I speak with Ben Aronsten who is Chief Marketing Officer at Seedrs. We discuss how Seedrs has grown in a competitive and regulated financial industry. Seedrs is the most active equity crowdfunding platform in Europe with 700+ deals and €175 million in investment. We discuss big advertising deals with London Underground all the way through to targeted remarking campaigns based on highly targeted geo location. Seedrs a fascinating business and this episode provides a lot of interesting takeaways.
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Last 5 questions:
What’s your best piece of marketing advice?
It’s probably a simple piece of advice but define your audience and objectives before you do anything otherwise you’ll be a rudderless ship, you know too many people go straight to this sort of tactical aspect and tactical execution and don’t ground in any clear objective or clear sort of audience to target.
Can you recommend a book to our listeners?
Yeah I think, they’re probably not pure play marketing books though I like… And probably most people listening have read these Zero to One Peter Thiel is quite a good book, I think you can take certain aspects of what he says in that and apply it in other disciplines. And the Lean Startup by Eric Ries is a great book too probably don’t take everything in that book literally, but you can certainly take sort of what it says, sort of disciplines and aspects of it and apply it, be very serious within a business whether it’s marketing operations, finance, there’re loads that can be taken from that book.
What software tool couldn’t you live without?
It’s probably Excel, like I said I think I would drown without, my whole life is spent in pivot tables and running SQL queries so I think Excel is it. I mean, and probably Slack as well when you’ve got a team the size I do it certainly helps me keep on top of what’s going on just by listening to all the different channels.
What’s your favourite example of a marketing campaign?
I think American Express generally get it right, I’ve got a lot of respect for the guys over there. I think they have a task where they’ve got umbrella brand lots of B2B products, lot of B2C products and so it’s quite complex to get the messaging right and then have that all tied back to the overarching brand. So I think they seem to be very clear on who their customer is, what their behaviors are and their ability to create these sorts of great wholistic campaigns that they can stretch across these sorts of B2B and B2C audiences separately but as I said ties back to the umbrella brand. I noticed one other thing that they’ve sort of launched recently last month or two which is “Don’t do business or don’t live without American Express” and it’s a very interesting play because they’re targeting their audience that will in their business life probably live and breathe and use American Express quite heavily and that crosses over into their personal life.
I remember reading an article where they were saying that they’d done some research around this where 60 percent of people say that the convergence of their sort of personal or work life is the norm and so they’ve really just horned in on that data research and learned into it and I think the campaigns pulled together really nicely.
Which other podcasts do you listen to?
I’ve got a few, probably the one worth mentioning here is the one by Guy Raz How I Built This, it’s fascinating, I love listening to people’s stories and I think more so you hear what’s worked but where people have failed or hasn’t gone to plan and I think those… You know, you don’t taste the sweet without experiencing the bitter and it’s always good to hear those experiences and try and take back into what you’re doing to try and learn from their mistakes or sort of give you a little more context. So I enjoy listening to the various stories.
Transcription:
Matt Byrom:
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Marketing Strategies Podcast. Today I’m joined by Ben Aronsten, who’s chief marketing officer at Seedrs. And Seedrs for anybody who hasn’t heard of it yet, are Europe’s largest equity crowdfunding platform, so companies list themselves for investment through the Seedrs platform and investors invest in the business in exchange for the equity. Ben has been with Seedrs for coming up to four years and has driven the marketing team to achieve over 420 million pounds worth of investment in businesses through the platform and over 670 deals from it since launch. So today I’m extremely interested and excited to learn about how Seedrs market their business, the activities they perform and what’s moving the needle for them most. So let’s dive right in. How are you doing today, Ben?
Ben Aronsten:
Good Matt, thanks for the invitation, looking forward to having a chat.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, you’re very welcome, great to have you on board as I mentioned before we even started speaking, I’ve invested through Seedrs when you actually put yourself on the platform for investment, so it’s been extremely exciting following you over the last few years since then. For anybody who doesn’t know that much about you, if you could tell us a bit more about what you do, why companies and investors use you.
