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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel podcast, host Michelle Kesil speaks with Jason Fishman, a growth marketer specializing in investor acquisition. Jason shares insights into his innovative marketing strategies for real estate investors, detailing his approach to building awareness and engagement through digital channels. He discusses the importance of a structured marketing strategy, the success stories from his campaigns, and the evolving landscape of digital marketing. Jason emphasizes the significance of building relationships and leveraging referral partnerships to find clients, while also exploring new trends in marketing, including the use of podcasts and AI tools.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Jason Fishman (00:00)
And I’ll tell you, once you’re able to crack that code,it all starts sounding a lot simpler. You’re able to say, hey, these audiences with this creative, these follow ups, I’m able to get a 40X. I’m able to get this substantial return on my marketing spend. It’s very scalable. That’s what digital really allows for. So beyond…
All of the lunches and coffees and meetings and calls that could occur offline if you have these digital channels working to generate more leads for you to retarget, to follow up with everyone in the funnel, not just the digitally generated leads, ⁓ that there’s really no limit for how many people you can go after.
Michelle Kesil (02:13)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to chatting with, Jason Fishman, who’s been making serious moves running an agency called DNA. So excited to have you on the show today, Jason.Jason Fishman (02:35)
Thanks Michelle, been looking forward to this.Michelle Kesil (02:37)
Yeah, me too. think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching helping investors through your marketing efforts. So let’s dive in.Jason Fishman (02:51)
Let’s do it.Michelle Kesil (02:52)
Awesome. First off, for those not yet familiar with you and your world, can you give the short version of what your main focus is?Jason Fishman (03:03)
Absolutely. Investor acquisition. I have worked as a growth marketer for over 15 years. I found a lot of brands, a lot of projects were not hitting their goals, they’re undercapitalized. So once I learned about laws, exemptions that allowed us to use digital marketing to target, to engage, to convert investors using online marketing tools, the light bulb went off because I realized, hey, we can…effectively fundraise for these groups that we’re talking to, working with. I began working on Regulation D506C campaigns in 2015, allowing for the solicitation of accredited investors. My background’s in advertising, so I able to utilize data partnerships to reach high net worth, high household income audiences. Saw success, was introduced to more companies, more issuers. To date, have worked on over 500 deals that have collectively produced nine figures of capital.
We do so through content, through advertising, through outreach. I showcase a lot of the results of my podcast, test, optimize, scale, over 200 episodes, over 200 guests. I feel like I’m always learning, but present on the topics regularly. We live online at this point. So why should you not be able to build relationships with investors, be able to tell them about your opportunities on the investor side, have quality deal flow coming across your desk.
and we’ve been able to continue to grow. believe this is gonna be the primary approach towards capital formation in years to come. And I try to be an open book around how we see success around it.
Michelle Kesil (04:38)
That’s amazing, such an innovative line of work that you’re creating.Jason Fishman (04:46)
Thank you. It keeps us excited. It’s very fulfilling to hit the full goals. I’m always happy waking up in the morning.Michelle Kesil (04:55)
Amazing. How do you work with real estate investors specifically? How does this marketing effort target them?Jason Fishman (05:54)
Sure, sure. So I work on behalf of the sponsors. I work on behalf of different real estate ⁓ portals, platforms, mobile apps, what publishers, what have you, and are running marketing campaigns to build awareness, get traffic engagement from investors. So the investors see the creative, but I’m working the promotions, the campaigns, I’m working directly with the groups who looking to bring them on.We’re generally beginning with a marketing strategy. There’s a model I’ve built called the eight point plan where we’re building an algorithmic roadmap to the goals. We’re looking at the current stats of the industry. We’re looking at the marketing that competitors are running. So what else are these target audiences going to be presented with during the capital race? I want to know exactly how other groups are getting their attention and obtaining market share, what ads they’re running.
organic content, email follow-ups, media, events. I want to know it all, so I’m not shooting in the dark. We then look to take those findings and blueprint out audiences, creatives, ⁓ marketing channels that we are going to be using during the campaign. We look for strategic partners that we can outreach to, put together a perspective map, a messaging sequence, any administrators of…
of the target markets we’re going after. And then projections, the only one measures with numbers. Impressions, clicks, conversions of the digital metrics and there’s associated numbers with each of those. But I want to know how much we’re looking to hit each week, each month from each channel. Allows me later to identify key drivers to pinpoint where performance is falling off for any under producing channel. I put it all together in an executive summary and activation section and then we’re off to the races.
