Digital Funnels That Attract Real Estate Investors With Jason Fishman

 

Digital funnels are changing how real estate firms attract and convert investors in an increasingly competitive capital-raising landscape. Jason Fishman, CEO of Digital Niche Agency and a performance marketing expert who has led hundreds of successful campaigns, breaks down how structured digital funnels are used to consistently generate qualified real estate investor leads. He explains how ads, landing pages, and automated email sequences work together to turn cold audiences into engaged prospects ready to invest. The conversation also explores why most firms struggle with conversion, how messaging builds investor trust, and what separates high-performing funnels from wasted ad spend. This episode offers a practical breakdown of how real estate groups can move beyond referrals and build predictable investor acquisition systems through digital funnels.

Get in touch with Jason Fishman:

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jafishman
• Website: digitalnicheagency.com

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➤Website: https://cpicapital.com/ (https://cpicapital.ca/)

#avabenesocky #augustbiniaz #cpicapital

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Important Links

• Jason Fishman on LinkedIn
• Digital Niche Agency
• Digital Niche Agency on LinkedIn
• Digital Niche Agency on YouTube
• Test. Optimize. Scale. Podcast on Apple Podcast
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It―A Guide to Starting a Business in a Productive and Successful Way
• CPI Capital

 

About Jason Fishman

Jason Fishman is the CEO of Digital Niche Agency and a digital marketing expert with over 15 years of experience scaling growth campaigns.

He’s worked with more than 850 brands and helped raise over $100 million through 500+ equity crowdfunding campaigns.

Jason specializes in building measurable marketing systems across search, social, email, and content, and he also hosts the ‘Test. Optimize. Scale.’ podcast where he’s interviewed over 200 founders and marketers.

 

Digital Funnels That Attract Real Estate Investors With Jason Fishman

Welcome to the show. We’re back at it. We’re going to be talking about something that’s super exciting.

The “Chemotherapy” Of Geopolitics: Iran And Global Impact

Excited to be here. As we sit here in beautiful Naples, Florida, and our guest is joining. We’ll find out where he’s joining in from. There’s a war happening on the other side of the world. Trump and his administration have learned from Putin. They’re not calling it a war. They’re calling it a special operation. People in Iran are getting bombed. That’s where I’m originally from.

It’s very interesting. People are asking me about the situation and what’s happening in Iran. Obviously, my family left Iran a long time ago after the revolution. When the Islamic Republic was in power and Iran became from a secular, constitutional monarchy to a theocracy and kleptocracy, which is a very interesting kind of dictatorship to be living in. I lived there for a few years before we made the move to Canada when I was a teenager.

People ask, “How do you feel about Iran getting bombed as you’re here from all sides, right and left?” My response is imagine having cancer and the IRGC and the Islamic Republic is the cancer of Iran. The US and Israel bombing Iran feels like chemotherapy. It’s killing you while you’re dying in the hopes of getting rid of the initial cancer. That’s how I feel. Hopefully, fingers crossed, some family we have left over in Iran have made the move to Northern Iran by the Caspian Sea, which is usually insulated from the war. That’s what we did when Iran was being bombed by Iraqi planes in the ‘80s.

We should be glad and excited that we’re here having a show, enjoying the sun, and living life. While unfortunately, American troops are putting their lives at risk and the Arab Gulf nations are getting rockets coming in from Iran as well and oil prices are above $110 a barrel. Very interesting. It has an effect on commercial real estate where we are. Our discussion is going to be a bit different.

To your point, though. It makes you feel gratitude every morning. That’s why we join hands as a family every morning and say, “We are so grateful for where we’re at. Prayers going out to everybody.”

The Challenge Of Private Equity Marketing

We have a great show for you guys. We’re excited about it. In preparation for the show, Ava and I were pretty excited to have our guest on and discuss different strategies for marketing. Marketing for a real estate private equity firm is not the same as marketing to sell a product or a service. You’re offering a partnership. Minimum investments are usually pretty high.

The top investors who invest in these private offerings are pretty sophisticated. You have to be accredited when it comes to SEC regulations. There’s a lot of different stuff out there. Basically, you’re competing with Wall Street, the richest of the firms in the world. Maybe we can tell our audience a bit about our guests. We can start the show.

I was going to just talk about marketing plays a big part in capital raising because capital raising is all about relationships. You can tap into your current database as much as you can. When you start marketing, that’s when investors start coming through your funnel. We’re excited to dive into all of this and talk about how these two intertwine. We’re joined by Jason Fishman.

Jason Fishman is the CEO of Digital Niche Agency and a digital marketing expert with over fifteen years of experience scaling growth campaigns. He’s worked with more than 850 brands and has helped raise over $100 million through 500 plus equity crowdfunding campaigns. Jason specializes in building measurable marketing systems across search, social, email, and content. He also hosts the Test. Optimize. Scale. Podcast where he’s interviewed over 200 founders and marketers.

 

 

Jason, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Ava. I appreciate that introduction.

We wanted to dive into things. August, why don’t you start out by talking about how the show is going to go here?

The “Chiropractor Secret”: Scaling With Paid Ads

Talking about marketing, a great start to this is CPI as an investment firm. When we started, we had no idea about marketing. Ava and I and our other partners had no background in marketing. We just knew that we had a business idea. Our idea was allowing Canadian investors to have exposure to US commercial real estate. Particularly multifamily, which was, at that time, had done tremendously well from 2019.

