Latest / The Marketing Brief / Jason and Brian Find Common Ground Between Investment Strategy and Marketing Strategy (S2 E2)
Transcript
- Brian Aucoin: the marketing brief podcast. I am your host Brian equan. And this is the podcast where we briefly touch on topics across the marketing landscape. As always, we're joined by by an industry expert and today we are very excited to be joined by Jason Fishman Jason welcome into the podcast. Jason Fishman: Thanks, Brian. Love the show. Love your honesty and realism with your recommendations and discussion points. So it's been a big date on my calendar. Been looking forward to it. Brian Aucoin: Thank you, thank you so much. Would you like to introduce yourself to the podcast listeners, kind of talk about what you do? Jason Fishman: Absolutely. Absolutely. I run an investor and user acquisition agency. That's the marketing that we focus on, growth campaigns. in business since 2014, have worked with, come up on 1,000 clients. Over 500 of those have been around capital raises. So we'll use advertising, outreach, content campaigns to effectively bring in investors for our clients and using digital tools and the scalability with those. Of course, we've worked on over 500 deals that have collectively produced hundreds of millions in capital, showcased a lot of the results on my podcast and our educational series, try to be an open book in terms of what we see working and not working in this space. I should mention we go on to work on growth milestones, particularly if it's in between rounds. If a group and issuer is going to be doing another investment opportunity, they need to be able to show more sales, more audience growth, more traction. So. If they're looking to have a higher valuation, can directly support in that process in between and thereafter. Brian Aucoin: Nice. And your podcast, of course, we can mention it here, Test Optimize Scale, that you've been doing since 2020. Jason Fishman: That's right. That's my approach, my philosophy towards growth summarized in three words. Done over 230 episodes. A lot of our clients on there, strategic partners, other marketers, people I find fascinating. I love it. Want to do it forever. I feel like I learn from every episode. Brian Aucoin: 230 episodes. I think you're like 30 for us. so we're trailing you, but we're gonna catch you. Yeah. Jason Fishman: 30 is a big mark. I think it's 5 % of podcasters that ever get to 30. I'll also tell you, you'll get hit up by the booking services Brian Aucoin: I have. Jason Fishman: at about 30, 35. Yeah, it'll just become more and more. You'll get guests thrown at you every day. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, I have and you're the second interview on season two. So welcome to season two of the marketing brief podcast. Well, I love Jason Fishman: Awesome. Brian Aucoin: that you're in the investing space. I think I want to start there kind of at the 10,000 foot level because you know, obviously we've seen a lot of VC money dry up investing's in a different place in 2026. How have you seen things change for your business in the last couple of years or this year? Jason Fishman: Sure, sure. I got involved in this space because companies fail if they're under-capitalized. If their revenue isn't supporting their growth and being able to compete in their vertical, they're done. There's horrible stats around it at that. And founders, CEOs are generally limited by their first-degree networks. So with marketing, could go well beyond that. We've built databases of historical. investors for these types of deals see stronger performance as a result can bring investors. Some of them have over 100 of these types of deals in their portfolio. So they're going to be approaching it differently than someone who doesn't understand what investing online and private companies really consists of. And I've definitely seen it change over the years from a heavy, heavy informational process on how these filings work and the SEC approvals and everything around it. It picked up dramatically in what's called the rise of the Robin Hood investor back in 2020. And it showed up and the industry grew and attracted more investors, lot of issuers, larger companies who said, hey, I have millions of people in our audience database. If we launch one of these deals, maybe they could invest and become shareholders alongside us. Some of those companies, millions of customers at that who love what they do and are then owners alongside them. There's been... periods where you know lot more investments are occurring. There's been new cycles that have affected well called investor appetite at different points as well not across all deals, but some of them get dramatically impacted. I've seen a lot more medtech, health tech, biotech companies use these platforms over the past year and I've heard notes from those founders of you know offline capital. VCs, it's really dried up over the past year. They're not the only vertical where that's occurred. Money can be harder to get. And there's three types of filings, primary filings. One's for accredited investors only. And that's more of the traditional angel VC route, maybe 50K, 150K million dollar type investments. The issuer gets to set the minimum. And I could