Ben Aronsten:
Indeed. Seedrs as you say is the equity crowdfunding platform in Europe, we’ve been around for around six years now. Our latest numbers which are just slightly higher than the ones you mentioned in your intro, is about 475 million in investments in the campaigns on the platform and we’ve just funded our 700th deal this week, which is obviously, great news. We only focus on equity so, it’s on the investment into businesses from an equity perspective that we focus on and we target the full range of startups from very early stage startups that are looking for say £150,000 right up through to sort of IPO deals that we’ve helped support raise as well. And from an investor perspective we allow investors from £10 to invest on the platform right through to venture funds and family offices that invest substantially more amounts than that.
Matt Byrom:
So Seedrs really breaks down the barriers from both sides doesn’t it? So it makes it really easy for investors to invest as you say from £10 and it makes it really simple for companies who need investment to actually generate that investment with that support that they would get on the back end if they went through any other method of doing it.
Ben Aronsten:
Indeed, it’s the democratization of venture capitals and I think it’s important to point out that equity crowdfunding isn’t an ore it’s an end so when I say that I mean, we do a lot of co-investment rounds with other investments or other investors in that round like debenture funds and the larger institutional investors so we generally for this, sort of bigger rounds invest alongside other investors as well.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, so you’ll make up a portion of the investment round?
Ben Aronsten:
Indeed, and give access to an asset class that has generally not been available to the retail investor unless they’re either fairly well connected or they’re investing significant amounts of money.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah absolutely when I was looking at your platform in the first place that’s what I thought about is you know if you didn’t have something like Seedrs you wouldn’t actually be able to find or know about these deals it’s usually restricted to people who have the network or the net worth to actually make these deals so it’s super cool, it’s actually giving visibility and access to people who might just not normally have the ability to do these deals.
Ben Aronsten:
Very true, or identify themselves as investors when they actually are.
Matt Byrom:
And so you joined Seedrs four years ago the business was started six years ago, what position was the business in when you joined?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah. I joined as you say four years ago now there was 15 people I think in the team we are now roughly about 90 people so it’s grown fairly dramatically. My team was two when I joined, which was the marketing business development team, three if you include myself. Now my team makes up around just under half of the business so it is a significant team.
Matt Byrom:
So it’s 45 people in your team currently?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah and growing, which is great. The size of the team is growing because of the demand of, you know the pace at which the business is growing itself. Last year I think in 2017 we had sort of 125 million pound invested through the platform, the year before that 85, year before that 64. So there’s a momentum in the speed at which we’re growing, which is roughly sort of 75 percent a year, year on year which is quite quick and obviously were trying to find efficiencies in scalability as we do that but growing at that pace you do need to resource quite quickly.
Matt Byrom:
Absolutely its fantastic growth and it’s great to see. And when you joined them what was your remit and does your remit continue to be today?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah, so I joined as CMO and my title hasn’t changed. I guess the task I was given was, there wasn’t really a marketing function or a business development function in the business at any significant scale so over the last four years we’ve built out both those functions to be fairly robust. At the end of the day we’re our own market place, so we have investors on one side and businesses wanting to raise capital on the other. And within each side of those market place we have various audiences with various different needs and expectations in regard to product and service, so the marketing teams and the business development teams run, I wouldn’t say complex but there are many sorts of functions within each side of those.
Matt Byrom:
And are you a marketing lead business over… You’ve said you’ve got a business development function there as well, are you more marketing lead or… I presume so with a team size of 45 over I guess a smaller business development function?
Ben Aronsten:
From a head count perspective it’s actually probably more business development at the moment. So let me drill into how I guess those teams are structured which might help sort of give some context to it. So if we look at the marketing teams we have four teams I guess in marketing, we have a team that we call the growth team and that looks after channels of scale so this is all about the retail investor and I guess what you would call the smaller size raises, those looking to raise sort of 700 and 350, how do we get those deals inbound at volume. So if you look at this sort of as a customer lower value higher volume, we have a team that looks after that segmentation. We have another marketing team which is a channel marketing team, and that does support the business development functions. So that is a focus around marketing, where it’s a lower volume higher value.