We can build offering pages, pitch videos, different types of digital environments to educate audiences on the opportunity. We then drive traffic into it with advertising and with outreach, but it all starts with that strategy. I can’t tell you how many developers, projects want to test one channel. They’re interested in the return on ad spend, the cost of capital, you know, how much.
Outreach we have to do to see results, but not interested in underlying factors behind it. The first marketing campaigns are always tests. They need to be validated with positive results in the reporting. We always have assumptions going into a campaign, but we need the data to show us what’s working. So we start with that strategy, activate across those channels. And it’s really more of a focus of how we’re to get enough people there at a high enough conversion rate.
each step along the way from the lead form and getting a sponsor, getting an issuer, speaking with a real estate investor from there, and then ramping it up as we see pockets of performance, as we see channels producing at strong return on ad spend, strong marketing efficiency ratio levels.
Michelle Kesil (09:05)
Amazing. Yeah, sounds like such a advanced process and yeah, so many different layers in order to get that ultimate goal of, you know, what the investors are looking for.Jason Fishman (09:22)
Absolutely. And you know, you have that CFO conversation of, how much does this all cost? Is it producing? You know, we’ll get calls at times from clients a week in, two weeks in. You know, when can we expect to hit the whole goal? But it really is that higher level view towards the strategy, the channels, the audiences, what we’re doing in terms of follow ups.And I’ll tell you, once you’re able to crack that code,
it all starts sounding a lot simpler. You’re able to say, hey, these audiences with this creative, these follow ups, I’m able to get a 40X. I’m able to get this substantial return on my marketing spend. It’s very scalable. That’s what digital really allows for. So beyond…
All of the lunches and coffees and meetings and calls that could occur offline if you have these digital channels working to generate more leads for you to retarget, to follow up with everyone in the funnel, not just the digitally generated leads, ⁓ that there’s really no limit for how many people you can go after.
Michelle Kesil (11:02)
Amazing. What kind of success stories do you have from some of these types of clients? And yeah, what did that process look like?Jason Fishman (11:13)
Sure, sure. One of the first real estate campaigns I worked on, we saw 250K investment during the first week from an advertisement. No one on the team had met, spoken with, even once they got to the site, the investor just put in funds and move forward. ⁓ That to me ⁓ has been what I’ve been chasing ever since. No, we’ve seen seven figure, we’ve seen larger investments, but just the fact that some groups are able torun ads and they’re offering for their asset class and their market and the category and the details and returns and everything that that’s speaking to the investors is so strong that just getting ⁓ presented with the opportunity they’re moving forward. We’ve worked with groups on Reg D where it’s a 500k minimum investment and you know I’ve seen ⁓
Investors participate at levels where it’s 25 to 50K, everywhere in between. But I would say what we’re generally playing for is about a $50 cost per lead and then one out of 50 of those leads closing for a $2,500 acquisition cost. Even at a 25, 50K minimum on a Reg D campaign targeting investors around real estate offering. I’m anticipating 100K or more.
as the average investment. So if we’re seeing one out of the $50 leads close, $2,500 acquisition cost, 100K, let’s just say baseline as the average investment, the average order value, that’s the 40X I was referring to before. And even going after eight figure larger goals, if we’re able to do that consistently with the traffic channel, it’s powerful tool set that we’re using.
So that’s what we’re generally playing for. Have worked with groups that are impact investment funds. Have worked with groups that there’s multiple streams of revenue beyond just the ⁓ real estate itself. ⁓ Everything from coffee farms to storage units to car washes, short-term rental, long-term rental. How we tell that story with the creative is the fun part. But those are…
basically the numbers we’re playing for and on the conservative side, I will say there’s a hit or miss element. It’s not as simple as launch a marketing campaign and you’re gonna get these types of returns. But going back to that statement before of, know, once you figure this out, you can do it consistently and at higher and higher volumes. That’s what have kept clients coming back. After a year, a couple years, some of the real estate funds we’ve worked with have brought in these types of services in-house.
