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Brad Michelson – Crypto Marketing & eToro Transcript

July 10, 2020 robmcnealy Crypto, Social Media, Transcripts 0:00 Comments Off on Brad Michelson – Crypto Marketing & eToro Transcript

Brad Michelson - Crypto Marketing & eToro

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Hey folks Rob McNealy here. And today we’re talking to Brad Michelson. He is a crypto marketing guru based in New York. And today we’re going to learn all about the ins and outs of marketing in the crypto space. And I think you see this a lot with a lot of developer led projects out there that marketing seems to be the thing that developers hate a lot. But I want to get a Brad’s kind of input and his take on things. So Brad, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Doing great. Thanks for having me.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk with us. Marketing is something that it’s near and dear to my heart. And I think that in really for there to be crypto mass adoption, I think marketing, at least from the crypto side of things really needs to ramp up his game. And I want to kind of explore that a little bit with you today if possible, but but before we dive into kind of all this, you know, marketing stuff. Let’s talk a little bit about you. What’s your background and how did you get into crypto marketing?

Brad Michelson – eToro
So I originally started out in e commerce marketing, so I was at an agency for a few years and learn the ins and outs of paid media over there. ended up leaving as the director of strategy at the agency went in house to an e commerce brand and didn’t have the best time and then I when I was looking for a job from there, I found my first crypto company so I jumped into that. Two feet forward, which was pretty fun. I was at helped launch dex which was really cool and obviously a big learning experience. It was after, you know, the Ico boom, it to a degree like the the place I had worked had already completed their Ico so it was fully funded and they’re building out the platform. And it was also right around the time when Facebook and all the social platforms started banning crypto ads. So that’s one of the biggest differentiators between traditional marketing and crypto marketing is that you don’t have a lot of the same levers as you might elsewhere.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So what do you do about that? You say your crypto project, how do you get your brand out there? How do you market a crypto project effectively?

Brad Michelson – eToro
You know, a lot of it relies on social media and it’s really community building and not in the way that Ico projects would create a telegram group and just like get as many people in there as possible and use it as as like a pumping mechanism. It’s not really like that at all, at least anymore. It’s a lot more reliant on word of mouth and just general community sentiment, being able to go on Twitter, having your brand post something, you know, you’re not necessarily being like, outrageous, but you can just post it in an Oculus. bullish tweet and you’ll get hundreds of likes out of it just because of the goodwill that you’ve, you’ve grown in the community. So a lot of it is just sharing and echoing the sentiment of your target audience. But on top of that, you still have to make gestures that deer, the brands to the community. So with some people it’s being you know, a really approachable brand with very easy to understand. messaging that maybe is like a really easy onboarding to the ecosystem, for example, lolly they do a fantastic job with that. Other times It’s, you know, something like what we do at etoro. Or we’ll work with, you know, a famous celebrity or something like that. And we’ll do a commercial with them. And that way we’re, you know, bringing in more average consumers into the the ecosystem. But I think every brand has their own different approach. And it’s sort of the key really is just finding what makes the most sense for the people that want to use your product and expanding that as much as you can.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So I was around when the Ico craze was going nuts. We started two and a half years ago with Tosca, and it was interesting because we could never even get an ad, you know, placed with any of the social media platforms out there primarily, you know, Facebook and stuff. But that seems to still be kind of the problem. And in the last two and a half years, I mean, the Ico world is largely dead, at least in the United States right now. The the scam pump and dump groups are mostly You know, quiet at least right now, though they’ll probably return when you know, the next Bull Run kind of jumps up. So the question I would have with you is, why is there such a still a blanket, you know, community standards problem with crypto related stuff on the major platforms? Why are they still banning it? The space is so much different and more mature now than it was a two and a half years ago. You got any insight of my why that might be?

Brad Michelson – eToro
I think it’s a risk thing. I think that that there were a bunch of lawsuits around the time of the Ico boom, both to the ad platforms and you know, not necessarily just Facebook and Twitter, but predominantly them, as well as other platforms where people are saying, I saw this advertisement on your platform. I assumed it was legit. And it turns out it was a huge scam. I think that everyone by now has noticed the the increase in attention on not just content across these social platforms, but the you know, whether they’re offensive or whatever else or they’re predatory, there’s rules on tons and tons of different industries. And obviously, finances is a big part of that. And that extends into things like predatory loans. And payday lenders can’t necessarily advertise on Facebook or I think even Google, you can’t advertise those products anymore. So unfortunately, crypto is still in one of those categories. But we have seen a little bit of movement that hopefully over the next little while this will start loosening up a bit. There have been rumors for the last little while.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Yeah, it was interesting. I saw today on my social media that there was a couple social media content people that said they got locked out of their Twitter accounts, which I thought that was interesting. Then and then most of the stuff they post is not what I would call spammy or shilling by any stretch of the imagination. than anything, and it seems like it’s pretty alive and well. And I’ve seen this where a URL will, you know, be banned from, you know, Facebook or Instagram and there’s like, zero, you can’t even appeal. There’s not even a process. There’s not a button to push. And so it’s interesting. I, you know, there’s a lot of rumors out there, especially among the conspiracy theorists that, you know, they’re they’re trying to, you know, head off any competition, you know, at least on the Facebook side would like a Libra out there, for instance. So they don’t like the competition from other crypto projects. I mean, do you think there’s any merit to something like that? It seems it seems a little out there for me, but I was just wondering if you’ve heard anything along those lines.

