High Intent
High Intent explores unfiltered lessons from the frontlines of modern marketing.
Hosted by Justin Rubner, High Intent features interviews with innovators in brand building, demand generation, sales conversion and beyond.
- Why are CMOs disappearing?
- What behavioral science principles can marketers employ to ensure better conversions?
- How should a new marketing leader scale an early-stage company?
- How can we get sales reps to follow through on cold MQLs?
... These are just some of the topics we explore.
About your host: Justin has spent his marketing career building and scaling marketing programs — for tech startups and Fortune 500 companies ranging from NCR to CoStar Group. He also was a brand strategist for the Air National Guard.
A former business reporter, Justin brings positioning and storytelling front and center to his approach to ensure clarity, pipeline growth and long-term brand equity.
High Intent
The Truth About Crowdfunding: What Actually Drives Backers
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So, your company decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign.
To be part of the estimated $378 million raised via Reg CF platforms like Wefunder, your work’s just started. Once your admin and legal are ironed out, it’s all about the marketing.
Jason Fishman, investor acquisition expert and CEO of Digital Nice Agency, or DNA, helps companies with crowdfunding marketing campaigns. Whether the investor return is a reward or equity, he’s seen what makes a campaign surpass funding goals. He recently managed a webinar that raised over $1.7 million in 24 hours.
Jason’s next on High Intent, where we explore unfiltered advice from the frontlines of modern marketing. High Intent is hosted by Justin Rubner.
So, your company decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign to be part of the estimated $378 million raised via Reg C F fundraising platforms like WeFunder, your work's just started. Once your admin illegal are done, it's all about the marketing. Jason Fishman, investor acquisition expert and CEO of Digital Niche Agency, or DNA, helps companies with these types of campaigns. Whether the investor return is a reward or equity, he's seeing what makes campaigns surpass funding goals. Jason's next on High Intent, where we explore unfiltered advice from the front lines of modern marketing. I'm your host, Justin Rubner. Let's do this. Well, Jason, I'm really excited to have you on High Intent today. We're going to be talking about crowdsourcing.
SPEAKER_01Justin, have been looking forward to this. Excited to be on.
SPEAKER_00Great. So taking from your agency's name, which is Digital Niche Agency, crowdfunding, in my view, is pretty niche. How did you get into this game?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, happy to break it down for you. Created DNA, digital niche agency. As a growth marketing firm, and having to do what their advertising or targeting abilities, not quite by someone's genetic makeup, but I felt like we were targeting based on their audience's DNA. And we found a niche, a specialization in capital raising. I found fundraising to be a common theme among our clientele. It's always part of the discussion. Hey, can you work on this first marketing campaign? Once it's successful, we're going to present it to our finance partner and be able to bring in more capital for this. We were being asked to work on the marketing section of business plans, pitch decks. I was even flying out at times to be part of that investor pitch with clients. So when I first learned about some of the laws, some of the exemptions that were coming into play, the light bulb went off because I realized, hey, I can be of direct value towards sourcing investors for our clients and learned about Reg D, Reg CF, Reg A. Just to break that down quickly, Reg D allows you to target accredited investors. So high net worth individuals, audiences, basically, you know, capital raise, but online, you know, higher investment amounts. And with my advertising background running a mobile advertising network before this, I said, hey, I could target by net worth, I could target by income, I could target by portfolio size and what people are doing online. So we saw success on these types of rounds and right out of the gate. And then Reg CF, Regulation Crowdfunding, and Regulation A Plus, you could actually include non-accredited investors, Reg CF up to $5 million, Regulation A Plus up to $75 million, can tell you about plenty of eight-figure rounds there, can tell you about $5 million campaigns we've oversubscribed on even in the past two weeks. So what I like about those campaigns is although they have a much smaller minimum investment amount, oftentimes a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand dollars, you get this strength in numbers aspect to it. And with advertising outreach, bring in thousands of investors, you then have all of those individuals to essentially act as ambassadors once the fundraising round is complete, even during. So because of the value, because of the impact we were having on these types of rounds, the market basically told us to do more referrals, introductions, case studies. I'd work on an e com campaign and show 3x and you know, a few thousand, a few tens of thousands, maybe a hundred, a few hundred thousand dollars of revenue in one month. Meanwhile, showing these other campaigns where we raised millions of dollars in a single month. So just kind of gravitated more and more towards what was working.