We’ve consulted for a period of time, part of the handoff, but they have lofty goals of how many investors they want to have five, 10 years down the line. Investors, not just a list of people have participated with them. So as they launch a new fund, a new offering, they can fill it very quickly.
Michelle Kesil (14:23)
Yeah, that’s amazing. I love how you were able to get that goal and support those investors in that job that they’re really trying to get to.Jason Fishman (14:39)
Absolutely.Michelle Kesil (14:40)
Awesome. What are you most focused on now when it comes to solving or scaling the next thing in your business?Jason Fishman (15:34)
Well, I always need to be ahead of the curve in terms of digital marketing, digital behavior, trends. always testing out new products. And I generally test them out on our agency. So everything from search advertising, social advertising, organic social media, podcasting, webinars, we’ve ⁓ first tested out for DNA and then rolled out to clients.have to, of course, change up the audiences that we’re going after, but really want to understand a medium and the performance metrics behind it. We’re beginning to run ads from publisher pages. So think ⁓ a print publisher and their Facebook account. your favorite print magazine and then the Facebook account from them. There’s ⁓ gatekeepers that actually allow ⁓ brands to run advertising from those social pages. And you can run it from your own ad account.
so we can add our custom audiences, our investors to it, but it’s an ad coming from that print publisher. There’s a lot happening in the world of podcasting and a lot more clients are coming to us saying, hey, I want to appear on a podcast every week, podcast every day, 50, 100 over the course of three months, six months, what have you. Our content marketing, our advertising, our outreach programs can build off all the placements that they have.
So whether they’re speaking at a conference or they’re just a guest on a podcast, we’re creating a profile picture and a quote from the event publisher logo of the podcast. It’s become very powerful. We’ve seen it perform in various verticals on campaigns we watch outside of our own. Again, always looking out there, seeing what’s coming next. Some of the secondary social platforms are working for these investor acquisition channels at new levels.
TikTok’s always brought up and before we necessarily see the conversion behavior around it and that that is now happening and not just TikTok but other secondary social platforms. ⁓ But running ads from ⁓ editorial pages, running ads from ⁓ different ⁓ social channels, more on the organic side and around podcasting is where some of our conversations have been focused recently.
Michelle Kesil (18:03)
Yeah, I love that. know podcasting is such a powerful platform to share people’s message.Jason Fishman (18:11)
Absolutely. So many different ways to repurpose it as well. I recently took all of my episodes, turned them into transcripts and created a GPT in AI so that audiences could ask a question. And it’s as if me, the guests I’ve had on are answering. And I’ve had to put additional framework around that.But just one of the ways we’re using AI tools, playing with a few others for marketing automation as well. Big focus on quality for me. It’s got to be beyond human capabilities really. But the ability to speak to large audiences at a moment’s notice daily through an AI is definitely a standout for me. So we’ve been testing that out a bit as well.
Michelle Kesil (19:02)
Yeah, of course that makes sense. was actually curious about that when it comes to, you know, all these marketing and scaling at this large level. ⁓ Like how you’re doing it. Is it just through like you have your employees that are doing all this research or if it’s more automated or a mix of both? Like what does that look like?Jason Fishman (19:24)
So we’re finding out about the latest marketing trends through structured scheduled research. As an example, one of the categories where I run investor acquisition campaigns regularly is investment crowdfunding. Reg CF, Regulation A +, Reg D. Reg D, because it’s a credit investors, isn’t always included as part of that list.But I go on to King’s Crowd, I go on to other platforms where I could look at all the live deals who are also going to target, know, Reg D investors, real estate opportunities, stuff that is not showing up on those charts. But at the same time, there’s a story in the numbers. So I want to look at how much they raised the past week, who’s raised the most, how many investors, how much capital that they brought on. I then do a weekly report on that and then we audit one of the top issuers.
of the week. So let’s say they raised $8 million last week for the regulation A plus campaign in path to 50 million or 75 million. I want to know how much traffic they’re getting to their site. I can go on Facebook ads library, look at what ads they’re running. I could go into a search advertising ⁓ platform, search marketing platform, look at how they’re ranking organically, look at what ads they’re running, if any, on search engines. I could look at who’s talking about them in the media, which invest in newsletters.