Brad Michelson – eToro
I really doubt it. You know, Libra, especially at that time was so far away from even launching, and it’s even far away now from launching, and it’s just not really, it’s not really also what that business models competing with. So I just don’t think that they’re related personally.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So over the last last couple years, it’s been interesting, you know, watching crypto marketing from the inside as a project. You know, we, you know, there’s so many stories that I’ve heard about at least experienced myself, where during the Ico boom, you know, just to get an interview on a podcast like this might cost $10,000 or more depending on what it is. Is that changing? Now is that Yeah, easier,

Brad Michelson – eToro
way easier. I don’t think I’ve seen a podcast that charges to interview in a while now, which is a really good change. You know, that it was extremely hard to get on, you know, any of those big YouTube channels or, or whatever it was in 2017. And then it moved into podcasts a couple years later. Obviously, the space for sponsoring all these shows has expanded significantly. There’s a ton of money that goes into that. And, you know, I’ve been sponsoring podcasts and influencers for a few years now and I just think it’s going more legit. There was a time where it was like wild west amateurism, and it’s finally matured into like a legit marketing marketplace kind of for sponsorships.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
You know, it’s really kind of funny because when we started Originally, I couldn’t get on an interview. Because we didn’t do an Ico we had no cash to spend, you know, lots of money to get on, though, actually, it’s kind of funny, because one of the reasons I started this podcast, because I said, I’m not gonna charge and I never have I’ve never even taken a sponsor. I don’t do this to monetize. I do this because I genuinely like the industry. And I like to talk to cool and smart people that are doing cool things because I learned from people like you coming on the show. So I always thought it was funny because this whole podcast was a response to that. And originally, when I started this, I didn’t really want to do this. But I do like talking to really cool people. And so it’s just interesting, you know, kind of seeing it, but When I’m trying to get interviewed, I’m seeing it. It’s a lot different now than it was two and a half years ago. And I think that’s a good thing for the industry that the advertising the marketing piece is starting to become more formal, I guess, and a little more legitimate and honest. And I think that’s good.

Brad Michelson – eToro
I think there’s a reason for that, too. I think that with a lot of crypto companies, like when I started at my first crypto company, most of the opportunities that were available were companies, Ico companies that were gonna pay you in their tokens. And this was before the Icos. So they were like pre mining tokens to give their employees and in the hopes that the token will pump at the Ico and you’ll get paid off by that, but then we’re going to pay you otherwise. Now, you it’s you’re going to be really hard pressed to find that that’s not really you’re not going to really find that anywhere. A lot of crypto companies now are at least reasonably well funded. So They can pay you normal salaries, some more than others. You know, these things come with benefits. And there’s HR along with it. And these are real companies as opposed to in that 2017 2018 range where it was very bootstrapped, and like semi real company and people were really leaning into the whole decentralized company thing, which I don’t know necessarily if it materialized in the way that they originally presented it. But the way that it’s become now is his own unique thing, which is really exciting. But it’s nice to see that it’s formalized in that way and with those budgets for the businesses come budgets to to hire legit professionals. So you know, most of the people at most of the projects you’re aware of the big ones at least, they didn’t come from crypto, a lot of those people aren’t crypto native. Even my team there’s half of us probably aren’t crypto people I’m lucky enough to have been in since 2012 is when I discovered it. So there’s, you know, this whole back catalogue of knowledge that I can pass down to my team and to other teams. But it’s a double edged sword, right? Because people come in with traditional marketing experience or traditional finance experience, whatever it is, and then they got to catch up on the the finer points, and especially in marketing, you know, the audience is so sensitive to certain signals or values, that there aren’t a lot of opportunities to screw up and figure it out afterwards. So at first, it’s a bit of a learning curve, but it ends up being huge for the the attracting talent in our industry in the long run.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So you said earlier and I know this to be true as well is that there’s a lot you know, the the tools that you have for growing are a lot more limited, because, you know, you just can’t go say, Oh, we need 10,000 users. To download our app that’s, you know, between five and 10 bucks a user, whatever it is, just go buy the ads and boom, you know, we build it out. You know, that’s not really something you can do with crypto very easily. So when you have an when you’re hiring, you know, marketing professionals and you bring them on your own team that, you know, maybe aren’t, you know, crypto natives, but they come from a more traditional marketing background. Have you found that they see that as a challenge? Or do you think they get more frustrated that they don’t have as many tools in their toolbox?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Depends on their background, if if they had like a pure paid marketing background like I did when I was younger, then it would be a little head spinning because you’re used to having a fashion brand that you just run ads on Instagram on. And you can test you know, a million different iterations of copy and creatives. And there’s a whole universe within within that realm of marketing, but it really forces you outside your comfort zone. It’s not that paid media disappears necessarily, right. There’s ad networks. outside of just Google and Facebook, and the obvious people, you know, buy sell ads is one that you see relatively often. There’s a few others. And you can also do, you know, native placements within a bunch of different websites, like you can buy native placements on Yahoo or, you know, CNBC or TechCrunch, even. But they don’t necessarily come with the performance metrics, or the performance history that Google or Facebook might. So someone in that scenario, initially, in theory would be a little shocked. And there’s a bit of a learning curve, but you’d hope that that person would be able to, you know, dive in and come up with some new best practices for themselves.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So that’d be things like, you know, programmatic and those kind of ad buys that you’re talking about there that which are not the normal Google AdWords kind of thing, but, you know, dedicated ad networks that are already placed on specific websites.