tell you what the average investment would likely be based on that minimum and experience around this. You didn't have Reg CF and Regulation A +, which is high volumes of these small investments. Average investment on a CF in quarter one was $1,800. Brian Aucoin: Right. Jason Fishman: So it means you need a lot of conversions. Every thousand conversions, some repeat conversions from the same individuals there, would be $1.8 million. Got to do a pretty serious marketing campaign, maybe 50,000, 100,000 visits to an offering page to make that occur. But it's a lot easier to ask somebody for. a few hundred, a few thousand dollars than it is to have them come in for a few hundred thousand. So less reservation, strengthened numbers. I'll tell you, the issuers get a lot more value than just the capital. I mean, the marketing campaigns basically added value at that point with a high return on advertising spend, a high return, a high marketing efficiency ratio. But they're getting, from just imagine a thousand people investing in you, you're going to have some Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Jason Fishman: strategic partnerships emerge, you know. Publishers have seen merger and acquisition activity, franchise opportunities, all different types of things come out of it. So more groups gravitating towards this because of less active marketplaces. And I'll tell you more repeat issuers, operators, if you will, people who understand how to do this. They've done it effectively. They've gone from Reg CF, we could raise up to five million to Regulation A+. We could raise up to 75 million. They're investing heavily into the advertising, seeing great returns, but even having business units, teams inside their company just to facilitate the success here. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, I like that you're speaking to the value of it right because if you do get a thousand investors like you know Ten to twenty thousand people have been exposed to what you're trying to do right which is now coming as added value from your offering It kind of sounds like you've unlocked like the long tail of investing Is that kind of kind of what you've done? I oversimplify things. Yeah. Jason Fishman: It's approached, yes, I don't want to oversimplify the yes there, but to a degree and Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Jason Fishman: one that works for many companies, there's a formula that can be very productive for them. It's not to say every company should do it and if they could get funded by one strategic investor offline, they should go down this route. But I would tell you, founders I work with, They've told me the valuations they're able to get here are very favorable in comparison to aggressive VC negotiations they've had. They feel less concerns around losing control and some of the other things that come along with accepting VC capital. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Jason Fishman: So I don't wanna say one's better than the other, but I could tell you a lot of companies who are stuck are definitely benefiting from that long tail approach. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, just unlocking that. Another oversimplification, but when I think about investing teams, they're typically looking for you to identify a market opportunity, how you're gonna fit that market opportunity and who's the team that's gonna bring you that, right? And again, I oversimplify everything, but what's the nuance in there that you find investors are looking for, right? Your consumers, the investors you're looking, you're essentially reaching. Is there nuance in between kind of that that line there? Jason Fishman: Sure, I could speak about some differentiators on successful campaigns, both online and offline, but what you're pointing to is essential. It's generally an offering page. I look at it as a vertical pitch deck that speaks to all of those fundamental points, right? The problem, the solution, the team, the product, the market. You could actually say more forward-looking statements about the market than you can for your company. Reg CF, Regulation A plus is a little bit different. They all have their own nuances towards them. But I would tell you it's then layering digital marketing, best practices, landing page, conversion rate optimization principles. So you want to have as much social proof and third-party validation as possible. You wouldn't necessarily do that in a pitch deck where Every other page is another validator. Maybe, but on an offering page, I absolutely would, as featured by investor testimonials, what our investors are saying, publisher features. There's an update section. You want to have a headline-worthy announcement on a weekly basis. It's all about that engagement. It's all about that ongoing conversation, as you say in your content here. It is not the first touch point that someone gets to one of these offering pages, sees a, you know, let's call it shark tank style pitch video for two and a half minutes, scrolls down a page and says, yeah, let me put my social security number in here. Let me, you know, put thousands of dollars in. Cool, signed up. No, touch point seven, 17. Was looking at a deal last week and it's got advanced analytics around, there's 43 different touch points and I can see the email newsletter and different. publisher placements and different ads and different providers of those ads. So it is more of that journey because it's not just that first financial transaction as much as they need to keep an eye on it. They need to be able to see if there's going to be a liquidity event, some type of exit strategy that they should be on the lookout for. They have to really consider it and how it fits into their life, their portfolio potentially. