are plenty of marketing tools where you can figure out exactly what people are searching for.
today.
Federico Ramallo (21:42) Interesting, so if people are talking about it, then it means that there is a month, right? Pretty much
Jason Fishman (21:49) Absolutely.
If I can find them online, if I could touch the content, I can then create content that’s similar. And then can manage it and manage the funnel that they’re going down to direct them in the right areas. And really, I believe I can manage it to a point of effectiveness.
scale it, do it again. But yes, if the audiences are available in digital environments, if I could see, this many people are talking about it, this many people are engaging with it on a daily basis, there’s definitely a signal that goes off.
Federico Ramallo (22:21) Interesting. What do you think is the most underrated digital channel today for customer acquisition?
Jason Fishman (22:27) underrated.
Well.
Highly rated is social advertising, platforms like Meta, Facebook, Instagram. You’re reaching an audience that does not know they’re looking for something in that moment. However, with the right messaging, with the right visuals, you could pull them in and then retarget them with the ads. And these are intelligent machine learning tools. You can then ramp it up. But those tools are highly rated. Some people don’t know how to use them. They don’t understand pixel tracking. They don’t understand
how to really hone in on a specific audience within the larger set and do more of what’s really driving. They may even tell you something’s not working because it’s not showing up with a unique tracking URL or a pixel. When really you can identify that it is if you know what you’re looking for. One channel that comes to mind as you say that a good answer if you will is YouTube.
I’ve had different YouTube advertising specialists on my podcast and it’s direct response advertising. You really have to have an expertise in a hook, a value proposition, supporting information and a call to action and do so in a quick window of time. All that has to occur within 30 seconds and the first three seconds, first seven seconds. If that hook is not strong enough, the value proposition is not resonating. You will lose people. They won’t stick around for the supporting information.
won’t care about the storyline, they’ll be gone. They won’t even get to the call to action. But because of that, if used properly, you can actually see strong results in many cases from YouTube ads. Also, you have organic. So when I think of podcasts, I often think of video podcasts. A lot of the podcasts I engage with are on video. I have YouTube in the background when I’m working on emails.
If you are showing up on enough podcasts, if you are organic content, content marketing is reaching people on multiple channels they follow. It’s very powerful and is a
I don’t want to say disguised, but it’s presented in a way that is very authentic, organic, natural, if you will. It does not come across as a straight paid advertisement. So if you can master organic content on YouTube, your acquisition model could bear very low costs. And it’s pretty endless.
a of channels, a ton of podcasts, a ton of YouTubers that you can go after. Also the advertising, you can target people who have consumed specific episodes from a specific channel at that. So you can be very focused on who you’re going after. You can then take a lot of the findings to Google’s search platform, to their display networks, including email platforms where ads show up. So I would say YouTube’s kind of underrated in terms of an acquisition medium.
Federico Ramallo (25:12) interesting yeah i’ve seen my perception with YouTube has been that since they launched shorts this was i don’t know less than five years ago i don’t remember exactly but ⁓ the attention span of the users went from 30 seconds to three right or five you know whatever it is a short right i think it’s less than a minute and a half right and
Jason Fishman (25:19) Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (25:36) And I find that, as you mentioned, the hook has to be very short for people to keep watching, right? And as a user, I find myself scrolling, just skipping things that I don’t like, right? So I can see how YouTube is becoming more and more on that short thing, a very powerful, you know, platform, attention grabbing platform.
Jason Fishman (25:59) Yeah, it is advanced though.
It’s not for the entry level media buyer. It’s not for a beginning content creator. It can be, but to get to the point of performance scalable results at that, it could be a longer road. Even the advertising, you may think, hey, people watch this on their television. It’s like a broadcast channel, like you said, where maybe with repetition you can get some results. But that hook,
that value proposition, that storyline. You know, “want to get 10,000 plus people to your website today? Click below to figure out how to get millions over the next month.” Hook,
value proposition, story. I was struggling with getting enough people to our digital environment. I found these tools. I then later saw these results. Even though I skeptical, click the button below to be able to get the full guide on how to do this. That’s a powerful advertisement.