Brad Michelson – eToro
Right, exactly. And then the The whole universe of app advertising, which is a whole other thing,

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
That’s interesting, tell me about that.

Brad Michelson – eToro
So in the same way that there are display ad networks on whatever website you’re on, there are also those really annoying ads that show up in apps, like when you’re playing like a puzzle game or something and you lose, and then you have to watch an ad for like 15 seconds, those kind of ad ad networks where they’re gonna get placed in games or news, news apps, or whatever it else, whatever else it is. And they’re not necessarily run through Google. So they might have less strict rules in order to attract people like crypto companies or other smaller industries that are not as easily accessible through Google.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So what have you found to be the most effective, you know, tool out there for getting out to as far as normal advertising? Would it be the app advertising? Would it be the programmatic? Which one Have you found has the best, which one of those has the best audience that are receptive to the crypto messaging?

Brad Michelson – eToro
It really depends on what your objective is and what kind of marketing you’re doing. So if it’s brand marketing or performance at etoro, we’re lucky enough to actually be able to run ads on Facebook and Twitter in the main platforms, because globally were more widely recognized as a broker. So that’s what most people know us for overseas, but in the US for crypto only right now. So we’re able to take advantage of that relationship with those publishers. Outside of that, you know, it’s it’s the typical stuff, when you’re marketing to a niche industry like we are. It’s thinking about where are these people most often? So you go to Twitter, okay, well, we can’t necessarily run ads on Twitter. You know, you can post organically as much as you can. But what’s next so what’s next is podcasts, advertising or YouTube advertising. natively within the videos with the publishers. But there’s also the influencer sponsorships. And you’re seeing that get more and more popular now, whether they’re through networks, like what block works group is doing or whether the brand reaches out individually to individual influencers, which is my preference and what we do. So that’s one of the easiest and arguably most affordable ways to get wider reach within your niche.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So say, a community project. Now how what would you say is the best thing for a community project that may not have that Ico backing that big bankroll that we had with a lot of these products? You know, two, three years ago? It was interesting. I mean, you saw people throw money, like really big amounts of money at ridiculousness. As far as marketing goes, I saw and it seems like ROI to me has always been an important thing. I was just you know, curious. What would you recommend? For like, you know, these community projects that don’t have that, how would you deal with those kind of projects instead of something that was really had a big bankroll? And, you know, maybe VC funding, for example? Sure.

Brad Michelson – eToro
Well, I think that you got to think about it in some degree, similar to a brand selling a product. So who is where is your product for sale? Okay, so we’re thinking about crypto exchanges, right? So, you might want to spend a lot of your time getting more familiar with the marketing and PR teams of those exchanges so that you have better like co branding opportunities and relationships with those people. You can have them add your brand and your token into more marketing materials and therefore, expose the token brand to more people that way. And, you know, marketing is really just a game of eyeballs at the end of the day, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously The more people see things, the more they’re aware of a brand, the more opportunity there is for them to purchase or participate within the brand. So that’s probably a place that I would start with first because, you know, when people see people shilling, like non top 10 assets now, people just assume it’s some sort of, whether it’s a bot network or whatever else it is. I see this in my replies all the time. But if you can integrate organically with a provider of your services, it makes it a lot easier for you.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So one of the things that I’ve seen and it was interesting, as someone whose US based your US based is that crypto is like a global thing from day one. You know, and so the exchanges are global, the projects are global. The, the basis for many of these projects are global in nature. How do deal with that as a project, like for instance, marketing. You know, a lot of times, you know, US base industry might be just mostly focused on that, you know, the the US, for instance. But how do you deal with the global niss and the messaging globally for any kind of crypto project?

Brad Michelson – eToro
This is a challenge that I think most crypto companies discovered really early on and when you look at when we keep going in 2017 2018, but it really was a craze, you know, people are not for people that are relatively new in this space. It’s not that people are playing up what it was like during the the boom, it was as exaggerated as it sounds when people talk about it. So there are all these projects that you know, started out us base or started out UK base and then suddenly they had to hire like a community team in multiple regions of Asia because suddenly that catches on and one of their exchanges over there. And then all of a sudden, maybe a market dries up. And they have to ditch those and only really focus on two regions. I recently had a call with someone who’s a part of a fairly large defy project. And they were saying that over the last year, they’ve cut teams in certain regions of the world. And they’re really just focusing in the US and a couple other places right now, because that’s where their customers are at the moment. And really, that’s what it comes down to. It’s where the majority of your users in the case of a token project, where’s the majority of your volume? And what can you do with those people to increase the brand awareness or your volume if that’s what your KPI Your goal is there?