Ben Aronsten:
We have what we call a campaign support team and that marketing function is there to support the businesses that are on the platform currently raising funds and how can they support those businesses in a distribution of the teams at the fundraisers and how can they help support those businesses in capitalizing on their own commodities. And the fourth team is a PR team, which we have in-house and that is cross function team where it supports seizes need from a public relations perspective and also support the businesses that are raising funds on the platform as well. So there are four teams roughly sort of two to three people in each of those teams supporting all those various functions, on the business development side of the business we have various teams we have a business development team that focus on direct outreach to the end business looking to raise funds. And we have teams in the U.K. in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Lisbon and they’re out there looking at businesses that generally want to raise between 500,000 and eight million and any co-raise funding rounds larger than that.
Ben Aronsten:
We have a partnerships team that looks after the indirect channel, so those partners whether they are incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces, accountants, lawyers that their clients are businesses looking to raise funds, and they can refer those businesses to Seedrs to raise funds. Then we have a portfolio team, we’ve obviously raised 700 funded deals, so there is quite a significant portfolio to manage. So there’s a repeat business function there that needs to be looked after and then we also have an investors business development team, which is ultimately an institutional function. So this is a team that goes and builds partnerships with venture funds, family offices and those sorts of larger institutional pension funds. So it’s quite a complex team and functions but as a market place and with that market place and the range of I guess products and services we offer it seems to work well but it is a handful.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, it’s fantastic and it certainly sounds like you’ve got a very fragmented team in terms of everyone’s got their core specialism and functions within that team as well.
Ben Aronsten:
Indeed, indeed, and it’s taken us a while to get there but I think we feel like we’re in a good place and the engine is humming.
Matt Byrom:
Well that’s fantastic to know and to go from three people up to double the amount of teams nevermind people in that in four years is incredible and it’s a testament to yourself there. Would the 45 people that we mentioned before, is that split between the marketing and biz dev teams then?
Ben Aronsten:
It is, yes. And it’s just over a half is… And the other is marketing.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah cool and so interesting to know, obviously you’ve got a market place so it does have the two sides and as you discussed some of those functions there have more input in each of those sides, do you split out the marketing that you do specifically within teams to the investor side and also the business side specifically or do people tend to get involved with a bit of both within their daily jobs?
Ben Aronsten:
Yes, I think they get involved with both. So the growth team looks after both investor and business and same with the channel marketing team when we go to market teams we call it, and I guess they have similar traits with each of those teams. So when you do have sort of higher volume segment of an audience and lower value within the sort of entrepreneur sphere and the investor sphere there are similar behavioral patterns, so we’ve just found that works really well.
Matt Byrom:
Fantastic. So it’d be great to start to dive into your marketing strategy as a whole so if you can just start off by telling us a bit more about how you actually work on I guess a channel basis, you know, where do you spend most of your time, what’s effective for Seedrs, and how is your marketing… I guess what areas do you particularly focus on that’s having most value for your business.
Ben Aronsten:
Indeed, I mean up until a few years ago we were growing at a great rate, very organically and it’s only been in the last probably 18 months to two years where we’ve sort of significantly ramped up the marketing function, where we’re now driving that growth even further. We’ve been very fortunate enough to have developed some fairly sort of industry leading products like we have a fully functioning secondary market. It’s the only one in the industry which allows us to… Or allows investors, sorry, to have sort early illiquidity events if they would like to, so early stage investing is generally a long-term asset class, seven years plus but those investors that have invested into businesses on Seedrs have the opportunity to list their shares on a secondary market and trade-out, or if they like to buy more in either existing stocks they’ve got or other business then they can do so.
Ben Aronsten:
And we’ve also got autoinvest, which is a new product that allows people to select a criteria, select the amount they’d like to invest and then the platform will automatically invest them into those deals for them as well. So we’ve made strategy perspective we are now getting into specific product marketing strategies around those products because they are unique and they know there are no other products like those in the market but generally we try to focus on very sort of specific audience behavioral strategies and try to sort of double down on those try and get traction.
Matt Byrom:
So you’re saying that a lot of your marketing is product focus to make sure that you’ve got the best most innovative or new product in the market to inspire, you know, your audience, it’s a big focus of your team.