SPEAKER_00At a high level, can you review some of these new laws that you're talking about? And are they good? Are they bad? Or do they make things more difficult? Uh share the light on that if you would.
SPEAKER_01I think they're amazing because they allow founders, they allow CEOs of various sized companies to go well beyond their existing first-party network. And for Regulation D 506C, that allows for the solicitation of accredited investors. An accredited investor is roughly a million dollars net worth outside of their primary home andor past two W-2 income years over $200,000, $300,000 as household and expected for the third year. I basically just say, you know, high net worth and high household income audiences is a good way to look at it. There's a few other things you could do with your business to show you're accredited, but it's going after larger investors. On a reg D campaign, I would say the minimums are most commonly $25K to $50K. And the issuer, the company issuing the investment opportunity, gets to set that, as well as work with their accountants to break down their audits and the valuation and share price accordingly. I've worked on reg D campaigns where it's a $500,000 minimum. I've worked on Reg D campaigns where it's a $5,000 minimum. $100,000 is another common number, but I would say most frequently see $25 to $50K. So it's fewer amounts of larger investors. Yeah. Reg CF regulation crowdfunding, uh, you could raise up to $5 million. Generally, somewhere between a $100 and a $1,000 minimum. Again, the issuer gets to set it. You could raise up to $1.235, about a million and a quarter, without having to do an external audit and then do that audit to go then go to the $5 million regulation A plus. That is the big leaks. Uh public companies could use Regulation A plus and do a priced round. We've worked with companies that have used a Regulation A plus. You said public companies. Yes. Not all of the Reggae's are public, but public companies can. And we've worked with groups that that have. We've worked with other companies that used Regulation A to bring in enough investors, bring enough capital, and go directly into a direct listing and go public from there. And similar minimum types to regulation CF, because it's a larger campaign, gets more interest from groups, institutions, like the SEC family offices. Yes. And then these are all filed with the SEC, a Form 1A, a Form D, a Form C.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay. So I think when the average person thinks about crowdfunding, I would imagine that we're thinking about donations, right? Like go fund me. Someone gets hurt and they need help. But there's other types, as we just talked about. You have rewards, equity, debt. Let's talk about those latter three. If you have a company, a startup, whatever, and you you have an investment need, how do you start? What's an average use case for those three? And we've already kind of talked about how it's regulated, but how do you get started in this?
SPEAKER_01Sure. And like you mentioned, there's Indiegogo and Kickstarter on the reward crowdfunding side. That is not for securities, that's for some type of perk or reward. I did learn my fundamentals from there. And when I was at Indiegogo's offices in 2014, they said look at the total raise amount in thirds and envision raising the first third within the first 24 hours of the campaign. That's a good fundamental to take to any one of these. Uh donation crowdfunding is more of a go fund me a lot of the times around an individual's needs, sometimes around health issues and bills. But but it's a good fundamental from award crowdfunding to take to investment crowdfunding or anywhere at that, because do you need an initial crowd? So that's the result of a good pre-launch campaign for award crowdfunding campaign. What the early steps of an equity or debt campaign look like. And by the way, any of these can be done under different types of capital formation. So for Reg C F, there's preferred stock, common stock, debt, safe, convertible note, revenue share. There's a lot of different ways to structure it. We're on the marketing side. You want to work with an accountant, you want to work with a lawyer, you want to work with the broker dealer, and or a FINER-regulated portal, particularly for Reg CF or Regulation A. It's a website that serves as a marketplace for these deals. There'll be multiple deals on there. Like a Kickstarter. Yeah. But for Reg C F, it's WeFunder, it's Start Engine, it's Republic, it's Net Capital. There are these self-serve platforms such as DealMaker and Issuance, where you can build it to list on your own site. And they're going to walk you through the process. They're regulated by FINRA. They're going to make sure everything you're submitting to the SEC is all compliant.
SPEAKER_00All right, for the non-CFOs in the crowd, FINRA, what is that?