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Yeah. I love how you're taking the best practices from like e-commerce growth engines and bringing that here. And honestly, and it makes sense, right? Some of the nuance would be like, what's historically worked, right? How do you, how do you prove this out to me, right? Which is also what consumers are looking for when they're trying to make a purchase. So there's a lot of parallels there. I like that you also make the point that, you know, you don't just land on a page and click yes. Because I think a lot of marketers get caught up in that and they're like, why is my why is my conversion rate down? Right and you're like that's a symptom But we always talk about like you have to warm up audiences, right? You've got to introduce something to them You've got to let them know you're speaking in their language. You understand their challenge So it sounds like you're going through a number of those touch points before delivering someone to that final offer sheet Yeah Jason Fishman: Absolutely. People are skeptical on what they see online, Brian Aucoin: Increasingly so. Jason Fishman: particularly around an investment opportunity. Yeah, they're not going to potentially even believe it the first time that they get there. And if you're able to show them with the public amounts raised of how many investors are in the deal, you know, we talked about a thousand, we're working with a client and issuer, Mode Mobile, they have over 59,000 investors, over 63 million raised. So that speaks very loudly. Where if you get to a page and there's no investors or, you know, less than a hundred and less than a hundred K, less than 200 K raised, it says something differently. It's the crowd effect that you're playing for here. They want to be in that line around the block. They don't want to be in an empty restaurant and have that sensation. They may not even know what they're waiting for in that line around the block. They may not even. be familiar with the product at that restaurant, but say, you I wanna go there, I wanna check that out, that looks good. So it is those social dynamics that you're really shooting for. And then if you could layer an immediacy, that fear of missing out, some of the regulation A plus issuers do it by share price increases and dates on when that occurs. There can be perks across these filings. You know, put in this amount, that amount, you invest in this time, that time you get bonus shares, get... other things involved. So you don't have to wait for the closing, which is often when there's the biggest spike, if a campaign hasn't hit its goal by that time. But you want to do something that creates that immediacy, that action. Brian Aucoin: that urgency of course that's awesome well I'd love to ask all my guests one question and season two our question has gone to what is your superpower do you know what your superpower is Jason Yeah, I'm excited. Jason Fishman: getting people excited. I have to use it for the right purposes. Brian Aucoin: That's where the superpower, yeah. Jason Fishman: I've been notorious with friends about talking them into snowboard trips and with extensive travel and you know, I have to make sure I'm applying it towards the right things, Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Jason Fishman: productive, know, healthy things at that. But being able to apply that to marketing, copy, creative, visuals, videos, even just the strategy discussions we're having with clients, I would say. that's something that I'm very passionate about and have received very good responses around. So I'd love to say it was like golf and I play in the 60s every time or something like that. But I think getting people excited is very powerful and where you apply it. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, no it is and you're using your powers for good. That's great Well, that's awesome. I've really enjoyed talking to you How do people get in touch with you if they're interested in DNA if they're interested in listening to the podcast? What's the best way to get in touch with you? Jason Fishman: Absolutely. Brian, love speaking with Diaz as well too. I could see why your audience tunes into every episode here. You could check us out at digitalnicheagency.com. That's what DNA stands for. YouTube.com slash at digital niche agency. could see our podcast playlist, our webinar series, know, guest appearances, any audio channel as well too. But I always point towards the video there. Brian Aucoin: Nice, that's awesome. Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for being a guest today. This has been a brief conversation with Jason Fishman. I'm your host, Brian Aucoin, and stay curious, everyone.