Before 2019, US multifamily had beaten the S&P 500. It had beaten the index funds and was a great asset class. Canadians couldn’t have exposure to US multifamily through the syndication model. When we started CPI, that was the mandate and the goal. Soon after, we realized that firms that opened the door for US investors had done tremendously better Canadian firms.

We’re like, “We need to be available to US investors and Canadian investors.” Early on, we try to gain as much knowledge as we can through who we are going to go to invest with us. Initially, our circle of influence, people who had partnered with me, invested with me as a builder, as a developer. Ava, as a real estate agent, top ranking real estate agent, the database that she has. People that knew, liked, and trusted us.

We knew that, at some point, we were going to squeeze the juice out of the database. We needed to bring in more leads. We got a CRM. We started adding people to that CRM. Soon after, we heard that if you have a CRM and you have a thousand investors, you can raise hundreds of millions of dollars. I’m like, “We got over a thousand investors, which should be easy.”

We heard a story about this. There’s a chiropractor who got involved in real estate investments. He was able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Absolutely mind-blowing. We’re like, “What is the secret sauce? What is he doing?” I was investigating that further and further. I realized that this chiropractor was spending $100,00 a month on paid ads. He was able to raise a lot of money.

Advertising today is really based on having a strong strategy. Share on X

That was our experience when it came to marketing. Soon, we realized we had to build a brand around ourselves, the company CPI. We learned about funnels and lead gen paid ads, other aspects of it. It was a whirlwind of learning for us when we started CPI. I was still learning because it’s a very fluid market when it comes to marketing. I can stop there and see if you have any comments about that. Go ahead.

It’s such a fascinating space. That’s why I got involved back in 2015 in Reg D campaigns. My background is in advertising. I was brought to these initiatives to leverage third-party audience data, allowing us to filter by household, income, and net worth. As you said earlier, bringing accredited investors into these deals, you’re able to solicit.

You have to be very specific on who you go after. Great to hear that you had this strong understanding of who your audience was. “We want to bring Canadian investors in.” Imagine there’s ten, 30 other different targeting filters you could apply to that. The great thing about advertising, why I love it so much. I think you were asking earlier too, “Does it still work? What’s going on with it?”

You’re buying media. You’re buying traffic. You’re buying visits to your offering page. Many offering pages are pitch decks, vertical at that, and layered with social proof, more reflecting website, lead generation, and best practices. We’re measuring click-through rate. We’re measuring the conversion rate of each stage. We could be buying traffic. Look at how they’re converting through each stage of the funnel with setting up a call perhaps with you, your teams. Some of our clients will use Invest Relations partners, looking at the closing rate of those calls.

You can measure a cost per lead and then a cost per acquisition of each investment. Looking at the average transactional value and that cost, you get a return on ad spend metric. If that is favorable enough, clients typically ask us, “How much of this can we buy?” Your example there of that $100,000 a month. I could tell you many issuers, many funds will start at $5,000, $15,000 a month in advertising spends.

As they’re seeing results, as they’re testing and optimizing towards what’s working best, they scale to these higher and higher levels. No one wants the expense. No one wants to spend on the ads. They’re buying those results. To have $100,000 in monthly, $100 million more coming out the other end for the year. Great return. That’s what you’re managing with these traffic algorithms.

Meta, Newsletters, And The Diverse Ad Stack

Is it fair to say that Facebook and Instagram ads, paid ads essentially are still the number one way to gain leads?

It’s a hard question to answer because you’re looking at what you’re comparing it to. I would say referrals are the strongest peer-to-peer marketing, even above that. There’s, generally, limitations. This is to be stacked on top of that foundation. You had mentioned we’re bringing our first-degree network in. Friends, family, email subscribers, social media followers, followers of the podcast and all your different media platforms.

 

 

You bring that in first. You’re hoping to see some social sharing, some peer-to-peer marketing from there, and then additional referrals if you’re getting people to introduce prospects. I would put that higher in the totem pole. That being said, it’s hard to scale that. That advertising piece, how you’re able to buy more and ramp it up allows for a different type of intentionality towards your goals and the actions you take around it.

As far as advertising, allowing for that, but then selecting Meta, Facebook and Instagram as the top channel. It’s a fundamental channel. Some people have generalizations about who you’re reaching on Facebook, on Instagram. There’s over a billion daily active users there. You could reach anybody, whether it’s at a family office or someone. While you’re reaching out for institutional capital at any of these organizations, whether it’s a credit investor in a very specific area. You can find anyone there.

You could upload email lists. Run advertising directly to the individuals on that list. The click-through rate and conversion rate I find to be favorable on Meta. It’s a high-impact placement, often in between people’s family and friends and the influencers and thought leaders they follow in between those posts. It could be mistaken for organic content at that.

There’s a call-to-action button, the click-through rate button that you’d measure the click-through rate from. I typically find higher conversions and click-through rates there. It is diversification. As you get to higher spends, let’s say $5,000 a day, $150,000 a month, the results can often plateau. Another place clients can see very strong performance is investor email newsletters.

The best ones, investors are paying to receive the content and the publishers are selecting deals organically. There are many other newsletters where you can buy placements in front of an audience that’s just receiving the email for free. You’re paying a sponsorship fee on top of that. You can measure cost per click. You can measure the conversion rate and the cost per acquisition of each investor from there.

Is that more of an affiliate marketing if you’re piggybacking off somebody else’s newsletter to market your deals or your firm?

Broker dealers are allowed to take a success fee. Affiliates, unless they’re a broker dealer, shouldn’t be charging a success fee on the closed investment. There are different perspectives towards it, but they can towards a lead. I’ve seen affiliates offer their promotions and get paid per lead or per share of the investment process.