SPEAKER_01They're the governing body that's going to make sure these portals are following all of the laws and rules to protect investors.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Uh, and I've met people from FINRA in person at different events for professional associations I'm a part of. And they're actually very friendly and transparent, contrary to popular belief. It's all around investor protection and security, which I strongly believe in. I think it has to be a safe space, if you will, for all sides of the table. If investors think this is where fraudsters hang out, it's bad for everybody. So I would say follow the rules, you know, to a T. And that's why I mention bringing the right accountants, bringing in the right lawyers, bringing the right portal. Can I advise on some of this stuff? I could share notes from what other founders have told me, but I point to those individuals directly. That's their area of expertise. And again, believing uh you know in that compliance aspect. While you're starting that process, you should begin your marketing strategy.
SPEAKER_00Let's jump into the marketing. So, crowdfunding conversion rates, in other words, the percentage of visitors who actually I saw sits at about 1.5%, roughly. Can that be improved with effective marketing?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And I'm really glad you got into the numbers because it's the only way to measure. And some of the portals, some of the lawyers will just talk about success stories and not exactly the underlying algorithms that got the audiences there. It all begins with that marketing strategy. You fail to plan, you plan to fail. There's something in the background that is making you hesitant towards putting pen to paper to determine what your marketing campaign is going to consist of. Again, this is a marketing exercise, and the best lawyers, portals, accountants in the space will tell you that. I've seen issuers, I've seen founders launch one of these campaigns and think they made it to the finish line. Hey, this deal is going to be online. There's billions of people daily online. It is just the start. I've built a model for strategy called the eight-point plan, where you pull in stats from the industry, you then look at competitors, mostly their marketing campaigns, and audit those because the investors you're going to be going after are likely going to see their deals, likely gonna see their ads, likely gonna see their press articles. So don't shoot in the dark. Understand what your audience has coming across their desk. And success leaves clues. You're gonna be able to pull into that for your campaign. To follow, you then map out your audiences, your channels, where you're gonna reach those audiences with paid advertising and organic content marketing, the creative, the messaging and visuals to go into each of those channels, strategic partners that could help accelerate it, and projections. Again, only way to measures with numbers. I like to look at it as an algorithm of impressions, clicks, and conversions. Anyone not familiar with digital analytics, very simple. How many times an ad or a piece of content has been seen? How much traffic it's actually driving to your offering page? This is where your vertical pitch deck and pitch video lives, and where the entire transaction can take place for most of these broker dealers and portals that you work with. And then how many people physically convert from there? You could apply average investment amounts, like you said, average conversion rate. I think 1.5% is a great number to play for. I've seen very effective campaigns that were 0.5%. 1.5% should be considered good. Oh, yeah. Uh 2% is what we're we're ultimately playing for.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01The consistency is really what you're looking for. And if you're able to drive traffic at a low enough rate, you can have a great return on ad space.
SPEAKER_00Is that a conversion from an impression or a visit?
SPEAKER_01That would be a conversion from both, essentially, like an impression, let's say, of an advertisement, a visit to the offering page that then results in an investment. So you're calculating off the impressions for most of these ad platforms because that's what you're purchasing. You're purchasing a thousand impressions at a time, a CPM, a cost per thousand impressions. Some ad platforms, it's cost per click, so that would be irrelevant. It's just uh what you're bidding on for the click. But I'll tell you, there's a real importance to understanding each stage of the algorithm because if a campaign is not performing, you want to be able to look at each of the ad channels and not just decide whether to continue an ad channel or not, but determine where the traffic's falling off and how to optimize at that stage to improve performance, to manage the campaign to a port of effectiveness. That's where real marketing talent shines.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What kind of budget do you need to do the eight-point plan?
