First things first, no equity crowdfunding raise should ever be undertaken without a serious long-term strategic plan—that goes double for a digital marketing strategy.
From the outside, digital marketing can seem simplistic. You send some emails, make some social posts, build some ads in MS Paint (that still exists, right?) and Bob’s your uncle, you’re a marketer! Right? Right?!
Yeah, not quite.
Here’s the thing about digital marketing, especially when it comes to long-term planning for something like an equity crowdfunding campaign: it’s not a buckshot approach, where you’re just trying a bunch of different stuff and seeing what works. Sure, that might have worked 50 years ago, but back then we also fired dogs into space to see if it was safe for people, and that was bad.
Today, the goal of digital marketing is about building a funnel designed to generate and nurture leads, and then converting those leads into investors. This means that all the different aspects of the strategy need to work together to augment and enhance each other. This means that mass email campaigns, social posts, DM campaigns, blog posts, search and banner ads, even automation campaigns all have to be aligned in pursuit of a singular goal.
For a company that’s considering running an equity crowdfunding raise, let’s say Regulation A+ for instance (although there are other kinds—Reg CF, D, etc.), digital marketing is going to be one of their campaign’s largest expenses, which can be alarming to some entrepreneurs. However, what companies are ideally getting out of their digital marketing company isn’t just a list of items, it’s a long-term strategy designed to amplify and enhance their strengths, and use them to create a narrative that will appeal to investors, and more than that—help one specific offering stand out from the crowd.
Since 2012, when Regulation A+ and equity crowdfunding were created as part of the JOBS Act, there have been over 6000 Form 1-As filed with the SEC. The number of new Regulation A+ raises has been increasing every year, as more and more companies learn about this method of raising capital. Competition is fiercer than ever, and it’s never been more difficult or more important for a company’s raise to be attention-grabbing. That starts with marketing.
Getting down to brass tacks, this is the value that a digital marketing strategy, and a processional digital marketing firm, can add to a Regulation A+ capital raise. That’s not to say that marketing is the be-all and end-all of having a successful raise.
At the end of the day, what the cost of a digital marketing firm really buys an entrepreneur is expertise and time. The time and work saved by not having to do their own marketing can be much more efficiently used by doing the thing that only they can do: managing and developing their growing business.
Public Yield Capital is a leading investor marketing partner specializing in Equity Crowdfunding Raise to support innovative companies raising corporate awareness and their capital. Contact us to learn more