You’re talking about a digital asset, digital conversion, something without any upfront monetary costs, putting your information, you’re getting that guide. Now, the guide can then take the audience to the next stage and the next and the next and the next. And it’s a forced view, at least for the first part of it, with some of the YouTube placements. So if done correctly, if then optimized,
great detail as the focus.
You could see stronger results than many other channels as a result. But you have to be committed to it. You can’t just be putting a toe in the water. You have to make sure you’re getting enough traffic, engaging based on the audience targeting the quality and where you could do more of it. Organics even tougher because now you’re looking to get people to take action on something that they may not be showing up for. They want entertainment. They want educational value.
they’re not looking to buy something and it’s a small percentage of the audience whether it’s an ad or organic content that actually move forward from there so you have to do it enough scale you have to have enough of an organic audience you have to have enough people talking about you and driving it over you have to rank in the YouTube algorithm in a way where it’s showing up to more people based on the performance that you’re getting so it’s it’s it’s tricky it is not just a straight direct response ad let’s say a Google search ad for a b2b company
local B2B company at that, straightforward model for how search ads work there. It’s complex, but once you find an algorithm that works for you, you can do more and more and more and more of it and see better acquisition costs than other more traditional mediums.
Federico Ramallo (28:33) Interesting, Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, and the algorithm has been evolving throughout the years and it’s getting more and more difficult to grow organically, right? Which they kind of do it on purpose so you spend money on the platform, right?
Jason Fishman (28:34) Mm-hmm.
Exactly. And that turns some people away. again, they’re marketing tests. And if you do them with a good strategy behind it, you could find a crawl, walk, run scenario. And if you’re walking enough, can get the running up to paces you wouldn’t believe are possible before it.
Federico Ramallo (29:05) Interesting.
So you said those who market the best lead verticals, right? ⁓ Can you ⁓ expand a little bit more on that mindset for us?
Jason Fishman (29:11) Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Just going with gut responses here again. This is actually away from investor acquisition a little bit, but just around good marketing and per the nature of your show. I lift weights. I believe everyone should work out to some degree that they’re comfortable with, make sense for their health. Creatine is a product that has been around since I was a kid, well before that. There are more…
Desirable ways to consume creatine these days these creatine gummies some of the brands around it do an amazing job and marketing and they make creatine seem like the answer to everything from mental fog to Energy throughout the day beyond just the results you get from muscle breakdown recovery and growth and they then have
Dozens hundreds of different influencers that are talking about these products some of them run ads from their Facebook and Instagram accounts. So you’re not seeing it from the creatine brand as much as from the influencer and talking about how amazing Of an impact the product has had in their life and their fast-paced Quick video production feels like other types of content you receive some of our selfie videos at that, but they just they’re very very enrolling
I use that as an example.
and for investor acquisition campaigns at that. And these creative companies are taking on market share. They’re beating out companies that have been making other workout supplements for decades, but because of the marketing creativity around it, because of the product design, but going back into the marketing and some of the branding. But for me, it’s the ad campaigns and how they’re able to scale into it because they’re seeing such strong results. They can actually advertise more than these market leaders, if you will. But because of the effectiveness, I try to
do
the same thing for investor acquisition campaigns where I want to look at what the top issuers, the top brands are doing, many of which I work with, but even when starting with a younger…
company that’s new to the digital capital raising process. I want to build out ads that incorporate thought leaders and point out quotes from some of the top business moguls in the world, whether they’re directly contracted with them or not. There’s compliant ways to do this. And you have to make a brand seem like it is the next big thing. It’s already happening. I use these analogies of social proof. I’ve really learned about crowd dynamics working on these investor campaigns. And you want to create a line around
block sensation. Without it, it feels like an empty restaurant feeling.
people invest in people, they invest in what their friends are investing in, they’re investing in what the brilliant thought leaders around them are telling them to pay closer attention to. They’re investing in what makes sense to them. So how do I accomplish that in an ad? How do I do it with the creative? That is where the game comes to be and where you put enough variance out there and you look to have that.
crowd effect around them where it’s, hey, everyone’s doing this, now’s my opportunity to hop on board this moving ship versus let me tell you about the boat and when we’re gonna take off and when it’s gonna happen. It has to feel like it’s already in motion, extreme velocity at that.