SPEAKER_01Uh, the eight-point plan, I have plenty of resources online uh on my site, on other sites, for groups to do this on their own. I would say if you're working with a consultant or an agency, you should probably plan for you know 5K, 10K, for getting everything in order and prepared to launch your campaign, including writing the messaging and the entire direction of the campaign itself. Then, in regards to advertising, there's different numbers thrown around the space. For years, it was 10x, 10% cost of capital. If you're spending $100,000 and that produces a million in funding, that's looked at as a successful marketing campaign. Even more so, by the way, if it's e-commerce or a different type of initiative. And groups don't usually come to the table and say, hey, here's a hundred thousand dollars, raise us a million. They'll start with $5K a month, $15K a month. You could start as low as $3K a month. I would not recommend running less than $100 a day on these ad platforms. With the A-B testing, it's not set up for performance and the data is very thin, even at that level, let alone underneath. But basically $100 to $500 a day, about $3K to $15K a month. Then as you're seeing somewhere between a 3x and a 10x return on advertising spend, I would recommend that you scale. Scale incrementally, but as long as you're seeing that performance, do so in a frequent and uh aggressive fashion. I could tell you the most successful issuers really ramp stuff up quickly when they see it working. And I say 3x, you may say, hey, I thought you just said 10. If you're scaling up at 3x, as you're seeing more investments come through, even if a small percentage of those are larger investments, maybe your 5K, 25k plus investments, relatively large for these types of rounds, you'll see more of them. And that'll have a very positive effect on your return on ad spend. You'll also see more social sharing. Someone invests, a few days later, you see someone else invest with the same last name, same geographical location. You'll see more earned media. So as that's occurring, you'll have more retargeting opportunities, running ads to people who've been to the offering page because it's going to be seven touch points or more, I find. It's going to be multiple visits, not on the first time they get to your offering page that they put in their personal information, they put in their financial information. So you have more people to retarget and more performance to see come out of that over time.
SPEAKER_00Let's delve a little deeper into the ad channel here. Yeah. I was surprised to see this, but and correct me if I'm wrong, but roughly around 35% of your crowdfunding traffic is coming from paid. Is that roughly accurate?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I don't know exactly where you pulled that stat from, but I can say yes to that.
SPEAKER_00From your website.
SPEAKER_01I'm generally telling people 20 to 50%. Okay. And that's from a half. Yeah, I checked the half. So my team picked the middle number there. That does say I'm impressed. The number I can agree to it. It's really in that 20 to 50% range that I'll see tracked from an advertising pixel, an advertising tracking system. Some of the conversions that come from ads don't get tracked. I can explain all the reasons why with ad blockers, but you wouldn't want to see 100% either. You'd want to see that social sharing and that peer-to-peer marketing generated from those investments coming in.
SPEAKER_00I was surprised to see it that high because these platforms are marketplaces themselves, and you'd think they'd be running, I don't know, 90% of the traffic to your project.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So if we look at WeFunder, they have 208 live reg CF campaigns right now. They have about 80 others that are in the test of water stage, the pre-launch marketing stage. They have thousands that they've run on there to date. Their investor audiences, be it that they're large, have somewhat of a fatigue from emails being sent to them. How often are they actually getting to one of these websites? Meanwhile, if a marketing agency has a list of investors who've participated on that platform, then you're uploading that list for advertising targeting. And if roughly every dollar, $2 you spend is a visit to that offering page in advertising spend. And then maybe you know you're getting that, let's call it 1% conversion rate, and it's a hundred, two hundred dollar cost per acquisition. If the average investment is between a thousand and two thousand dollars, that's a 10x return on ad spend. So $1, $2 click, $100,000, $200 cost per acquisition, $1,000, $2,000 average investment amount. It's going towards someone who has invested in a WeFunder before, or perhaps it's a different list that the marketing agency has for start engine investors or other platforms. They don't know how they're being targeted, the prospective investors. They could actually look a little into it if they click on the advertisement and could see more about how they were targeted. They just know that they keep seeing this offering everywhere they go. When I speak to investors in person, they're saying, Yeah, I kept seeing them online. I'll even ask if it was an ad. And I don't know. I just kept seeing them online. So that repeat exposure really goes a long way. And they they may have already invested on the platform, but without that driver, if someone invested on a deal in 2022 or in 2019, what's the likelihood they're getting to that site looking for new deals? They haven't been there in years. But if they're brought there and they have an account, the checkout process is streamlined, they're far more likely to convert and there's advertising spend used to get them there.
SPEAKER_00Well, obviously, a campaign is more than just advertising. Can you walk us through the channels here? What we're talking about.