Aside from the compliance side, I was more talking about, in marketing lingo, when you’re using somebody else’s database to market any product that you have. Is that considered affiliate marketing or that has a different name to it?

You fail to plan, you plan to fail. Share on X

It could be. I would look at it as advertising. Some of these are larger publishers. You can do this through Robinhood Snacks. You could do it through 1440 Morning Brew. There’s many of these larger publishers that offer these paid email placements.

Going back to your services and your firm services, you are not, by the way you’re talking about it. You don’t seem to be just a paid ads-focused firm. You’re more holistic, more involved when you come in and offer your services to firms.

Paid advertising is based on a good strategy, a successful campaign, and how that lives in the creative, how that shows up in the funnels, the content marketing. Typically, seven-touch points or more before an investor converts even on a lead form. We need to be focused on what they’re seeing, headline-worthy announcements on a weekly basis at that.

How that’s populated across social media, across email drips, across long form content, often including webinars, articles, videos, press placements, podcast appearances, conference appearances, and as much social proof and third-party validation through that as possible. People don’t believe what they see online. The more you’re able to point to these validators, the better. All of that feeds into a strong performing advertising campaign.

 

 

We’d like to start at the strategy stage. It’s a model I’ve built called the eight-point plan. You’re building out the roadmap from there. Based on what competitors are doing, the audiences you’re targeting, the channels and the creative and the partners and the projections that you’re playing for all the way through.

That activates across those content funnels, the ads, and outreach campaigns. Even if we’re just working on ads for a client, if they say, “We have these other pieces.” We’re still going to advise on them as part of an advertising push. Because we know that’ll show up in the conversion rate and return on ad spend metrics were measured at the end of the day.

I want to talk to you about a couple exercises. One exercise, for example, August and Ava, executives with CPI Capital came to you for our marketing needs. It’s a unique marketing need. We’re an investment firm. We’re looking for investors. There are compliance layers to overcome. There’s a minimum investment of $50,000 or $100,000, in most cases, as a big ticket item. There is a trust basis there. There’s a lot of different layers, which you have expertise in.

 

 

August and Ava come to you. August and Ava just have a simple website. They don’t have a podcast. Never been on anybody else’s podcast. They don’t have a blog. They don’t have social proof. They’ve done it, maybe a deal here or there. What is the first thing that you do for a boutique startup firm that doesn’t have a huge track record, doesn’t have a marketing presence? What is the first thing you do? I’m guessing it’s not going to be like, “Let’s spend $20,000 on paid ads.” It might be a month on paid ads. Tell us, just at a high level, what would you do for that firm? What is the initial advice?

The 8-Point Plan For Boutique Startup Firms

I’d go back to that strategy. You fail to plan. You plan to fail. We have these groups that come to us and think, “I don’t know if this is going to work. We’ll spend a few thousand dollars on ads. Go do your thing, counting on you.” It’s the wrong approach. We would tell them this as well. You want to be asking yourself the right questions during that planning process.

That eight-point plan model, I’d want to walk through that. I’d ask a lot of questions about your industry and look to pull different stats. Even what you’ve shared so far, outpacing S&P, being able to talk about the deals in Canada versus the deals here. I would look for these different points that we’re going to be able to speak to later in the creative, but also to bring us up to speed.

You leverage the competitive advantages that this firm might have.

We want to ask as many questions as we can to get the top ten reasons to invest. We’ll hear it from you. We’ll also be pulling those types of highlights from the materials that you have. If there’s already a pitch deck or any type of offering page we want to pull from that as well. I mentioned competitors a bit earlier. Competitor marketing audit, to me, is one of the most important parts of the planning process.

That shows me what the prospective investor audience is going to see, what’s going to be coming across their desk. I want to understand what that conversation is. Success leaves clues at that. I want to know how much traffic they’re getting to their site and offering pages. I want to know what they’re posting on social media, including LinkedIn.

I want to know what ads they’re running on social media. You go to Facebook Ads Library to see this. I want to know what ads they’re running on Google and similar platforms. What they’re ranking for organically, which publishers are talking about them, what events they’re speaking at, who’s speaking about them on social media, and what they’re sending out on their email.

For this exercise, what if they’re not doing a lot of that stuff? What if they’re just newcomers? They’ve done one or two deals. They have a website. What is the first thing you want them to spend their money on?

I’m doing that for the competitors, people competing after the same audience. I would say spending on this strategy, on this process because they need to get a sense of that. There could be misconceptions on, “This is what investors want to see when I show the actuals and the groups that are moving the most, advertising the most in the Reg D space and for their vertical.” It’s typically pretty eye-opening.

No one wants to pay for ads — they’re really buying results. Share on X

He takes a look at the competitors.

We use that to formulate the campaign from there, the channels, and creatives.

Historically, when you’ve done this for newer firms, you realize they don’t have a lot of social proof. They’re not out there on social media. Even if you craft their strategy, where is it mainly being spent on? Where is the budget being spent on? On paid ads? On blogs? Is it on updating their website, creating lead magnets, creating media kits for them to get them on shows, for them to start their own show? Where do you put your attention?

After we look at the competitors in the audiences, we get a good idea on what channels we want to focus on from there. In any case, I’d want to make sure there’s a good content marketing funnel in place so that we’re getting a higher conversion rate. Those funnels, where’s the landing page? What does the email drip look like from there? What are the emails pointing to? Are there different long form content pieces that we’re going to be able to get them excited about? That is going to be imperative to get a higher closing rate.