Federico Ramallo (32:27) interesting
So from your perspective, how has performance marketing evolved over the last years?
Jason Fishman (32:34) Well, I would say the lines between organic and paid have blurred. And it’s tough to tell what and the paid strategies are incorporating what would be standard for organic content marketing years back. We have publishing schedules with new ads coming out on a weekly basis that are actually more robust, more sophisticated than some of the social media management plans I saw years back, per the direction of your question.
So
managing paid as if it’s organic is a theme I would put out there. Having stronger calls to action as organic, even that YouTube strategy I was mentioning on the posting side where it’s okay, how do we have a lot of people talking about us, how do we have them driven back, how do we position our organic content with a strong enough call to action so it’s producing performance type results.
How do we scale it? Because that’s what really matters is how scalable something is. If you’re able to do it with a few people or if you’re able to do it with thousands of people a day, completely different outcome and scenario. I would say there’s a lot more people doing it, so you have to have better creative.
Creative is more important than the targeting many would say today It has to stand out from the noise From the clutter it has to have someone who’s scrolling through a social media platform be it YouTube or Facebook or LinkedIn X Stop what they’re doing stop engaging with updates from their favorite media sources friends family influencers thought leaders
colleagues, strategic partners, referral partners, and click and then move on to later stages of the funnel. So that all comes down to good creative, good research behind it, good designers, understanding what competitors are getting out and what’s going to move the target audience on a psychological level in a stronger fashion.
Federico Ramallo (34:30) Interesting. So you mentioned a few times about fundraising campaigns. What do you think are the keys to building momentum and trust in a crowdfunding environment?
Jason Fishman (34:39) So you have regulation crowdfunding, Reg CF. You can raise up to $5 million from both retail and accredited investors there. You have a larger stage for that same type of targeting. Regulation A +, we can raise up to $75 million. Much more in depth audit and paperwork. They say it’s about 80 % of an IPO.
Some groups use regulation A plus to go public, it’s far more granular. If regulation D, which is accredited investors only, across all of those, I mentioned the crowd effect, mentioned social dynamics. There’s a saying, everyone wants to be first to be second in the investment world, meaning they want to see a major investor. They want to see someone from Shark Tank or that they read about in ink. Entrepreneur Forbes regularly investing into a
company and then if they have that opportunity, okay, what are the minimums? How’s this company going to grow? Is this easy for me to get into? Do I want to put a larger percentage of my portfolio? Do want to put more?
capital more dollars behind it, but it all comes from that social proof. On a Reg CF campaign, the average investment is $1,500. 2024, there’s 1,408 Reg CF campaigns. The average investment was $1,500. You could go onto a website called kingscrowd.com and look at the analytics, look at the performance for all of those Reg CF campaigns. It’s where I get these stats, this data from. You can look at it from 2023, all the way back to 2016, Reg
Title III of the Jobs Act went into effect. But the reason I’m mentioning the average investment, if I want to raise $3 million on a Rake CF, I’m probably going to need 2,000 investors, 2,000 conversions. 2,000 investments, some of those investments will be from the same investors.
10 to 30 percent of the investors participate multiple times. The minimums you get to set as the issuer, as the company, many are between $100 and $500. So someone could come in at $500, someone could come in at $1,500, at $5,000, $25,000, higher amounts, six figure amounts even, but across 2,000 investments.
If you’re getting a $1,500 investment, you’re in a good place. But I would tell you, to get 2,000 investments, you probably need 100,000 visits to an offering page.
That’s all contingent on a good conversion rate, 2%. Google says an average conversion rate is 2.35%. To be at 2 % on a fundraising campaign, having someone invest online, you’re in a good place. But you get the idea. It’s a relatively substantial amount of visits to that offering page.