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Yeah, it’s been interesting as a project right, and you know, I’m not here to shill #TUSC all day, you know, I love #TUSC but it’s interesting because it’s really we’re US based, ee’re not an IC O, so we’re not a legal security. So we’re one of probably a couple dozen projects that eventually be able to legally be traded on us exchanges. The problem is it’s really hard to get on a US exchange. So most of the exchanges we’re on at least right now are in Asia. I mean, there’s just seems like we’re the most of them are right now. But it’s interesting having to go through and negotiate with all these different in that and it’s different by which country in Asia to their the way they interact, the way they negotiate, or in some cases don’t negotiate. And it’s an interesting kind of trying to navigate that, like, I mean, I got a background in business. I got an MBA for whatever that’s worth these days, but, you know, but it’s like International Business one on one day one. Yep. And it’s like, I got to go read a book on you know, negotiating in Asia and because I just never had to do that before. So it’s been pretty fascinating. And it’s actually been really fun too, though, because I’ve met some amazing people. Around the world through my project. And so I think that’s what I really like about doing this. But it’s also sometimes really frustrating is, you know, not understanding some of the, you know, just the more cultural nuances just because there’s so many you have to be worried about something. And you know, it’s interesting, because in a typical American, right, you just kind of think all Asians are the same. Well, they’re not they’re very, very culturally very different from one another. And so, only time ago I did I used to work for a Japanese country company. And back when I was a corporate Guy 20 years ago, and you know, I get how the Japanese work because I work for a Japanese company I worked for an ally Japanese were but they think and act and do business very differently than say people in China do. It’s just totally night and day and, And to me, that’s been very fascinating. But is for you guys even like with etoro? Are you essentially then hiring different marketing people or ground teams in each country that you think you’re going to have a big presence in?

Brad Michelson – eToro
So basically, the way it works with us is that we have regional offices. So, for example, I work in the US office, I run the US marketing team. But there’s a completely different marketing team in the UK, for we have one region that’s most of Europe that there’s one team working on. There is a team in China that only works on China, etc. So we’re a little bit luckier because we’re at the scale now where we can have all these regional teams. But it’s not that easy for everyone else. So it’s kind of a little bit about prioritization based on business goals.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So do you guys all coordinate though, all the different marketing teams around the world to so you still have a similar message or really staying on the consistent? You know, focus when you’re doing the marketing, or is it is it then just regionalised? Like, is there one central brand messaging and then it’s just, you know, regionalised in a certain way, that makes more sense for those places?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Yes, kinda. So basically, there’s like a central brand to etoro That’s managed globally, or at HQ, we just call it globally. There’s like a brand book basically with the way we like to talk about things, the colors, we use the gradient styles that we do in our graphics and things like that. But every region is a little bit different, right? So the coffee is going to differ. You know, the way that the UK talks about crypto would be different than we do. There are things that we’re allowed to do that they’re not allowed to do, for example, we like to throw incentives to customers to have them come in, but in the UK, they’re not allowed to do that legally. So there’s a lot of differences and they really leave it up to us to make it our own, which is a really fun part of the job.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, and your experience, at least, you know, coming from the more traditional side of marketing to the crypto, what would you see what are some of the the horror stories that you’ve seen out there in the marketing of crypto?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Yeah, I think a lot of it goes back back to how there was a lot of like amateurism at the beginning and it wasn’t like, purposeful negligence or anything like that. It was that most of the people, most of the personalities were just people, right? They, they had never taken a sponsorship before, they had never done any of these things. So sometimes you’d like sign a deal with someone for six months. And then two weeks later, they’re like, sorry, I decided I don’t want to do this with you anymore. I signed with your competition. So stuff like that is really annoying, but it happens from time to time. And, you know, you’re not going to burn a bridge. So it’s whatever it is. Other times it’s, you know, you if you think back, you can probably think of at least a couple companies that partnered with a project that ended up being a scam of some sort, right, like whether it’s listing a token or whatever it is. So I think that a lot of the differences between then and now is just maturity and growing into like a respectable industry.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So what would you say your best advice would be to new companies say, VC backed project, what would be the best piece of advice you could give them in the beginning?

Brad Michelson – eToro
Invest in your brand and your brand’s voice. So that applies to social media, the way you talk about things, the way you present the values of the company. Because at the end of the day, the way that our community works is that if you don’t follow the simple rules of, of the the basic tenants of centralized currencies and whatever way you want to interpret those things, digital currencies, you’re really never going to take off, right? Because you’re not going to be able to capture the attention of the influencers, who might share your content and bring more attention to your brand. It’s a lot more of an uphill battle. You don’t need necessarily to invest in a paid media. A team or a paid media agency, which is kind of backwards to a lot of people’s experiences. So having a strong brand team, which includes a strong UX asset on board, and then making a product that’s easy to use, I think we’re finally approaching the days of no longer having to deal with apps or daps, or platforms that you need to read like a manual for because the first time there were a lot of exchanges where you kind of had to read steps on a forum or whatever to complete a purchase or a trade. And thankfully, those days are now appeared to be behind us.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Thank goodness.

Brad Michelson – eToro
Yeah, right.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So Brad, where can people find out about more about you?