From there, I like to begin on Meta for market testing. Why? I can A/B test the different audiences at a low daily spend level. Meanwhile, get enough of a sample size to see which audiences and which creatives are performing best. I have my email list. I have partners to get far more in terms of a credit investor email list and very specific down to the zip code level that I can upload and target with advertising. Let the data show me what’s working best.

The simpler you make something, the more easily it can be understood. Share on X

Beyond my assumptions for the audience. I think audience B, Canadians living in this market, and working in this field. I’m able to see from the results what’s producing the best cost per lead for me, and then hopefully, the best closing there, it’s best acquisition cost. I would then look to scale up those advertising channels. Begin to explore some of the advertising channels that the competitors are using further from there.

For people that are reading, when he’s talking about testing. When you go do some ads, you can tell me some metrics that you guys use. For example, if your ad campaign is, you have $5,000 to spend. You might make three different videos that are saying something different, but slightly the same. You pour that out. You see which video is getting the most clicks, qualified clicks. It’s important to hire a consultant like Jason because it does get very convoluted, I would say. It’s pretty difficult. If you could talk a little bit about testing. For example, how many videos do you test? Does it all depend on how much money you’re spending on a monthly basis? How does that all work?

Benchmarks: Cost Per Lead And Acquisition

The money that you’re spending on a monthly basis matter because it’s how you project your results. It’s also how you determine what’s going to be too narrow of an audience size, how many creatives you need to build. If you’re only running, let’s say $3,000 a month, $100 a day. We generally begin somewhere between four and ten audiences.

If you’re running five, that’s only $20 a day. If you’re getting $1 or $2 per click off of that, which based on the CPMs, the cost per thousand impressions you’re bidding on. It may be $1 to $2 per click based on a decent click-through rate. That may only be ten, twenty clicks per day. That’s thin. Anything below 100 visits, 100 clicks, you’re shooting in the dark. It’s difficult to shut things off too early. You could be missing the performance. You don’t want to run too many at too small of a budget.

Generally, four to ten audiences to begin. I would say, four to eight creatives to begin. Again, you want to assess what’s occurring, the performance for each of those before you shut them off, or even before you start creating new ones to add to that. Based on how much you’re spending, how fast you’re able to get to those benchmarks, and get a better glimpse into how that audience is responding.

Every one to two weeks from there, we’ll add another four to eight creatives, again, based on timeline and spend. You almost manage it like a social media organic profile, where you want to have something new that you’re showing those investors each week. This could be an investor testimony. This could be how many more investors you’ve added, how much capital has been there.

This could be talking about some type of investor webinar or in-person presentation. Ads could be used to geotarget people to get there. There’s so many different things to structure. The competitor audit, I’ve shown these. I’ve worked on so many of them. If I could add one more thing about the testing, the results, what you’re playing for.

I would generally be shooting for about a $50 cost per lead. I’m happy paying $100. I’m happy paying $300 if I know it’s closing at a higher level. The significance is if one out of 50 of those leads are closing and you’re hitting a $2,500 acquisition cost, $2,500 to $5,000 on a Reg D is generally looked at as a gold benchmark. If your average investment is in the six-figure level, even if it’s at $100,000, if you’re in that 20X or 40X type return level.

That’s generally looked at as a good cost of capital. I have campaigns running underneath the $1,000 cost per acquisition on Reg D campaigns. You’re not limited to that. This is an effective metric. I’m using round numbers that would come down to the penny and how much you’re spending on ads and what it averages out to. That’s what’s available when you’re seeing good performance on ads and a strong closing process offline.

Closing The Deal: The 2% Conversion Reality

Your whole business is KPIs and what works best and everything like that. I heard you talking about some numbers on a different show. Put it into perspective for us. If we had 1,000 people come through our funnel that were off of paid ads, what’s the conversion rate for those leads? What have you typically seen?

 

 

Offline, there’s variables. Every company closes at a different level. If they’re speaking to the CEO, the founder, if they’re speaking to somebody mid-level, lower. Someone’s processing the lead first. The prospect then gets discouraged. If they’re speaking to an investor relations partner, they’re speaking to, believe it or not, an AI investor relations partner. You’re anticipating different levels of closing, even the founder. I’ve worked on over 500 deals. Some founders are stronger than others at closing investors offline. Some of them, the first call, it happens and at higher levels. Others, they talk to a lot of folks and it’s not moving forward.

It’s a big variable. I used that number, one out of 50 of the leads closing, accounting for some no-shows, accounting for investors who don’t pass through the KYC, Know Your Client process, ensuring that they’re accredited. Not everyone who thinks that they’re an accredited investor is. The way it works with W2 and networked outside of primary homes and their businesses and other things that can convolute things, some investors won’t pass through the KYC, historically.

Two percent, so 1,000 people, you get close twenty. Twenty at $100,000, that’s $2 million.

That would be looked at as a good level of performance. I’ve seen much higher closing rates, much higher average investment levels, of course. If you’re out of $25,000 to $50,000 minimum investment, you’re probably looking at around $125,000, $150,000 as an average investment. If you’re at $100,000 as your minimum investment on your Form D506 filing, you’re probably thinking $260,000, $280,000 as an average investment. I would be playing for these same benchmarks, even at those higher transaction averages.