SPEAKER_01I like to break it into three categories of content marketing, advertising, and outreach. I've heard it as many loose bullet points and these 20 things, and people can remember three things. I can remember three things. As soon as it's four, I need to start writing content, advertising, and outreach. Yes. So outbound, basically. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Content, I'd also put into three categories: social, email, long form. Social media. It's likely going to be found when a prospective investor and yes, not accredited investors like to do due diligence when they're searching around and looking for more information about what you do. And what they see in comparison to other investment opportunities that are coming across their desk could shape their opinion and whether they're going to act or not, or you know, maybe invest into something else. So I like to think of it as headline-worthy announcements on a weekly basis, distributed across social email, and long form. Social would include LinkedIn, probably Facebook and Instagram in there as well, too, particularly if you're running meta advertising. Email.
SPEAKER_00So Jason, uh, for social, we're basically talking a video with the founder showing prospective investors the cool things that their product does or service, and encouraging them to get involved.
SPEAKER_01I think that's a great post. Yeah, I would encourage multiple posts on multiple channels per week. We're typically doing three or more per week on three or more channels. So that type of pitch posts, fantastic. More posts on the team, more posts on the problem, more posts on the solution, more posts on publishers that have featured them, more posts on clients and investors and testimonials, more posts on industry they're in and projected growth, which you could speak far more about than your own forward-looking statements. You want to be able to create content around anything that an investor may ask you. So you're answering it before they get the chance to. Also, the more social proof, the more third party validation, the better. Hey, we're speaking at this conference next week. Take a look at this podcast we did last week. Look at this uh client testimony, look at this write up from yesterday. Thank you, entrepreneur. For putting this out, right? The user-generated content. Yes. User, publisher, the more of that, the better. People don't believe what they see online. They're skeptical on new investment opportunities. You want it front and center across your offering page and every one of these content channels. Then your email marketing. So this is to your email list that is growing throughout the course of the campaign. I would say a weekly newsletter and pointing at many of the same things. Okay. Also, I would build drip sequences, one for prospective investors who have spoken to offline, one for those who haven't. And then long form content, monthly webinar. First one could be a pitch presentation. Next could be a town hall format. You can have guests there with you, especially if they have a large engaged audience of their own. I see hundreds of thousands of dollars at times raised during the webinar itself. I've seen figures raised within a 24-hour window of the webinars at that. Uh, we did one last month. It raised over 1.7 million within the 24-hour window. Reg CF, so high volumes of small investments, some larger ones.
SPEAKER_00These are virtual uh online webinars usually.
SPEAKER_01Yes. You can do it in person. You can do it in person and have a digital distribution, but I would say you should absolutely do at least one a month digitally. I know groups that do uh recorded webinars. I like these more. I know groups that do it weekly. I think that's great if you have enough volume. Some of the credit investor run uh campaigns run off a weekly one and you know, larger group pitch to investors. So monthly webinar, article every other week, search engine, LLM, AI platform friendly, if you will. Both of these, by the way, the long form content pieces can be splintered into shorter formats for your social media posts, going back to what to write there. You could be pulling clips, could be pulling quotes from this. So I would say at least one article a month recapping the webinar, and then another one, if we're working on, we do as part of an interview process with the client. So we're capturing voice, capturing expertise. But there's many ways to write this. But a thought leadership piece at least once a month. So you're getting those two articles. Many of these sites, of these offering pages, have update sections, a weekly update or more there. It is supposed to be the centralized location for all information. All investors need to be provided with the same info. So you want to have any meaningful update put onto the portal there. I would also say a press release at least some point in the campaign, not necessarily to drive traffic, you know, the pluses and minuses with press releases, but at least show some syndication and be able to potentially inspire some writers to reach out, but show some syndication. Some people are talking about you.
SPEAKER_00What are the minuses of a press release?
SPEAKER_01I feel that some founders believe it's going to be more impactful than it really is. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe a long time ago, but it's still effective.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And when we're working with publicly traded companies, and let's say Regulation A Plus campaign, virtually everything they do, because it needs to be you know announced publicly that they do a press release around. So there are many benefits to it. There's a lot of different publishers you could bring into the mix. A lot of publishers you could purchase press from at this point uh as well, especially for these types of campaigns. So we've done a lot of that. Another thing I would put into this content marketing category is uh guest podcasting, which you're then able to talk about on your social media posts and in your email newsletters and can recap in your long form content pieces. So potentially outreach to podcasters, likely starting with people in your own network.
SPEAKER_00This is a full funnel spectrum campaign here, just like anything else you're marketing.