Brad Michelson – eToro
You can find me on Twitter @BradMichelson.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Well, I appreciate you coming on the show today. And anytime you got something interesting, you want to talk about, you’re more than welcome to come back. Sounds great. appreciate you having me. Thank you. I am Rob McNealy, this is the Rob McNealy program. Check us out on the web at Rob McNealy calm and we will catch you next time.

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Brad Michelson – Crypto Marketing & eToro Video

July 10, 2020 robmcnealy Video Podcasts 0:00 Comments Off on Brad Michelson – Crypto Marketing & eToro Video

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Brad Michelson – Crypto Marketing & eToro

July 10, 2020 29:27 0 Comments

Brad Michelson talks with Rob McNealy about how marketing crypto projects poses a unique set of challenges due to the rules imposed by many social media and traditional marketing channels.

Jason Fishman – Digital Niche Agency Transcript

December 15, 2019 robmcnealy Crypto, Transcripts 0:00 Comments Off on Jason Fishman – Digital Niche Agency Transcript

Jason Fishman - CoFounder of Digital Niche Agency (DNA)

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy
Today I am excited because I am talking to Jason Fishman. He is with a digital niche agency, a digital marketing agency based out of California specializing in the blockchain space. We met a few weeks ago at World crypto con, and I had a really good time hanging out with them. So welcome to the show. Jason, how are you?

Jason Fishman
Good. Thanks for having me. Rob. Excited to be on and chatting in front of your audience.

Rob McNealy
Well, I appreciate it. So what’s been going on? What are you been working on lately?

Jason Fishman
Sure. Sure. is in the conference schedule. Going to Australia in a couple weeks right before I saw in Vegas, was at Paris blockchain summit on a marketing channel and CC forum London on an investor panel. So always busy with Thought Leadership type activations, have a article come out in Forbes tomorrow, excited to be on the podcast today. That’s where a lot of the focuses are during this time of year. In the same breath, I could go into my history. also working on some private rounds campaigns as well as blockchain user acquisition campaigns. So you know, I always say, if I’m not busy, something feels off. I like balance. We’re running an agency. We’re working on 15 to 30 projects at a time. So gives you a lot of different things to be creative about, and anything less than that. Yeah, feels like under you there.

Rob McNealy
So what’s your background? How did you get into the marketing world?

Jason Fishman
Sure, sure. So, to go all the way back. About 12 years ago, I started in marketing as an action sports consultant. I grew up snowboarding skiing, Surfing here in California, have a lot of friends in those industries and started as an agency working on some of the biggest brands for their accounts, and getting into the world of top, specifically around video sharing platforms. One of my projects was then acquired based on the success in marketing launches, and I quickly started building my portfolio with accounts and other verticals including music, fashion, telecom travel, eventually moved over to a different agency and led the new business team and being part of the whole pitch process and coming up with these creative ideas before going in house and played a role at a social gaming company here in Santa Monica, raised 3 million in seed capital. And as part of that initiative from the timeline is an idea on a whiteboard all the way through funding into branded licensed entertainment games. That’s where I really learned user acquisition models. average revenue per user, essentially arbitrage traffic and buying traffic lower than the cost that you’re selling it really ins and outs of the whole digital marketing landscape before getting into the world of ad tech. And that was through a partnership that we had at the social gaming company was able to work with a lot of top 100 advertisers in that period of time, and oversaw Product Marketing, as well as sales. So I got to sit with publishers figure out the best ways to engage and monetize their audience, to then take those ad units over to advertisers and find rollouts for these different pieces of inventory that we’re going to hit their goals hit their deliverables. My overall focus has always been business growth, being able to leverage marketing, to do so and algorithmically at that was very exciting to me with that, at this point in depth, record and success without the partner in this company, digital media agency DNA marketing DNA since January of 2014, since we’ve worked with over 300 clients, startups to product launches of larger brands as well too, but generally building a community and pushing them through a funnel to hit initial milestones, and then scaling from it. In doing so, working with startups, we found fundraising to be a common theme, a common initiative, whether it was working on pitch materials for enrolling investor meetings, working on the marketing sections and business plan or even more so the revenue sections of a business plan to show which channels we’re going to drive each different metric in their projections, eventually into equity crowdfunding and still in 2014. Here, I was bringing third party data of accredited investors, user investors with over a million dollars net worth outside of their primary home or significant income over the past three years. And bringing them to offering cages using third party data we were hitting surpassing some of the biggest agencies in the industry. And therefore we’re getting a lot of calls from portals from platforms. And we’re running these type of campaigns from websites. Think of it as an exchange, but just around the sale and purchasing of that private equity, not in the trade of it quite yet. But when the industry is limited at that point, and the laws opened up more in 2016, as acknowledged by the SEC for us to use different filings, and raised from both accredited and unaccredited investors. That’s when this really became the biggest part of our client list. We saw those type of inquiries change to initial coin offerings in 2017. And particularly with the momentum in that year that became our sole focus. So you know whether they were international or equity crowdfunding campaigns with a token offerings with a token component to it. Some cases being voted to tokens. We were working on investor acquisition. And we invested into the development of our own first party data. So data that we then tested out for our clients and soft performance, and at this point have records of investors who participate in private sale investors which participate in public sales on the equity crowdfunding side to throw a bunch of acronyms but reg, CF reg, a reg D, all the different filings we have investors specific to those restrictions, have it broken down by geo targets to markets, essentially records of millions of investors and we then find audiences to a B and D test against each other for these campaigns, and can measure depending on how we’re tracking and depending on the actual campaign setup, the cost per acquisition of each and every 30 return on adspend and essentially provide opportunities for our clients to scale. Beyond fundraising, as mentioned, as well, as we’ve seen, things evolved from my field as to some ideas this year. We’re also doing a lot of blockchain user acquisition campaigns, whether that’s wallets or different types of apps or software, even some projects on the business to business side of things, finding ways to provide company’s value and, you know, continue to build up their user base.