Most campaigns fail because they start with assumptions instead of questions. Share on X

Going back to the exercise that I was talking about as far as a newer firm, I didn’t get a concrete answer back from you, but it’s fair enough. Newer firms usually don’t have different divisions within their company. They’re pretty mom-and-pop started out. The executives are wearing many different hats. They don’t have appointment setters, closers, the executive team getting on calls. It’s usually them being on a lot of these calls.

When you have this many leads coming in, there is a need for qualifiers and appointment setters and people figuring out that these people are qualified. You discussed this a bit as well that sometimes you also provide those services to newer firms. You might provide them with some investor relations team members or what have you. Talk to us about that aspect when it comes to newer firms who don’t have investor relation team members. Maybe the founders, themselves, are not there. They’ve never been on investor calls. They don’t know how investor calls go. What do you do in that situation?

Answering the question, strategy activity and cross content marketing ads and outreach will produce the leads. We can work with their team to train them in terms of what is most engaging to prospective investor audiences for their webinars, for their advertising, for their articles. With Investor Relations, we aren’t equipped to manage internally. I do work with IR firms and they’re able to bring in IR agents. They have a whole call center, so volume’s not an issue. Some of those groups even offer AI solutions at this point. Some of our clients hire for those individuals internally over time as their campaigns are successful.

With the coaching we provide for the webinar, for the advertisements, for the content, I would say a lot of that translates directly to the investor relations calls. I find there is some type of sales background with most of the founders that we work with, especially in real estate. It would just be filling in some of those gaps.

Scaling The Established Brand: Strategy For Growth

Let’s do the second exercise. August and Ava come see you. They’ve been in business for six years. They have used paid ads on some level in the past. Nothing crazy. Maybe they had a couple live deals. They spent some money while they had a live deal for paid ads. They have their own show. They have their own blog. They’re getting 300 to 500 website visits on a weekly or monthly basis. I got to get those stats.

If you research their company name, it comes up. If you ask ChatGPT AI about Canadian firm that helps Canadians invest across borders, their firm name comes up. Social proof and track record exists. They have the infrastructure internally when it comes to closers and appointment setters and qualifiers. They never use AI. The brand is pretty built. They want to increase the number of leads, increase the database. They have a weekly email with 10,000 people getting their email on a weekly basis, 30% to 35% open rate over 200 live and current investors.

What is your strategy for a firm like that? Is your attention and focus going more on trying to find current sleeping giants within their leads? Maybe investors who haven’t invested yet because they have such a large current database. Is your attention and focus going to bring in more leads, or is it both at the same time? What do you do when you come into a firm like that? Maybe something completely out of that.

I’d be very interested in audience development of the show, of the blog, of the email, and looking to use that as an opportunity to engage those audiences. Versus, taking them to a lead generation form, which we would do with a newer firm. That’s a massive value point. You’re going to have a more dynamic, warmer conversation by first taking audiences through that funnel.

Strengthening the mid funnel messaging, looking to take them down a path to speak with you guys about investment directly, and looking to have increases to the conversion rate there. Conversion rate optimizations and ongoing tasks sounds like there’s an indication to me that there’s a lot more people in the audience that haven’t converted yet. Doing different A/B test variants to see how we can get better performance there while continuing to grow the audience, but from the upper part of that funnel with your media platforms.

Focusing on the current database and trying to come up with strategies to get them on calls with our team members, that would be one. Would you also audit our current strategies to see how we can, let’s say, increase our audience on our show and YouTube shows, maybe host more webinars? We’ve been hosting a lot of webinars.

They’re just more educational webinars trying to convert our social media leads into our actual email leads. Because people who get our emails, those are the ones who are going to get our live deals when a deal comes in. I have over 20,000 followers on LinkedIn but my investor relations team is never going to reach out to them.

You want to ask as many questions as possible to understand the top reasons someone would invest. Share on X

My investor relations team is going to reach out to people who’ve subscribed to our emails and are getting our emails regularly and they’re opening it regularly. They’re much higher on their list to reach out to than somebody who’s just my follower on LinkedIn. You would come in and possibly do an audit seeing how you can take my LinkedIn leads, for example, and make them into a subscriber for our email kind of ideas.

Lowering Acquisition Costs Via Webinars

Exactly. When strengthening the funnel, we’d have to look at past performance. What emails have the highest click-through rate, the highest reply rate? Which posts have produced that type of engagement? We could strengthen it. It wouldn’t just be adding blindly as much as doing a deep, thorough analysis of what’s occurred to date across those databases while growing it from there. Probably a centralized location around email and as you said, taking the social audiences there so from LinkedIn and these other places.

You mentioned the webinars as well too. To give a more concrete example around audience-building. Your next webinar, if you’re running advertising to a lead form that signs up the audience on Zoom webinar or similar platform. You could even set up Facebook Instant Forms for this and probably get under a $5 cost per sign up of a new attendee.

Meanwhile, you’re getting their email address, adding them to your email database accordingly, checking the right boxes, everything. You can get lower cost email sign up than through the normal lead generation submission funnels. You can build a larger digital audience there. Maybe only a third of the signups show up.

If you’re seeing good performance and keep ramping up the ad budget over time, you could have thousands of signups. You could have a thousand plus people in the room digitally. Everybody gets added to the email database afterwards with that stronger funnel that we’re then running so that you’re seeing more calls, more actual leads after they’ve been nurtured.

Everything that we do is for when we have that live deal and we go for capital raise. That’s the whole point of putting all this work in. We have a buddy who has one German investor. He doesn’t do anything on the marketing side. We literally spend our days on podcasts, marketing and retail.