SPEAKER_01Yep. In fact, on these Reg CF and Regulation A plus campaigns where the investment takes place on the offering page, I really do look at it as e-commerce. First securities, you're you're purchasing securities, you're following securities law, you want to have the right investment strategy and have it fit into the right areas of your portfolio as an investor. But it is the same measurements from the high-level view. And then we drive traffic into that funnel, into that content marketing funnel with advertising. You're prospecting people to that offering page with ads, you're retargeting people who've been to that offering page with ads. Meta, fundamental spot to do this. You could do list uploads, you could target by equity crowdfunding, you could target by various investor titles on there, can test out Google, some search keywords, some display banners. There's many other social platforms, AI platforms to buy ads on, banner ads, video ads, sponsored content. I would tell you financial email newsletters are of particular interest. You could buy ad space within those. There are other investor email newsletters that charge the investors and not the issuer, but they generally reach out to you. We have some relationships and can make some introductions, but they're very selective on who you can see.
SPEAKER_00Like yours would have relationships with these institutions that have the financial newsletters.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I look to not overstate that, but yes, absolutely, because they are their own operating entities. So I wouldn't want an issuer to think, hey, DNA or another agency knows these guys, so we're absolutely going to be published there. There are external evaluation processes. But uh advertising, the reason I love it, it's very scalable. So if you're getting a good cost per acquisition, if you're getting a good return on ad spend, it's not a matter of, hey, can we do more outreach to publishers or podcasters or newsletters or institutions, anything like that? We can somewhat systematically increase the ad budget, therefore increasing the traffic, or decrease it depending on yes. Hopefully it's increased though, because that shows it's performing going to the next levels. But yes, you can decrease in real time. Yeah. And then lastly, is outreach. Big fan of LinkedIn for outreach. There's a specific way to you know build the messaging, and it's best to get that approved by legal counsel to ensure compliance, but essentially building relationships on LinkedIn and connecting with new people and DMing them and whatnot. Yeah, send an invitation, just like any other sales motion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Some groups will do it where it's it's just to build a relationship and talk about what they're doing, and then an investor will ask them for more information. They could direct to the offering page or the next webinar or a different type of route. But uh, I find people would be far more responsive on LinkedIn. So 20% plus acceptance rate of invitations, 20% plus response rate to new messages from contacts, many cases much higher, uh, depending on the type of round and the ask, putting a scheduling link in there and seeing you know, bookings and just add it to the calendar on a daily basis. You know, you got profile picture, mutual connections, background, it just leads to a warmer dynamic. It's more trustworthy. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Are we talking, you know, the companies seeking marketing services for crowdfunding? Is this mostly consumer products? Uh, or does it run the gamut to software as well? What are we generally talking about here?
SPEAKER_01You know, it used to be centered around a few verticals, and then those verticals would change the next year, and there's different industries that did well using these vehicles the next year. I have to tell you, it's it's full spectrum.
SPEAKER_00Everything.
SPEAKER_01The campaign we oversubscribed on CF a couple weeks ago, they're a graphene company, material that'll likely replace steel and have various different uh applications for different verticals. The month before uh worked on a regulation A Plus campaign that oversubscribed at 65 million influencer marketing AI platform software that that agencies are buying. We have work on a campaign right now that's doing very well. Over 20 million raised, and they they raised even more last year for uh mobile phones, software and hardware, where users earn while they're using their phones. So all that time, all the people used to own phones. Uh, have worked with everything from tunnel boring companies to farming robots to oil and gas to real estate to uh restaurants, mom and pop restaurants, larger chains, alcohol, various types of AI and robotics, data compaction companies with government contracts. So, again, really across the board. It is not right now, we're uh in the planning stage and actually working with some reg D campaigns in space and following the SpaceX IPO. A lot of the uh companies that inquire on our site tend to mirror what I'm reading about in the media at that time.
SPEAKER_00The Tunnel Boring Company, I don't think that's Elon Musk's company.