They were featured in Success Leaves Clues, and I need to be able to break all of that down. We then have ⁓ Instagram ⁓ threads and different chats among our team where we’re sharing standout advertising, standout marketing to us. Then have our account managers and product ideation for set blocks each week so that, again, we’re trying to be at the forefront of what’s going to occur next in digital.
Michelle Kesil (21:21)
Amazing. Yeah, that’s super cool how many different ways there are to understand and grow with marketing.Jason Fishman (21:30)
It sure is. Yep.Michelle Kesil (21:34)
When it comes to growing your business, whether that’s relationship building or networking, what has made the biggest difference for you in finding the right clients?Jason Fishman (21:47)
Well, the majority of our clients come from referral partnerships, introductions to groups who are preparing a capital raise or already live and looking to see more performance, more results, more investments on their route. I have over 200 referral partners that have built throughout the years. They’ve seen our work and know that we should be at least speaking to these CEOs.if not working with them directly. On top of that, we take our own medicine. As mentioned before, the marketing we run for clients, the same channels we use for ourselves. So we run search ads, we run Facebook ads to get signups for webinars and to retarget leads. We banner retargeting showing up on major media websites and apps for the agency. Have outreach occurring daily.
to all the issuers that we see on King’s Crowd. ⁓ On the scc.gov site, the Edgar filings, you can look at 506Ds that are filed, ⁓ credit investor campaigns, and I have my team reach out to them, email, LinkedIn outreach, and have goals for how many discovery calls are booked a week from that, how many proposals we’re getting out, and how that leads into our business development goals.
Because a lot of our campaigns can be shorter, know, three months, six months, ⁓ sometimes even less than that. So for an agency, that means we’re always looking to ⁓ develop more clients, develop more partners. On the organic content marketing side, we put out multiple social media posts on multiple channels per week, weekly email newsletter, we have drip systems to our landing pages for ⁓ website organic leads, as well as advertising landing page leads.
have a monthly webinar, I create a new educational deck each month and have a different team member on with me on our webinar, have a weekly podcast each week with a different external guest, many clients, strategic partners, but also just other thought leaders in the space. I’m also a part of different professional organizations. So October 2025, CFPA Summit in DC, speaking on a panel ⁓ very soon here, ⁓ about… ⁓
how to market these types of deals, Reg CF Regulation A plus Reg D, part of the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance, part of the Forbes Agency Council, we’ve been featured by Inc. 5000, create content for various different publishers, work with various different accelerators. It’s important as a thought leader to have recommendations put out there regularly and to be able to showcase your work, case studies.
constantly being published on our site, with client approvals there. So all of that helps us build strategic partnerships and still confidence in groups that are looking to raise millions of dollars and have limited budget that they can use to do it. ⁓ I frankly want to see a higher success rate industry-wide for Reg D, for some of the funds and different groups using investor marketing. So I try to ⁓ really get out there.
and be transparent about where we’re seeing results.
Michelle Kesil (25:11)
Yeah, absolutely, that’s so important and yeah, I love that you’re using your own methods and all these other channels to create those relationships.Jason Fishman (25:23)
Absolutely. It would be an oversight for us not to.Michelle Kesil (25:26)
Of course. Awesome. Before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more from you. Where can people find you and connect with you?Jason Fishman (25:39)
Sure. I always welcome direct contact. You can find me on LinkedIn, Jason Fishman, based here in Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles. ⁓ You can find me there. You can go to our website, digitalnicheagency.com. DNA’s easier to say, but our full name, digitalnicheagency.com. Definitely would point to our YouTube channel, which has our monthly webinar series. ⁓of 60 or more webinars can be accessed there. There are weekly podcasts, guest appearances, a lot of great video content. on top of the audio channels, our podcast is distributed to point you to our YouTube.
Michelle Kesil (26:22)
Perfect. Well, listen I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. Thank you for being here.Jason Fishman (26:28)
My pleasure, Michelle. Enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on.Michelle Kesil (26:32)
Of course. And for the listeners tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators just like Jason who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.