Focusing on retail has resulted in us getting institutional investors as well. The other day, one ended up in our database. They reached out like, “We’ve been looking for a group like you guys. We’ve got a couple million dollars we want to invest.” It’s happened, but it’s very sporadic. We never even tried for it.

Everything goes back to when we have that live deal. For example, I can give you a quick rundown at CPI Capital. When we have a live deal, we keep things pretty simple, I would say. We’ve done this time and time again. We send out an initial deal email. We send out about eight follow-up emails after that. We host a live webinar. We send out the webinar replay. We’re posting on our socials every single day.

 

We do some paid ads on Facebook and Instagram. The big question mark is, does LinkedIn ads work? We oversubscribe on our deals, which is incredible. If we were to come to you, Jason, we’re in 2026. It looks like it’s going to be a great year for deal flow. We want to make sure that we can, 10X our strategy even more to be able to continue to overscribe on deals.

Eventually, depending on the timing for an investor, you tap out of your current investor network. That’s what we do. I feel like with your brain power, with AI coming out there, you can probably 10X our strategy and make it much more effective moving forward. Again, we do keep it pretty simple. We don’t do anything too crazy. We’ve nurtured our database over the last six years to build a lot of trust.

That wasn’t simple. Building that database, nurturing that database. All those calls we’ve had. All those relationships built. All those dinners we have with investors. All of that work that we did. That wasn’t simple. When we have a live deal, that sounds simple.

Sounds simple. I’ve probably been on 1,500 calls. It’s just insane. That takes a lot of time. Traveling all over Canada and the US to host certain events and everything. It’s not as simple when you put it that way. Simple stuff.

Before we get to the next segment of the show, let us ask you. It has some proprietary effects to it. Is there something else you wanted to cover before the next segment? Was there something else you wanted to cover?

Do LinkedIn ads work? They’re so expensive. We’re wondering, do you use that strategy a lot? That was one of my big questions for him because we’ve always been asking ourselves. Should we spend money on LinkedIn? Should we not? Should we just keep it to Facebook and Instagram because it does work? Talk to us about your expertise on that.

The Truth About LinkedIn: Outreach Vs. Ads

It’s not as black and white of, “Do they work? Do they not?” The way I look at it is I love LinkedIn for outreach. It’s underrated for outreach. You are limited by volume. About 39-40 invitations can be sent to new perspective audiences, new perspective investors every day. It always amazes me how many people put investor as a job title.

Even vertical-specific multifamily investor. You could target by where they live and go into sales navigator, use different tools to put together these lists, look for 20% or higher acceptance rate, 20% or higher response rate, warmer conversation when you’re on the line. It’s beautiful. You could do it from each of the accounts of individuals on your team.

I like LinkedIn for content. You see where I’m going with this. For content. The algorithm, imagine getting twenty of your investors to comment on one of your posts and having to go across all of their algorithms and then favor to audiences that are lookalikes of people that follow them. You can get more distribution using LinkedIn than other platforms. Not even to mention creating a page for your business, a page round groups, a page for your email, live. There’s so many different things you can create within LinkedIn for content.

I will use LinkedIn ads if requested by the client. Click-through rate, cost per click, not as favorable as some of these other ad channels. It’s more expensive for a lower click-through rate. More importantly, because again, I’m fine paying higher costs for leads if they’re high quality. I also find that the conversion behavior afterwards is different.

I can make my own assessment of, “I’m going on LinkedIn, looking to get in, get out.” I avoid these things. It’s not the same as going into Instagram and scrolling for hours. I will say the in-mail is definitely something to look into as an ad placement. I’m more bullish on that than the newsfeed placements. There are people who see tremendous success with LinkedIn. That’s not a one size fits all, but that is my perspective towards it.

 

I did have one more question.

One comment I can make about LinkedIn is that I haven’t seen a lot of Reg D offerings on LinkedIn. That should automatically tell you that it probably doesn’t work.

It could tell you that there’s not a lot of competition.

I don’t know. That’s basically on tap.

Would you get Reg D investments there? Only the outreach. Again, using those other tools.

August and I totally agree with what you said there. One of the other questions I wanted to talk to you, a marketing guru, about is, you’ve worked with many founders before. Founders, typically, have their branding for their company. Ours at CPI Capital, as we were mentioning, we’ve done a lot. I’d say we have very strong branding for CPI Capital.

In your perspective, what does it look like when a founder should have a personal brand showcasing their personal life? I’ve been asking myself this question. I’m hard on myself sometimes because I have two children. Every day, in the back of my mind, I got to get around to starting my personal Instagram to showcase my beautiful life that I have and whatnot like that. Will that connect with people? Do you suggest that founders showcase their personal lives? Talk to me a little bit about that.

The Founder’s Personal Brand

I’ve had different branding experts on my show. I’ve been at events with them. I stay very connected to that world as a marketer beyond just an investor acquisition specialist. I envision the founder, their brand pulling the actual business brand and the products, the investment opportunities underneath. If that founder is positioned as a thought leader in their space, I believe it only leads to good things. There could be reputation management, at one point, and things like that. These are, like the word “management,” manageable things.

People invest in people if they’re able to see who’s behind the brand, understand their expertise, their exits. I often hear that reference from investors that I speak to offline. Whether it’s at an event or in-touch somehow, respond to my podcast episodes. They reference the founders, CEOs of the projects that they invest in.

Even real estate projects, you think it’s around the property itself, by first name and generally, have things to share about them that I’m not aware of. In cases, these are my clients. I know them well. I had a client at the office. We go golfing and ski trips. I’m learning about them from the investors even. I would say you’d want to have that level of personal brand.