Rob McNealy
So of all the different projects that you’ve helped, you know, do raises What was your biggest success story look like?

Jason Fishman
Sure. So we have published case studies, and I could speak to a few of those. We also have white label relationships were more in the background and more restricted contracts, where we’re bar in the background so longer than I can’t share, but I What I plan, there is a $50 million raise project for a hybrid exchange that we worked out a few years back. Some of the team members were very public figures. They’ve since been acquired and shaded. But hybrid block was a campaign where we had worked on user acquisition for their telegram, community audience most focused on their their public sale. So yeah, it’s in very large metrics there. Beyond that have worked on over 100 fundraising projects, majority of which blockchain and in a full spectrum from, you know, green energy to mining to exchanges, to various markets, specific currencies. Again, really a full spectrum of different projects. And you can buy them even more than the ones that we activate directly to.

Rob McNealy
So what do you see yourself The challenges of fundraising for you know, these different types of crowdsource, you know, kind of projects. What do you see is not only what are some of the challenges, but do you see the biggest mistakes people are making when they’re trying to raise money?

Jason Fishman
Sure, sure. So raise money can be very broad. You know, we’ve seen companies raise money by having a few conversations with people in their network and be able to close everything out from there. We’ve then been part of very visible public sale campaigns with high volumes of investors. So and everything in between, of course, so there can be a lot of different variables for any of those. timeline is something that I often see projected off by projects where they think they’re going to be able to raise funds very quickly. channels in which they’re going to do so whether it’s their personal network, whether that’s through specific capital groups will keep it product capital groups, but through specific Venture Partners, broker dealers, in regards to marketing, we’ve seen groups think that they’re going to place a token sale page, do a couple paid article placements, and you have a telegram channel have some type of community channel, given the point in time that they’re out, and they’re just going to be able to, you know, close out the round very quickly. I’ve certainly seen that happen. We’ve certainly been part of that happening, and oftentimes reflecting market conditions. But for me, it’s all about creating a well oiled machine of a marketing funnel. And to take it back even further than that, to have a resorting an algorithmic strategy, where it’s showing me exactly which channels are going to use what you’re anticipating the channels can produce in terms of its digital impressions, clicks and conversions, and some offline metrics for direct outreach, such as responses meetings, and you know, different types of written verification that you want to track all the way through to complete it investment, the only way to measure anything is with numbers. So without having that type of strategy, without having that type of plan, there’s no way in which that you’re gonna be able to tell what’s really working, what’s not working, or to be able to effectively optimize if if the channels not working for you. Again, if that’s a broker dealer relationship, or if that’s paid advertising, you won’t be able to tell where in that algorithm, you’re not getting the right traction, and therefore to be able to focus on improving things there. And you can say statements like, oh, broker dealers didn’t work for us. Advertising didn’t work for us, you can completely missed the mark on these tools that are stepped into other groups.

Rob McNealy
So speaking of tools, you know, kind of being in the crypto space it you know, a lot of the normal channels that, you know, a company or a project might use to market would be things like Facebook and Google and Twitter. And a lot of these platforms have, you know, outright ban crypto related kind of content and advertising. What kind of challenge does that pose to you and how do you deal with it?