SPEAKER_01No, no, but probably an attributing factor to why they did well. Yeah, cool. Elon Musk is actually referenced in a lot of campaigns, including a boxable, foldable, tiny home company. Elon was an early owner of the the homes, and uh they actually just went public this month. But then he's quoted in Energy X in a variety of different campaigns. His quote on an industry is then used in the offering page to show relevancy on what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00Let's talk a little bit about audience testing. Is there a fair degree of that in a marketing campaign with crowdfunding? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Test optimized scale. Something I say a lot. It's my approach towards marketing, my approach towards growth, summarized in three words. And for any ad campaign, you want to test audiences, you want to test creatives, you want to test the funnel. Not just a funnel, but variants, variants of each of those. We'll commonly begin with four to ten audiences right out of the gate, and then see the top performers, look to improve the others, and then look to phase out and add new audiences so we don't have our hands tied just to the called evergreen audiences at that point. Same with creatives, four to eight right out of the gate, and then another four every week thereafter for for most campaigns. Funnels, often three funnels that we're testing out, three different URLs, and we'll optimize towards where getting the best performance, particularly if it's you know a webinar landing page, let's say a Facebook instant form autofill, and then the offering page. Sometimes there's there's other types of variants in there as well, too. For audiences, you have standard targeting filters, age, gender, geographics, device type, day and time of week. You then have detailed targeting uh fields that you could fill in, some around financial information, some around interests and behaviors and what they're doing on any one of these platforms or networks of sites. So we want to have some audiences that are broader and allow us to cast a wider net to then pull in as we're seeing performance. Okay. Our list uploads play a large role in this brands' list uploads of their customers, of their clients, of their networks, even if they're just to create look-alike audiences of and have the ad platforms find people who are similar to those individuals, can really go a long way. But uh A-B tests let the performance show you what's working best. Assumptions are merely assumptions. You need the data to physically show it's working. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, let's uh wrap up here with some examples. Can we start with the bad? What are some common mistakes that you've seen with crowdfunders?
SPEAKER_01I had mentioned earlier that some of the founders will look at the administrative process as the heavy lifting, and once they're live, that they're to somewhat of a finish line. Yeah. And what they're doing is so amazing, it's just going to attract investors in its own right. That is the biggest mistake. I would tell you about 50% of issuers have somewhat stagnant campaigns.
SPEAKER_00They have that mentality.
SPEAKER_01And then that is why. If you build it, they'll come.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And it's not the case. The top 10% really get all the investments, and they're the ones who are actively marketing. You should look at a marketing strategy, even a compliant pre-launch marketing campaign before you go live. Back to that crowdfunding concept of that first day, that first week, and the importance of it. Uh, next, I would tell you that many crowdfunders don't understand traffic algorithms. You do. You said right out of the gate, hey, 1.5% conversion rate. And that that paints a picture. That shows you if you bring in a hundred thousand visits to that offering page from targeted audiences, maybe you receive 1,500 investments, which is fantastic in many respects. They may not think that. Well, if you don't have plans on how to get those hundred thousand people there, you're dead in the water. Uh, I've had people tell me their campaign's not working, and I've looked at their analytics with them, and they had 1,200 people to their offering page to date and 50 investments, about 70k raised, but they thought, you know, I'm trying to raise five million dollars. What's 70k? Meanwhile, I'm able to show them hey, you're at a substantial con you're over 5% on your conversion rate. You need more traffic here, right? Well, maybe when we raise more, we don't want to spend it on anything on marketing until then. Backwards thinking.
SPEAKER_00I've heard that before in other industries for sure. Oh, yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Anything else about uh common mistakes? Not scaling as aggressively uh as they should. The time clock, time is the most valuable asset. I could say that for life, even more so for an investment crowdfund campaign. Every day matters. Do not wait to scale until next week if you could scale at multiples exponential returns on ad spend today, and what that can mean in terms of driving audience that could then show up during the closing. If you're two, three months in and your marketing campaign's only doing okay, it's not yielding the results you want yet. Keep in mind it's gonna be, you know, a user journey to convert people you're getting there today. There is a rush of conversions and investment as the closing messaging is announced and there's a fear of missing out. So you do not want to let up on marketing. And then just uh the more social proof, the more third-party validation, the better. Just need to emphasize that again. You should have it mapped out, you know, who's talking about you each week throughout the duration of your campaign. If not, that's a shortcoming.
SPEAKER_00Great. You mentioned some depositive strategies here, but can we wrap up with what a recent crowdfunding company did right and what we can learn about it? Maybe the graphene company that you had mentioned or whatever you talk about.