There’s no shortage of opportunities for CEOs, for founders to build that personal brand. Whether it’s appearing on podcasts and all the opportunities that exist, conferences. There are sponsorships around that, let alone just outreach, that can get you placed, write-ups. There’s so much you can do to build that personal brand and over time.

That’s great to know. I better get on it.

Leveraging A “Mutual Fund Trust” Advantage

The last question before we move to the next segment of our show. I want to touch on a proprietary advantage that we worked on for a few years here at CPI to gain. It’s something that if leveraged correctly, it could bring in a lot of leads for us. When it comes to investments, Reg D investments, let’s say. Similar thing in Canada, we call them exempt market type of investments. People can use their retirement accounts to invest in these types of deals.

Not everyone who thinks they’re an accredited investor actually is. Share on X

In the US, they can use a custodian like IRA Club to self-direct their retirement accounts, 401(k)s or IRAs, into an investment like ours without touching their account without a tax event. When the deal is wrapped up, those funds go back to their retirement account. In Canada, it’s the same exact concept. People who have their investments sitting in, as we call them RRSPs, RESPs, TFSAs, can self-direct them through a custodian, such as Olympia Trust or other firms, and invest in our deals.

The only difference between Canada and the US is that, in the US, the deal can be structured in any vehicle. It could be structured in the LLC or in the corporation or in a limited partnership. However, in Canada, unlike the US, people self-directing their retirement accounts into the exempt market, into Reg D, let’s say, into the alternative space. The vehicle has to be a mutual fund trust, which is a very costly, cumbersome, very difficult entity to be able to launch and manage because you need to have 150 investors at all times.

There’s so many different hoops you have to jump through. We basically worked for two years to be able to launch a mutual fund trust, to be able to accept registered firms from Canadians. Canadians have over $2 trillion sitting in their registered funds collecting pretty much dust. They’re getting maybe 5%, if they’re lucky, net of fees that these other Wall Street-type firms charge.

They could have come and invest in multifamily deals or a development deal and make between 15% and 25% average annualized returns and get some yield as well if there’s a multifamily deal. If we have that type of competitive advantage, that we’re one of the only handful of firms across Canada that offer syndicated deals. We’re one of the only US firms that offer syndicated deals.

Exposure to syndicated multifamily and BTR deals, but allow Canadians to use their retirement account to come through our fund and not to be taxed and invest. What would be your strategy there when it comes to when a firm has a competitive advantage, which is so strong like that? What would you do?

In that case, I’d want to seek out strategic partners, those who are managing those funds for those audiences to build awareness. I would make sure that that type of competitive advantage is also highlighted in the marketing, in the content, social media, email, long form content, in the advertising and advertising copy, on the offering page and or landing pages.

 

One, test this against other messaging. I’d want to see what’s physically producing a stronger response against other value points. I would want to make sure that’s out there. Given the nature of building strategic partners, you can be bringing in people with those types of funds available and measuring those leads accordingly.

You keep it simple, right, Jason? I know I’m watching you before. You were talking about an elevator pitch. You can go on for 30 minutes or three minutes. You’re like, “No, keep it very short and simple.” That way people can connect with it right away. One of your strategies, I believe you said keep it simple. That brings more people through the door as well.

The Power Of Simple Messaging: The 313 Method

The simpler you’re able to make it, the more absorbable it is. If I said, “Do these four things, do these seven things.” Seven is a pretty good number for an article. If I’m just stating these verbally, it’s going to feel like you need to be writing it down if I say, “Three things. Content, ads, outreach.” People can remember three things. If you are breaking your value prop down into three things, it’s going to be far more memorable.

In fact, there’s a branding expert that I quote and reference a lot by Ryan Foland. His processes are amazing. I’ve seen them work with founders firsthand, literally, hundreds of times. He’s got something called the 3-1-3 Method where you break what you do. You break your offering down into three sentences.

It’s then a whole exercise you go through to combine that and make that one sentence and then to break it down into three words. That is powerful. It gives that type of description that you’d expect from three sentences in those three words. You could use that in advertising copy. That’s just one of the approaches towards it. That’s what you want to be playing for, that direction with your messaging.

How does this sound guys, “RSP at 25%?”

I thought about three words like, “We make money.” For you, probably.

“You’d make money.”

“You make money with us.” No, that’s more than three words.

LinkedIn is underrated for outreach. Share on X

I love it. It’s so much fun. There’s so many moving parts when it comes to marketing. It can make you literally pull your hair out. People like Jason, their minds think in such a quick way on it.

They’ve stacked on it, too, from before. Keep stacking over here to see what worked, what didn’t work. “What layers can I add?”

“Make this video. Say it like that. Do it like this.” It’s sad because you think that your way is going to work. You put like ten hours into creating one little video or ad and then it’s like, “No, that doesn’t give the right message across.”

It’s like a newer firm, you see what others do and you think, “That chiropractor, he must be doing those meetups. That’s why he raised hundreds of millions of dollars.” You go do the meetups. You’re like, “We didn’t even get a single investor from a meetup. It wasn’t that.” You find out, it was all paid ads.

We did meetups all over Canada, didn’t we?

We did.

One budget produces the next... that attention to detail is required for a campaign to continue. Share on X

Many things. At trials and tribulations, it’s better to just hire somebody like Jason. Get him to show you the ropes and then just execute from there honestly than to do by yourself.