Jason Fishman
Sure, sure. So, we get blanket statements all the time, such as, Hey, I heard we can’t advertise on Facebook. I heard we can’t do anything on Google. And when I look at how I grade A good marketer, I’m looking at their problem solving abilities. Anyone can set up a marketing campaign, as followed by a template or an approach. Anyone can use creative that’s been supplied by the clients or Very basic creative that is reflecting competitors. But simply seeing success out of the gate doesn’t make a marketer effective. What I like to see is their problem solving abilities, what do they do when things are not working. And now that’s where you can gauge true tower. Because campaigns are going to fluctuate, it could be the biggest brand in the world or a new startup, you will not see the same level of success day in day out year after year. It just doesn’t occur like that you have to be able to effectively optimize. So when I look at any of these channels and the restrictions, the same thing for me, it’s how do we problem solve here? How do we get something approved? When speaking was reps at these platforms? and ask them how do we do this compliantly they tell us what gets campaigns blocked certain rewards can ticker currency can’t say Ico. However, you can say distributed ledger technology, you can talk about the function of the technology, you can give out info that serves an educational purpose without using those words. And therefore taking audience down a funnel, where eventually they have an opportunity to directly participate in a security token offering as an example. So it’s all about how you use these channels. You can create a Facebook page, advertisements, a landing page, or mentioned URL and that landing page as well to that all do not use bands, trigger words. But meanwhile, speak to your target audience and convey the value of your offering. And after that next landing page, be able to take them down a funnel that would be tougher to get approved. This is true was very categories. A few other examples, go all the way to financial advising supplements, but include CBD, firearms, various types of verticals, where if you bring an audience in to more of a homepage, or something that can get approved and doesn’t talk about anything that’s a little more gray. You know, use the sporting goods store example and a firearms are sold at that sporting goods store and someone clicks through to it, it’s not going to be banned. If it’s not mentioned in the advertisement in the land engage yet audiences could store and purchase purchasing an item or participating let’s say an investment deal that if it was blatantly listed in the advertisement or landing page could be looked at as restricted. So by building funnels, we’ve been able to leverage this challenge and we’ve had to do so because those channels perform Over 40 million cryptocurrency and fuzziness that I can access with Facebook’s third party data. It’s a combination of their first party and third party data support pages that they like and data partners that they have that have identified audiences with an affinity for digital assets. And bye bye by looking at their ad placement by looking at the click through rates, which are about 10 times higher than a standard banner ad click through rate by looking at the sheer conversion nature with by catching someone in their social advertising in their social media experience. It’s something that can’t be ignored, even if it’s nothing else than the targeting. And they have Facebook, Instagram, the audience network, the audience network hasover it has a high volume of top tier sites, we can continue to retarget you can continue to reach a user again and again and again. So I wouldn’t look at these platforms and say look them Or blanket statements such as my audience isn’t on Google, they’re not on facebook, facebook has over a billion users a day. And again, through their their reach new can touch people essentially everywhere they go online, I would look at how I can use them. And then my whole philosophy towards marketing as a whole, which again, is a utility for business growth beyond just created my whole summary. My tagline, if you will, for marketing is summarized in three words, test, optimize scale. So I’m not saying use all of these channels, new them forever. More importantly, find some channels to test figure out as I mentioned, in regards to the plan, what audiences you want to go after their what creative that you want to use their the projections for full algorithm of performance metrics all the way through, and then optimize to improve performance and then scale the channels that are working best. That that’s been my approach to it. It’s been different in terms of the top dragging channel campaign to campaign. But there’s definitely ways to leverage these platforms for what you’re trying to do.

Rob McNealy
So a lot of the crypto world says, you know, rightfully drawn arrows from pay to play problem, you know, a lot of influencer marketing, advertising that comes off as journalism, but it’s actually advertising. It’s all paid for. I know, that was really important back, you know, a year and a half, two years ago. Is that still important now? Is it is there a really an ROI on doing those types of, you know, paid campaigns, um, you know, when we were initially, you know, launching our token two years ago, I had people that had like, 1000 people or 1000 subscribers on their YouTube channel, and they wanted $10,000 you know, in some cases to come and just get an interview. So, yeah, and, and I always looked at it like, I just don’t see how the There’s a return on that investment, you know, from the marketing side of it. What’s your take on that?

Jason Fishman
Question? You know, the overarching statement would still be test, optimize scale, look at the ones you want to test out. But I’ll tell you why it matters why it’s still good to consider these opportunities. Not just roll them out. People don’t trust what they see online. Social Proof third party validation is a big part of a successful marketing campaign. And if you’re able to leverage the right media publishers, the right influencers, the right communities, the right you know, organizations of various types to validate what you’re doing, refer them to your your pages to your assets. It can really go a long way. They can make the entire difference. It’s hit or miss. We’ve seen anything answers with very large audiences perform marginally at best we’ve seen them perform in zero metrics that we could measure. We’ve then seen influencers with you know, under 10,000 or 1000. In some cases, that the moment they talked about a campaign everything you know, Spike. So you know, it is a matter of testing it out. We still do straight influencer marketing campaigns now we call them outreach because of the way the influencer world has changed and the ways to interact with influencers. But essentially, when you’re running an influencer campaign, you’d want to test 310 30 different influencers depending on their size, and all in slightly different disciplines, slightly different audiences is a good way to look at it. You don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket, going back to some of the shortcomings, I’ve seen groups hit in the past. And I thought, Hey, we’re going to have this one guy posts about us. And we’re going to close that around in a few hours. And since he didn’t occur like that, I going to have seen ones that that has happened. But best practices would be more to diversify. So let’s try a few different publishers. Let’s try a few different influencers, if it’s paid advertising, which could speak at length about as well here too. Let’s try a few different ad placements, few different data sets, and different creatives, you want to have something to compare something to again, a and b test. But yes, it still plays a role. The pay to play sponsored content prices are going down. There was a point there in 2017, first half 2018 where everything was expensive and everyone wanted to be opportunistic, regardless of the effectiveness of their their media and More speaking to their own revenue model and what they thought that it should it should be valued at. So, you know, there’s a lot of ways you can work with an agency or third party, even over a phone call not even a formal engagement, where they can give you a few tips on how to structure these conversations. with publishers, with influencers with any type of paid opportunity, there tends to always be some level of wiggle room. If you’re speaking, managed service. If you’re talking to another human. I can give you a few ideas on how to do it if it doesn’t seem like that avenues available. But I would definitely evaluate them. They definitely still serve a purpose. And we’ve seen it be very effective for clients.