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah and it’s becoming more and more like that I guess and so within that sort of team structure as I described before from both a business development and a marketing perspective we do a bit of brand marketing from a strategy perspective but when you think about the space we play in and the fact that we’re trying to, I guess sort of the most part come into sort of retail environment, you’ve got a very long path the education, you know you’re telling people about a new product and a new space that they’re not exposed to. So you’re saying here’s crowdfunding, there are multiple types of crowdfunding so equity, reward debt, so you’re then talking about the equity part of the equation and then within that you have obviously different products and services from different players and you have to distinguish the difference in what those products or services are.
Ben Aronsten:
So while everyone may be in the drinks game, as an analogy, you know one selling coke, one selling juice so you need to make that distinction so that can be quite challenge to be honest but the one thing that people are, from an investor’s perspective do connect with are the businesses that are raising on a platform. Most people that live in London would have gone to Revolut or Toss’d salad or one of those businesses, so if you market the business and Seedrs is the platform that the business is raising that seems to be the path of the least resistance in regards sort of investor acquisition in the retail space.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, that seems to make sense because if I summarize that is basically if you market the businesses on the platform, investors are going to learn and find out about that business as a possible investment for them but then that actually also shows Seedrs is a platform where businesses get listed and can also then get investments as well, so you’re almost hitting two birds with one stone if you like.
Ben Aronsten:
Indeed, indeed. We use various channels to try and do that, everything from the usual suspects, social page search, we would do offline DM, out of home we have an exclusive partnership with Exterion media, with the London Tube network that allows us to be on that underground network most of the time throughout the year which is fantastic, emails, events and the different audiences have different behavioral patterns so our institution team that looks after investors would very much on offline world lots of face to face networking a lot of printed collateral, a lot of networking events. You look at the flip side of that and you look at the retail investor very much we are sort of trying to help support raise for businesses who are [inaudible 00:15:51] businesses like the Revoluts and their customers are much younger demographic, early adopters so they’re consuming mobile and digital channels far more than other investor audiences we’re targeting.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, it’s particularly interesting, it’s nice to know that you’ve got such a range of different channels there, I mean you know I obviously, have an interest in this area and this a product that I’ve used but I’m often in London and I go down the tube and I see all the different businesses that are getting an investment through Seedrs because you know you can’t help but miss them when you’re going down the escalator and you see various different businesses that are being advertised. So obviously, that’s an interesting strategy to actually do for a growing startup, if you still consider yourself that but it’s a growing business is to actually advertise using out door media really, it’s a bit of an older way to do marketing really so it interesting that you’re mixing digital along with print and out door media as well.
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah, and I think it’s one of those things where, you know the outdoor is for the most part a broadcast, non direct response channel allows us to get the reach we need to build a brand but it also does play a role in the direct response activity we’re doing in the digital aspect. So if we’re running or promoting a particular business that’s raising on the platform and we feature those on the Tube then we generally map that to the digital strategy in regard to what station those posters are at so when people come out of those stations, they’re obviously, being re-targeted digital ads based on a geo location and other proprietary data we have within the platform. So there is a consistent campaign that’s sort of multichannel.
Matt Byrom:
That’s interesting so you’re actually using geo location in tandem with adverts that you’ve got in the different Tube stations?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah, we are and we’re quite fortunate we… People that invest on our platform, we’re authorized to hold clients money STA, so we’re actually taking an investment on the platform so we have a very good depth of data in regard to people’s behavior, people’s investing patterns and those that invest in more than one business on Seedrs generally have a portfolio of about eight or nine. We cover 15 sectors in regard to funding and we’re no deeper in any sector than about sort of 12 percent, so it’s quite an even spread across those 15 sectors and then those that are building portfolios are building fairly robust portfolios. So, when you start leveraging that propietary data with the digital channels and you map that to the offline activity that you’re doing you could build some really, really robust campaigns that deliver some good ROI.
Matt Byrom:
It’s really, really interesting because that’s obviously, kind of fun technique to really you know map outdoor media along with geo location, I guess that’s over social search or display as well probably as well. Well two questions, how did you come across that strategy is actually, you know it’d be nice if we can marry the advertising on the Tube along with geo location spend and then how do you actually manage that on an ongoing basis to make sure that’s working effectively and actually driving ROI for you?