Imagine launching an e-commerce platform and getting $2 million in sales in a few months and getting 100,000 people there. It’s difficult. It can be risky. There’s inherent obstacles in marketing campaigns and the success. There’s inherent obstacles with capital raising. Less than 5 % of deals get funded at the VC level. So it’s not easy. Only 7 % of companies who…
FileRake CF hit a million dollars or more on their raise. Happy to say we work with many of those and I try to lay out the formulas of this. Half of the campaigns get stuck underneath 100,000. So I would tell you come out of the gate with over 100,000. Meaning, compliantly get your first degree network to invest in that first week.
and it could be 100 people at an average of $1,000 each. Many of those just want to see you succeed, whether they’re customers, friends, family, people you met in college or your neighbors or past employers, employees, partners, whatever it may be, go after that warmer audience first.
I said the line around the block, why not a pool party? You can’t have a bunch of people come over for a pool party and expect someone to just hop in. know, there’s little insecurities, why are they in the pool, you know, by themselves. They get to that pool party, it’s half full.
enough room for them. Meanwhile, it’s very inviting. It looks fun. No one’s going to be paying too close of attention to them. mean, it just in general, I’m playing on some different social dynamics here, but in general, it’s very inviting. Come on in the pool, right?
It’s the same thing for these campaigns. If I say, hey, I have an AI company and I’m going to transform the fintech industry and I have $8,000 raised. Or if I say I have $108,000 raised or $508,000 raised or a million in $8,000 raised, $4 million in $8,000 raised, I’m anticipating a different conversion rate at each one of those levels, each one of those milestones, I’d like to say. And if I’m able to front
that with people from the first degree network in the early stages of the campaign, I’m going to be able to get cold audiences to be that much more enticed to hop in. If I’m then putting together a content calendar that talks about…
the content strategy, what channels it’s living in, what’s going to be posted where and when, what third party validation I’m sprinkling in there. If I’m able to get the sources of those third parties, the validators to market to their audiences back to the YouTube strategy, having them come through organically. If I’m able to feature that in advertisements of, look who talked about us this week, featured by this publisher last week. We’re going to be speaking at this conference next week.
You know over a hundred investors over a thousand investors Over a million raised in the first week in the first month all of this creates more attention Creates a different type of listening from the target audience and shows up in their response
Federico Ramallo (40:19) It’s a little bit of the chicken and the egg, right? Because you need social proof in order to generate attention, but you need attention in order to generate social proof, right? And as you mentioned, using the first degree relationships can help you get the engine started, right, in a way, right? Yeah, I can see how that is challenging.
Jason Fishman (40:23) Little bit.
Hmm?
It absolutely is and it amplifies. So if it amplifies people who are getting to your offering and moving forward, people who are seeing your offering and then writing about it or pointing at it in a positive way to their followers in a good place, if it’s kind of dull and people are getting there and saying, hmm, okay, neat, maybe I’ll come back.
could end up working against you because it’s so visible. It’s not like the e-commerce site where you’re able to hide the analytics and who knows how much of this product’s being sold. It shows, there’s a counter. How many investments, how much capital on most of these platforms. So it can be your strongest marketing tool or it could work against you.
Federico Ramallo (41:29) what mistakes do you see founders repeat when it comes to investor marketing or crowdfunding?
Jason Fishman (41:36) Sure.
They think, hey, I’m going to launch a campaign and see what happens. ⁓
Marketing is an afterthought, when really it’s a marketing exercise. They should be starting with a strategy a month, months before they go live. Perhaps they do pre-launch marketing. There’s some rules around what you could talk about, what you can’t leading into the launch, but there are avenues to be able to market through test the waters as defined by the SEC. You can do various types of audience growth campaigns and
we should be starting early. And then the beginning of the campaign sets the foundation for the rest of it.