Rob McNealy
How do you see marketing in the crypto space changing over the next year to three years?

Jason Fishman
Yeah, yeah. So I want to want to be able to have a strong prediction here. So marketing is obviously changed as the industry has over the past two years. past two months, you know, campaigns in September of 2019 look different from December. We’re planning and activating this week in in 2019. And when it comes to investment opportunities, we’re seeing a lot more attention around private rounds, which means longer sales cycles, smaller investment amounts, and, in many cases, offline touch points in person meetings with investors, which groups projects looked at as not as necessary, two years ago, marketing plays a large role in that. When we’re looking at digital marketing, seven touch points are more on average are required for conversion. And if we’re Reaching that audience with the same creative, same messaging, same channel every time, it’s going to have that fatigue, where if we’re building a content marketing funnel, and showcasing momentum, giving investors the feel that, hey, this is moving shifts going in this direction. And I want to be part of that. It’s much different than if it’s a stagnant conversation with a lot of repetition. So, you know, being able to have more good fundamental marketing, best practices implemented into these types of campaigns, which again, groups did with very little digital marketing couple years back. Now I’m going to go out and say that’s going to be more of a best practice of having more of that. I don’t want to say corporate, the more professional look and feel of a larger organization, I think is going to be true for brands and if nothing else, to convey trust. And seeing the groups who have surpassed the crypto winter and overall thinning of groups in the industry, the groups that are surviving that are structured well. And they have, you know, good operating procedures and all air in many areas of the business, including marketing. So going more to what does a brand look like? How should a company be operating? How should the decentralized organization be operating and what should look and feel be both on the platform and marketing off to attract more mass adoption? I think mass adoption is really the game moving forward here. And some of the biggest thought leaders speakers in the space I’ve seen moved from pointing at smaller projects to change the world to even saying things like, hey, it’s gonna be the enterprise level businesses that are going to change the world. Going to be them that are going to drive mass adoption of cryptocurrency mass adoption of blockchain. Massive name any group specifically because I’m still filling things out in the direction of where those organizations, sure initiatives. At the same time, when you look at groups of over a billion users and how they can bring that type of adoption to this technology, very exciting. And what’s the follow through Maryland, you know, look at the chess game. And you know, strategies were five moves deep, where the audience is going to be a lot of possibilities open up. So even if it’s not enterprise appearing enterprise is going to be a big part of marketing strategies moving forward, I believe.

Rob McNealy
So last question, what does your ideal client look like?

Jason Fishman
So our values as an agency is being able to work with Which means not limited to just one client, communicate early and answer with algorithms. It’s how we approach this. I say it because it’s important and marketing conversations, regardless of the dynamic, and, you know, to that extent and so for we are we look for situations we could provide value. In some cases, it’s a quick advertising engagement or at the last part of their campaigns, bringing traffic from our audiences and showing the very strong return. You know, more of our standard models, starting with the marketing strategy, getting into the content marketing stages, driving traffic into that funnel, paid ads, while doing direct outreach to those four areas. But for me, it’s looking to align with projects that can have a you know, I don’t say disruption or anything like that, but a very measurable impact in their vertical To be able to align ourselves with projects that could leave that type of positive change, to be able to have case studies that showcased numerical results for those launches and how we play the role and we’re part of it was working while it wasn’t being able to scale from there is our ultimate goal. So anything that’s new or different, I like talking with them. I work with a welcome to warm marketing conversation anytime. And, you know, I’ve seen so many amazing ideas over the years and dating back to, you know, the first agencies and telecom projects have gotten, you know, just amazing technology that never saw the light of day, or that, you know, had a very, very low awareness level. Marketing for me is the answer. That’s why I focus on this I can get millions of people, all types of top groups, or in some cases, it’s very specific individuals to look at our clients, what they’re doing the ultimate goal that they have around it. And the effect is going to have on all of their users and how that translates out not to sound too idealistic, the killer world. That that’s really what’s exciting about we do about what we do. So anywhere where we can really serve in that type of role to amplify and scale the right problems.

Rob McNealy
You know, that’s actually good answer. Jason, where can people find out more?

Jason Fishman
Sure. So I’m accessible through LinkedIn. Jason Fishman. Our website Digital Niche Agency. So DNA stands for DigitalNicheAgency.com. And like I mentioned, I was happy to provide insights, packages recommendations for ya, whether we have the opportunity to collaborate or not. So yeah, feel free to reach out Listen company, feel free to reach out to me individually. always like to connect.

Rob McNealy
Jason, thanks so much for being on the show.

Jason Fishman
All right. Thanks for having me, Rob.

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Jason Fishman – Digital Niche Agency

December 15, 2019 30:38 0 Comments

Jason Fishman, Co-Founder of Digital Niche Agency (DNA), discusses startup fundraising and the challenges of crypto and blockchain project marketing.

About the Show

NFTs, TUSC, Crypto, Small business, blockchain technology, and politics go hand in hand. The Rob McNealy Program covers them all and much more. Hosted by Rob McNealy, a crypto entrepreneur and personal liberty activist, interviews thought leading guests on topics ranging from Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, blockchain and startups, to politics, gun rights and personal liberty.