Ben Aronsten:
So my background before joining Seedrs has been working with few other high-scale startups one was my own startup which I ended up selling another one was a startup based in New York that was around books, both community based network effect and market place type businesses and we did a lot of that type of activity in both those businesses. One was sort of in the cosmetic space and as I just mentioned it I was in the book space, outside of that my sort of experience before that was setting up digital functions for various marketing agencies working with the likes of active vision gaming, MTV, Cannon, and so we used those type of tactics on those various clients as well so it’s something I’ve done in the past, and what really intrigued me when I joined Seedrs was that level of data we had internally from a behavioral perspective and then so it was just a case of leveraging that.
Ben Aronsten:
And then I guess how we track ROI we’ve got a really clear focus on like most businesses do on acquisition and then activation and then retention and we look at things in regard to, you know it’s all good and well for somebody just to signup to see this but it’s rate of success if I would say not it helps obviously the topper funnel from a volume perspective but what’s really important is the first investment, that is really the test and so we can tell with the help of the data analysts in-house, we’ve got models where we can tell if somebody invests, you know first investment within 14 days and they go onto make a second investment within 60 days we know within the first 18 months if they’re likely to have a portfolio of about eight or nine and invest on average somewhere in the range of sort of £10,000 to £12,000 as like a minimum base.
Ben Aronsten:
So we’ve got these really interesting models in the data scientist in-house are constantly trying to update and look for new behavioral themes so we can then plug our marketing in and that then feeds into product development as well.
Matt Byrom:
Fantastic, so [inaudible 00:20:51] to have the depth of data to be able to actually create advertising and create marketing opportunities with that data to actually generate results.
Ben Aronsten:
Yes, it’s a very fortunate position.
Matt Byrom:
And it’s really interesting I’d say that you know you’ve had a lot of experience in that area before, you know which effectively taking game what’s a brand awareness play with the outdoor advertising and turn into almost a direct response which is like an advertisement on social or something like that for example.
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah, exactly and I think I’ve had experience in radio and outdoor before predominantly a lot of that work with obviously the gaming company we did a lot of QSR restaurants so the likes of Nandos and those types of businesses and it’s interesting to take I guess methods and types sort of activities and strategies from completely other sectors and see whether they can work in the financial space. It’s the first time I’ve worked in a sort of fintech business with a fairly heavily regulated background and that obviously poses its challenges for everyone playing in this space but we’re doing a reasonably good job and I’ve got an amazing team behind me too. So I think without them we wouldn’t be where we are now.
Matt Byrom:
The true heroes.
Ben Aronsten:
Yes, they are.
Matt Byrom:
And as I was doing my research I did a search on similar web and it shows that most of your website traffic comes from either direct or search and then when I look into that further it seems that the majority of search is organic and that most of the time people are actually searching for you by brand name and that kind of correlates with what we’re talking about here is that, a lot of what you’re doing here is actually generating awareness through events or offline networking events paid and social and things like that to generate awareness of these businesses that are gaining investment on the platform would that be accurate to how you feel as a generalization that Seedrs goes about their marketing?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah indeed and I think there’s a focus on the short-term tactical, and you’ve got to meet obviously certain operational targets, but you can’t lose focus of the strategic side of things, which is more of a long term value building stream of activity, so we generally build our marketing strategies roughly now a little earlier actually, we prefer sort of 2019 so we generally start trying to push things out in just at the mid-year way year prior and so what we do, we’ll get this right we need to hit this from a tactical perspective, so there’s a lot of sorts of short-term direct response tactical things then there’s the long-term player of building a sustainable low cost inbound channels long term and SEO is something that we have been focusing on we’re getting better, we have a long way to go. We think there’s a lot amount of head room for us in SEO and the team is focusing on that but it’s something that’s the parts of many makes a significant whole.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, I did necessarily just pick up that SEO is something that you’re newly focusing on I guess, and it seemed that actually the way that people were contacting you is perhaps through word of mouth being like direct in searching for brand name and things like that. So it means that brand awareness is working very well because people are finding out about the Seedrs name and then perhaps either searching for you or going direct to seedrs.com to actually then find out a bit more.
