So you want to raise money from investors, you just need to put it online, right? Well, this video is a blast from the past of a video I recorded to help people who were putting together real estate syndications and funds. In order to understand what that online medium looks like, it isn’t just a “put it up and magically money appears.” But it’s talking specifically about the online marketing media itself. So how does that need to be looked at? What’s the framework for online marketing in terms of finding those investors? I know you’re gonna find this video helpful.
In this video, we’re specifically talking about the media itself, about the way that we communicate online and how we do it, the mechanisms that take place. So let’s think about online. In this day and age, most of the time, when we think about online, we’re probably thinking about Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, maybe a blog somewhere, or podcasts. That tends to be the kinds of things that we’re thinking about in our current environment.
We’ve also got different media types in order to communicate. We can communicate on those media through video, audio, text, and image. In order of how well these work and how sticky they are, video is probably number one, audio is number two, text is number three, and images number four, in terms of actually converting mindset and capturing attention. Now, an image is going to capture immediate attention, but unless there’s something compelling there, it’s immediately going to fall off.
All these different media can be put into what we traditionally think of as online media. There is also a growing world right now in terms of how people perceive these different sources of media. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube – there’s a perception out there that marketers simply need to put it up there and broadcast their message and they’re suddenly going to be able to get investors or customers. That simply isn’t true. These are excellent sources and they allow us to communicate, but there are two different mechanisms: organic traffic and advertising.
With organic traffic, you probably are going to have more interest because these people already have some relationship with you. If you have organic traffic and you’re putting it on Facebook, those are people who’ve already either liked your page or they’ve friended you. Whereas advertising is interrupting them where they’re at. So advertising is interrupting, and in organic, you may have some engagement.
If you don’t have a big list, that’s understandable. You might not have a lot of friends and followers on Facebook. But here’s why it doesn’t actually matter. If you look at any of the big marketers, you’ll notice that sometimes they’ll have a lot of followers and sometimes the big companies and the big names that you know about don’t have a lot of followers at all. Why? Because followers don’t matter. Followers do not matter on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. It’s not a waste of time in terms of getting organic traffic, but in terms of your time spent building those followers, it’s not time well spent.
Why is that? Because on these platforms, you don’t own that list. So those are all people that you can’t immediately get in touch with whenever you want, unless they’re already on your list. If I meet Joe, or Joe likes my page, and I want to really get in touch with him and send him a specific message, there’s no real mechanism for me to do that that’s really engaging. What I’m trying to do there is putting a post up, hoping that Joe ultimately sees it and can engage with it in some way. But what if Joe is in Tibet for the next month? He’s never going to see that post that I put up. Or what if Facebook changes its algorithm? They all do this from time to time and make it so that your content is less viewed. You suddenly have a much less possibility to engage with them for any period of time.
What we are ultimately trying to do is build a list. You probably are thinking, “Well, okay, then what about my awesome website?” Is my awesome website where I’ve got a great logo, and then I’ve got this great menu bar? It’s got the home, investments, my blog, and contact information. And then I’ve got a really cool live video here about a neat building that’s really pretty. And then I’ve got some news over here, and I’ve also got a contact us page, right?
How often does this actually happen that somebody fills out that contact page and says, “I want to hear more”? Even if they have the ability to find it from the very beginning because they’re looking for you, if they’re not looking for you, how likely is it that they’re actually going to have traffic to this page? It probably doesn’t exist.
Now, it’s not to say that your website isn’t important and that I’m saying don’t do a website. I’m absolutely not. I’m saying you need to have a website. But you don’t need a website in order to build your list. The purpose of your website is entirely for social proof. By social proof, I mean so that when somebody Googles you because you’ve talked to them, they see, “Oh, this person’s legit. They’ve got real results.” Maybe they have testimonials. Maybe they’ve got some press releases on it. And so suddenly now you look like the real deal. That’s the role of a website.
What other people do is they build a different kind of webpage. And this is the kind of webpage we call a funnel. You’ve probably seen ads for Click Funnels or funnel this or funnel that if you’ve been looking at marketing. Funnels are perfect because what we’re trying to do with a funnel has two roles: to build a list or set a time to talk.
What’s the best funnel look like? It doesn’t even need your logo on it. It needs some sort of media in order to convey a message, to communicate a message, just like we talked about in investor target lock. Some sort of compelling message that they were driven to from online media or some sort of ad source. So they’re driven to this webpage, some sort of message that’s enough for them to want to hear more. And then ultimately enough for them to opt in, give you their name, give you their email, maybe their phone, and maybe schedule a time to talk.
The purpose of that is, again, build a list, set a time to talk. They are actually building a list from both of these. Your website is really grounded in that social proof, and your funnel is really grounded in building a list. And this is the online media. This is the territory that we’re taking place in right now today.
Losing track of this and thinking that, “Well, I’m gonna get traffic just by putting something up on Facebook” is not going to happen. You may even drive them to your awesome website, but you’re not going to convert them, and you’re not ultimately going to add them to your list. The only way to do this is to have possibly compelling content up here, and then drive them to a funnel to build the list. And then when you have the conversation, it goes back to the website. They’re Googling back to you to find out more information.
My name is Tilden Moschetti. I know that you found that video helpful to see what the framework looks like for any sort of syndication or fund deal that you’re putting online and using online resources, from everything from social media to website, in order to understand that. It also puts together in context what we mean by funnels versus websites and discusses that, and I’m sure that that’s been helpful as well.
Again, my name is Tilden Moschetti. I’m a syndication attorney with the Moschetti Syndication Law Group. If we can help you be successful, too, in your Regulation D Rule 506(b) or 506(c) offering, give us a call. We definitely take care of the legal documents that you’re going to need to be in compliance with the SEC and state regulators. But we also can go beyond that – we can help you be successful as well by talking through the different things that come up.