Sure, you could pick up momentum later, but statistically that’s not going to happen. So you need to come out of the gate swinging and bringing as many people to that offering as possible, knowing that offering is strong enough to hit an average conversion rate or higher, looking for what’s working, what’s not, optimizing towards it, speaking with experts, if not engaging them, but definitely, you know.
Throwing stuff back and forth to them over calls over emails to get feedback and make sure you’re going in the right Direction a lot of people offer that for free. I do I talk to people all the time
particularly as part of the professional associations and part of an accelerator as I’m a part of to be able to get them to a better place. want to see a higher success rate industry-wide. But marketing as an afterthought, thinking, hey, this is going to be on the internet. There’s billions of people online a day. We’re going to be able to raise more money just because of how amazing our product is than these other groups out there is false.
Federico Ramallo (43:14) If you build it, they will come at false.
Jason Fishman (43:17) Unfortunately, For Kevin Costner, maybe not. Maybe he could do it. But everyone else, they should not anticipate that. That would be the outlier.
Federico Ramallo (43:18) ⁓ Yeah.
Right, Yeah, yeah. Unless there is some magic like in the movie, right? ⁓ Yes, yes. Great movie, by the way, yes.
Jason Fishman (43:31) Yep, great movie at that. That’s why it was a
great movie because it was so far out of the ordinary. It was magical. You know, again, 7% hit a million dollars or more. Last year of those 1,408, five hit five million. Couple of those was 4.8 million after some investments canceled. You can look at the exact stats, but that generalizes it, but you can look at the exact stats on King’s Crowd.
Less than a percent. Those are not good odds. You do not want to count on those. You want to put your best foot out the door for your brand, for your capital raise, for your audience, for your public perception. These are amazing tools, powerful, but they have to be used correctly. They can’t just be providing a sense of assured success merely by their presence as much as how do I use this to get the strongest result out the other side.
Federico Ramallo (44:22) Right, right. Yeah, and the reason why it’s such a good movie is because the magic seems real, even though it’s magic, right? Yeah. And what you’re describing is that we cannot improvise with these tools, and we need a much more mature strategy, right? Amazing.
Jason Fishman (44:28) Yes.
And in the movie, everyone
thought he was crazy until it came to life, until it came to fruition at the end, where that’s not the case. I speak to founders who said, yeah, my lawyer, you know, they said, just kind of see how it goes. The accelerator we’re working with, they said, you know, don’t spend anything on marketing yet when, you know,
Federico Ramallo (44:43) Right.
Jason Fishman (44:59) With a company like mine, without us, whatever it may be, you need to be marketing. You need to be able to give me an algorithmic roadmap to say, here’s how we’re 50,000, 100,000, 250,000 people to our offering. Here’s the messaging. Here’s the follow-ups that are going to be present in the content. Here are the announcements we’re going to have throughout the course of the campaign.
you’re just shooting in the dark and hoping you hit five million dollars.
Federico Ramallo (45:28) Amazing. Yes, I agree. So we’re running out of time, any final remarks before we wrap it up?
Jason Fishman (45:37) Do more. I said that on a panel recently and I like it. Do more. Do more marketing. Do more marketing conversations with experts. Do more advertising. Do more content. Find more people who can talk about you in a positive way. It’s not finished.
Federico Ramallo (45:37) Hahaha
Jason Fishman (45:54) The top issuers, the groups that we work with who raise tens of millions of dollars through regulation eight plus filings, they are always looking at more that they can do. Their founders are relentless. They’re aggressive. They take calculated risks, but they take risks. They really scale into things when they’re working. They do more of what’s producing for them. And that’s why it’s put them into the top spots, the top positions. So I don’t know anyone that that does not apply to do more.
Federico Ramallo (46:23) Amazing, amazing, great insights. Jason, thank you very much for joining us today.
Jason Fishman (46:28) Again, Federica, pleasure’s all mine. Enjoyed the discussion, loved the questions, loved the callbacks. Can’t believe an hour flew by that quick.
Federico Ramallo (46:37) Yes, went by super quickly. Thank you.