Ben Aronsten:
Indeed, I think from the business side referrals is probably one of our strongest channels, which is great because that comes with a level of qualified validation, if someone’s willing to refer back Seedrs and there’s almost that sort inherent, you know I’m willing to refer you to Seedrs so there’s a reassurance from a quality perspective that they’re passing somebody onto us, that they know is crowdfunding applicable because not all business can raise with crowdfunding as a mechanic. They’re not all suitable, so we get a good volume and a good level of quality from referral, both investor and entrepreneurs to be honest.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, it’s particularly interesting as well and I was going to come onto to that and the next question for you is actually going to be, what strategies are most successful, you know what’s really moving the needle for you? You know obviously, referral is a big part of that and I can see obviously, people are investing real money and either they want to get these good return so to have that referral and somebody actually say, this is not just a good channel but there’re good businesses to invest in on here, it’s trustworthy and everything that goes along with it will be a strong mechanism for you to actually use, a strong channel for you to use but obviously, it’s not one that you can rely on without growing the other marketing channels as well. So what’s particularly moving the needle for you in terms of year 2018-2019 marketing strategy?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah, in 2018 we tried to explore social advertising again and we’d done it in the past, it worked okay, but nothing significantly moved the dial. That’s both from an investor and on an entrepreneur perspective. We re-looked at a strategy regarding that in 2018, took a different approach and it worked very well.
Matt Byrom:
What was the different approach, what changed the way that actually worked for you?
Ben Aronsten:
It was where in the funnel we were using it, it was the type of targeting from a behavior perspective we were having a look at and we were tighter on our segmentation and we found that a certain demography, a certain segment of the audience based on a handful of different behavioral indicators that we just found worked really well. So it was a case of right, we just stop all the rest, there’s no point continuing trying to optimize that, it’s just not going to work, we will use other strategies to get to that audience and we’ll just double down on that very tight niche in sort of paid social and it’s worked quite well. The other marketing strategies we’ve worked have been a real focus on email communications this year, once again leveraging a lot of [inaudible 00:26:56] data in-house and we found significant gains in email communications this year which has been good.
Matt Byrom:
And would that be with prospects as well as customers?
Ben Aronsten:
Yes, it’s a combination of both, so I think looking forward into 2019, there’s more development to be done in referral programs and that is once again on both sides of the market place member get member, when you’re talking about sort of the retail investor and we’ve been testing a bunch of different segmentation and testing different program mechanics to see what is potentially going to work, what lands, what doesn’t land, what resonates with the audience, what drive action? We’ve found some really good positive results there so we’re exploring those. In the inbound marketing and campaigns, is something that we are focused on moving forward and has worked quite well, further leveraging and I’ve said it a few times, further leveraging about proprietary data has been fantastic, we’ve been developing various API to automate all of this, because it’s been manual in the past. But I think that combined with further advancements in regard to life cycle automation as well is something that’s a key focus.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, so I was going to ask about that as well, I know you’re doing a marketing automation program once somebody actually signs up, to step back a bit I noticed you have things like your reports, the database reports based on the state of the market and things like that I presume that’s a very much a topper funnel to get people in to see this or enter your database and then are you nurturing those people through a program so that they might actually invest or list their companies somewhere down the line as well?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah, we certainly are and I think it’s one of those things where the market is growing considerably fast, the business is growing considerably fast, so customers on both sides of the market place their demands of what a platform like us can provide is continual changing, what those customers behaviors were and their demands of us 12 months ago are completely different to now. So we have marketing automation through the entire funnel on both sides of the market place already it’s just about taking that to the next level and as you say we’ve got a what we call a portfolio update which we worked with and it’s young on and that is kind of analysis of all the deals we funded over last six years and if you’re an investor that invested across all of those deals what would that look like from a returns’ perspective and it’s that type of collateral and content that helps us target a more sophisticated investor market that is generally has invested in other asset classes outside of [inaudible 00:29:33] equity.
Matt Byrom:
What does your typical year of flown look like, say from an investor point of view, is it very much in terms of filling the funnel at the top to really narrow that down to the people who end up investing down the bottom? What do you really focus on and… I guess I get the feeling that a lot of your marketing is middle and bottom of the funnel such as telling people about the businesses, doing a lot of brand communications and things like that, a lot of interviews and networking and events. It feels like there’s a lot of things that are actually there to nurture and support people as they make their decision rather than actually just filling the top of the funnel for you guys.