I was going to add. We have to think like that. We’re on the front lines of performance. One budget in many cases has to produce the next. That group that’s spending $100,000 a month. They were probably in that $5,000, $15,000 a month level at some point. If it didn’t work for three months, they probably would have cut it off. It did. It got up to those levels, that type of magnitude. It’s impacting these many people, these many projects at this point. It is that attention to detail that’s required for a campaign to continue. One budget produces the next.

The communication behind it. What you’re communicating out there, which is you’d think it be so simple and clear. It’s not. This has been great, Jason. You’re awesome. Let’s move on to the next segment of our show, Ten Championship Rounds to Financial Freedom. I warned Jason before the show that we’re going to be rapid firing ten questions at him. Are you ready, Jason?

Let’s do it. Looking forward to it.

The “Championship Round” Rapid Fire

Let’s get into things. First question. Who’s been the most influential person in your life?

My dad. He taught me about how to start a business, how to run a business and how to deal with difficult conversations. Sales is a transfer of energy. I picked this stuff up just watching him as a young adult.

The second question is what is the number one book you would recommend?

 

The E-Myth. My partner or COO had me read it before starting the business. It shows the difference from being an entrepreneur and working on a business and being self-employed and being able to set up a team to effectively hit the goals. It talks about the failure rate of new businesses, different types of funds even, and creating replicable models. I quote it regularly.

We’ll have to read that August. Next question. If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?

It’s starting the business and creating more referral partnerships. You can never have enough. They’re instrumental to the growth of a business. These could be with investors, by the way, individuals who manage investors and have that regular flow. It’s a complete competitive advantage towards other groups, other opportunities in your space.

What’s the best investment you’ve ever made?

Early BTC. I would like to buy more coins at that price.

Don’t we all? Good for you. What’s the worst investment you’ve ever made and what lessons did you learn from it?

There’s a lot of different directions I could take this question, but since I mentioned cryptocurrency, it was very up on Terra Luna. They created a stablecoin. It wasn’t backed. It took down Terra as well as the rest of the ecosystem. One exchange after the other. Projects that over leveraged, I could look at other services I bought. I could look at a few other things but that’s probably what sticks with me because it was so high. I had such a strong appreciation and then it all fell apart.

Sales is a transfer of energy. Share on X

Translated at today’s prices, probably the most money I’ve ever lost has also been on, as they call them, “crap coins.”

The next question is how much would you need in the bank to retire? What’s your number?

I want to keep being a value. I want to keep impacting the world and find ways to get involved. I don’t know, $100 million would be great, $35 million, I’m told, is an area where you don’t have limitations. It could be done with a few million with the right structure $10 million at a whole different level. At my age and for what I do, I think that $35 million or that $100 million would shut me up, if you will, where I don’t have to be contributing anymore.

Reach for the stars. Good for you. Next question is, if you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be?

This answer may be controversial, but at the same time, it’s the first thing that comes to mind. It’d be interesting to anybody. It would be Elon Musk. I did a lot of research on him in my early career. Obviously, he’s gone through different changes, different growth, but the magnitude of the projects and everything that he’s involved with. Why is that a bad answer?

Aside from the founding fathers, Elon Musk is the most common answer that we get.

Now I just feel average and basic. That was my gut response.

 

Next question. If you weren’t doing what you’re doing today, what would you be doing now?

Golf YouTuber. That would be more of a dream. I don’t know if my skill level is to that point, but in terms of how I want to spend my days, that’d be pretty fun. It all comes down to the guests and who you’re having on. That’s a fair answer. Maybe travel blogger’s probably another one there. I love what I do. Businesses fail. Investment opportunities don’t have awareness without marketing and without new capital coming through. I am excited to wake up in the morning.

My favorite question, Jason, book smarts or street smarts?

I’d probably have to say street smarts. I know people who were top of their class and their university or high school, whatever it may be, all different types of accolades on the book smart side. I know others that outperform them in their role in the world, if you will. I don’t want to just say how well they do financially or their portfolio or anything like that. since their street smarts, I feel street smarts can navigate through situations in a different way.

Last question. If you had $100 million dollars in cash and you had to make one investment, what would it be?

I feel like I should mention one of my clients, but I think there’s also compliance to that. A $100 million dollars cash. It gets into a conversation of portfolio management, but I feel that’s not the nature of the question. I’m a marketer. I follow different influencers and thought leaders. I’d probably look at five of the accounts of people I know directly but that are constantly pointing out different things to me in the market.

I would go with one of their recommendations. It’s externalized a little bit. I’ve done this in the past, not quite at those levels. I’ve done this in the past and done very well off of it. Instead of telling you one stock or one asset or one this or one that, it does change every day. I do want to know what people see that’s coming next or saying and would want to base it on that, as well as have a very thought out strategy for liquidity.

I look at it as a duty to share what’s working, what’s not in the world of investor acquisition. Share on X

That’s about it. For everybody that’s reading, Jason, what’s the best way that people can reach you?

I’m accessible on LinkedIn, Jason Fishman, DNA, Marina Del Rey. Feel free to reach out to me anytime. Go to our website, www.DigitalNicheAgency.com. I would also encourage you to check me out on YouTube, over 230 podcast episodes and 60 webinars and all different types of guests and topics. I look at it as a duty to share what’s working, what’s not in the world of investor acquisition. There’s probably a lot of steps, a lot of time, a lot of budgets you could save by watching those videos.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing knowledge and experience with us.

We appreciate it.

Thanks, August. Thanks, Ava. This has been great. I enjoyed the conversation. appreciate you having me on.