SPEAKER_01Avidane graphene is a great one to look at. I will mention that is now their fourth deal and fourth deal with us, and they have raised over $15.75 million through these vehicles. The first deal 1.375, the next deal 4.5, and it was actually increased from 3.7 and 4.2, and that was the final level for that round that the board would approve 4.5, and then 5 million in 43 days last year. 5 million in 37 days this year. Absolutely. And their CEO, Bradley Larshan, is a genius, and we're really working on his behalf. I give all the credit to the founders on these campaigns. They're the ones who are creating the business, they're the ones who are putting in all the groundwork. Brad will use the offering page essentially as a PPM and direct investors back to it. Brad gets approached with all different types of deals and is able to really hold his value, maintain that level, even with strategic investors, and say, you know, if we're not able to do it at these terms, I'm just gonna take it back to the crowd. Or, you know, we have a deal live. You're welcome to invest there. And it's been very effective for him, it's been a very powerful tool. Uh, he's been able to look at some past rounds with heavier ad spends and large audience building. And then audience has led for much stronger returns and lighter spends over the past two rounds, over the past two years. Because you're building up the awareness. Absolutely. Still saw over a 13x return on ad spend on that $4.5 million deal, but much larger marketing efficiency ratios for round three and round four. He's commonly looked at it as advertising, we'll do the singles and doubles and a few strategic conversations he's having, may see some home runs come on top of that. And the more hits, the more home runs, the more stimulated elsewhere. I will tell you his campaign closed two weeks ago today, and it was during a webinar. During that day, $905,000 was raised, and there was an investment of over 800,000 from advertising, individual that never spoke to the company before offline from ads, tracked with an ad pixel. And yeah, so we were happy to hit a home run on that one. But our rising tides lift all ships in terms of these channels. The more press, the more email newsletters, the more advertising, the more webinars, all of that that's done, the more effective all of the channels are.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I imagine, but I don't know that a lot of your time up front is spent on the story, the messaging, the positioning, etc.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, we get brought in at all different stages of the campaign. So if a client is not yet live, we're able to spend a lot more time on the story during that eight-point strategy, that eight-point plan. And potentially if we're building the offering page and/or pitch video. For other clients, we're brought in during their final month and are there to max out what they could do there during their closing. Yeah. When that fear of missing out is present. And everything in between, of course. I've been able to perform on campaigns where there are six days. And the campaign was only live for six days. They had to close on April 30th. It's it's a big date in the industry. A lot of campaigns have to close, and over a million dollars raised in those six days. And we're on the phone scaling ad spends every day based on the performance from the day before. So we've we spent a lot less time on storytelling on that one versus a campaign where it's months of planning before going live. But yes, you want to be able to capture the audience and make them experts in what you do in as few words as possible. They're not going to invest in something they don't understand. You cannot command that much attention that quickly. So if you're able to do it in fewer words, pass the glance test, they'll go in for a deeper dive, but otherwise it's just going to go over their head. They're busy. And your investors are your biggest ambassadors. Someone comes in, you want them talking about it on the golf course the next day. You want them talking about it at the water cooler. I don't know if that's still a term we use. I still use it at the coffee pot, at the Nespresso machine, whatever it is. Their kombucha machine. Kombucha machine. That's a new one. I like it.
SPEAKER_00Well, very cool. I've learned a lot about this. What's your parting wisdom?
SPEAKER_01Do more. Do more, do more, do more. I tell myself that every day. So if it sounds preachy, it's really just meant to uh be saying my own self-thought out loud. When I see these marketing campaigns failed, they're usually not doing enough and complaining. Not hitting enough channels, not spending enough. When I see someone who goes to conferences all the time tell me that conferences weren't productive for them, they're not doing enough follow-ups. And I can pinpoint it with them. If someone's not getting enough media or enough podcast appearances, they're probably not doing enough outreach and building enough relationships and working with enough connectors. So, whatever it is for you, do more. I told you the top 10% get all the investments on these deals. You need to position your brand to be up there. You need to be doing enough activity to do so. Don't let fear get in the way. Do more, do more, do more. Cool.
SPEAKER_00Well, Jason, thanks for being on. My pleasure. It's been a lot of fun. All right. Take care. Thanks, Justin. Thank you, everyone.