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah, it did and I think we and try and be focused, so probably the beginning of 2018, we spent a considerable amount of time looking at the top of the funnel and optimizing that and we made some really significant product gains and some sort of marketing activation and gains there and a bunch of really significant changes in conversion rates and profiling there. We have in the back half of this year and also look at more of the middle of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel and I think we will probably go through a cycle where early next year we’ll probably start looking at the top of the funnel again. Now that we’ve optimized the sort of middle and bottom and we’ll probably go on another cycle similar to that but I think there is our top of the funnel there’s relatively robust, we can get volume based on the sort of long-term strategic activities we’ve been doing over the years. We’ve built a very good sort of inbound volume at the top of the funnel that is cost effective and we need to sort of capitalize on this sort of middle and lower.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, very interesting and I guess in terms of like ROI and metrics how are you actually tracking people through the funnel, what tools are you using and what’s a daily use tool for you and your team?
Ben Aronsten:
Mine, if I think about it one is Excel, if I have to be boring and probably [crosstalk 00:31:27]
Matt Byrom:
You’d be surprised how many people actually say Excel.
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah and I think I live in Excel more than anything else on the other side, Slack is probably my fun enter, you know that’s an imperative, we use a lot of automation in regard to slack from a notification and updating of metrics and performance. We’ve got a lot of sort various tools feeding into Slack as a communications channel internally to keep us on top of what’s going on and try not to drown in through data or paralysis I guess. But I mean yeah, loads of different tools I think those that are operationally involved with display, paid display in paid channels they’re using a combination of aggregation tools and the platforms themselves. We a bit of BI tools and visualization tools that helps have sort of real clear picture. We have a very clear understanding of how we’d like to look at our data and we’d like to look at our pipelines and our funnels and we report. You know less is more, I guess so what are the key metrics we want to move and we track those.
Ben Aronsten:
I mean in regard to sort of ROI I guess the key thing in a market place like ours from an investor perspective is how much is being invested on the platform and how many investments are being made on a platform.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, so that’s I guess interesting from a marketing point of view that actually your key success metric is investment value through the platform?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah indeed, I guess from my perspective what I’m measured against if you like is, both revenue for the business and scale in regard to the community base for both businesses and investors and their activity on the platform.
Matt Byrom:
Fantastic and I guess that’s going well so I guess you’re in a good position at the moment.
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah, it’s going well, it’s always a challenge.
Matt Byrom:
Absolutely, this actually where I see this makes money it’s on a percentage of the actual investment amount.
Ben Aronsten:
We do, so we charge fee to the business for successfully raising and so if a business fails to raise fund we don’t take a thing so it’s a success fee only and to investors that invest on the platform there’s no upfront charge to invest like invest in a business and hold that investment with Seedrs and have access to things like the secondary market and their digital portfolio and that at no cost however we take a carry or a fee for any profit an investor makes and so they only owe us the fee once they make a profit and if they don’t make a profit then we don’t take a few. And that commercially aligns us with both sides of the market place because it’s in our best interest to ensure we support businesses after they’re funded on Seedrs to grow because unless those businesses succeed the investor doesn’t make money and if the investor doesn’t make money, Seedrs doesn’t make money so. It commercially aligns everybody together.
Matt Byrom:
Fantastic that makes total sense and last question here really is what’s next for Seedrs in 2019? I guess, you’re focusing on your newer products, secondary market, autoinvest and others that you probably got in the pipeline as well.
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah I think that’s it, we’ve got some really interesting things coming I think 2019 could be the year where we start looking at building the Seedrs fund so watch that space, I think there are evolutions of existing products, the secondary market as you mentioned, you know that’s been up and running for just over a year now. We’ve had a million and a half ponds trade through the secondary market, the investors have had 5,000 [inaudible 00:35:02] 280 businesses I think have traded on the secondary market so that’s going from strength to strength and there’s obviously the next evolution of that and autoinvest as well, and new things I can’t talk about unfortunately.
Matt Byrom:
Well it be good to get an exclusive but I appreciate that.
Ben Aronsten:
What’s [inaudible 00:35:24] with us?
Matt Byrom:
Okay so it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you today, I’m going to wrap this up with five quick fire question that I ask each guest on this podcast. So number one is what’s your best piece of marketing advice?
Ben Aronsten:
It’s probably a simple piece of advice but define your audience and objectives before you do anything otherwise you’ll be a [ruddler 00:35:43] ship, you know too many people go straight to this sort of tactical aspect and tactical execution and don’t ground in any clear objective or clear sort of audience to target.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah so important, I’d literally align with that as well, you know the more you can understand your audience what they want and how you can help them effectively it’s support-full marketing is so successful. So the more you can understand your market the better you can actually help and support them with the marketing or with your business as well.
Ben Aronsten:
Indeed.
Matt Byrom:
And can you recommend a book to our listeners?
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah I think, they’re probably not pure play marketing books though I like… And probably most people listening have read these Zero to One Peter Thiel is quite a good book, I think you can take certain aspects of what he says in that and apply it in other disciplines. And the Lean Startup by Erick Ries is a great book too probably don’t take everything in that book literally, but you can certainly take sort of what it says, sort of disciplines and aspects of it and apply it, be very serious within a business whether it’s marketing operations, finance, there’re loads that can be taken from that book.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, I’d vouch for those books as well I’ve read both and I linked both on the share note page so if anybody would like to check those out, you can go to mattmyron.com and check out this podcast and have a look at those books as well the links will be there. So question number three is what software tool could you not live without?
Ben Aronsten:
It’s probably Excel, like I said I think I would drown without, my whole life is spent in pivot tables and running SQL queries so I think Excel is it. I mean, and probably Slack as well when you’ve got a team the size I do it certainly helps me keep on top of what’s going on just by listening to all the different channels.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, I’ll give you that, Excel is a good one. And so what’s your favorite example of a marketing campaign?
Ben Aronsten:
I think American Express generally get it right, I’ve got a lot of respect for the guys over there. I think they have a task where they’ve got umbrella brand lots of B2B products, lot of B2C products and so it’s quite complex to get the messaging right and then have that all tied back to the overarching brand. So I think they seem to be very clear on who their customer is, what their behaviors are and their ability to create these sorts of great wholistic campaigns that they can stretch across these sorts of B2B and B2C audiences separately but as I said ties back to the umbrella brand. I noticed one other thing that they’ve sort of launched recently last month or two which is “Don’t do business or don’t live without American Express” and it’s a very interesting play because they’re targeting their audience that will in their business life probably live and breathe and use American Express quite heavily and that crosses over into their personal life.
Ben Aronsten:
I remember reading an article where they were saying that they’d done some research around this where 60 percent of people say that the convergence of their sort of personal or work life is the norm and so they’ve really just horned in on that data research and learned into it and I think the campaigns pulled together really nicely.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, I’d agree with that and I’ve seen some of their ads for that same campaign actually one the London Tube and things like that as well and it all pulls together very nicely.
Ben Aronsten:
Yeah they do it really well.
Matt Byrom:
So final question what are the podcasts you listen to?
Ben Aronsten:
I’ve got a few, probably the one worth mentioning here is the one by Guy Raz How I Built This, it’s fascinating, I love listening to people’s stories and I think more so you hear what’s worked but where people have failed or hasn’t gone to plan and I think those… You know, you don’t taste the sweet without experiencing the bitter and it’s always good to hear those experiences and try and take back into what you’re doing to try and learn from their mistakes or sort of give you a little more context. So I enjoy listening to the various stories.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah absolutely. Again it’s one that I listen to as well and I think its just stories really, you know to listen to these big brands and understand where they’ve been and the tough times as well as just the overnight success times that people have as well so, I’ll also link to that on the show note page, so if anybody wants a link to that then please come and check out the show notes page for this podcast episode. So yes, thank you very much Ben it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you today, it’s really interesting learning a bit more about Seedrs, sounds like you’re absolutely flying, you’ve got a great team behind you, you’ve got some interesting products out there and I’ll look forward to seeing what 2019 has in store for you but I wish all the best.
Ben Aronsten:
Great, thanks for having me.
Matt Byrom:
You’re very welcome. Thank you all for listening today if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and share with your friends and also it be extremely grateful if you could rate and review us on iTunes or the channel you get this podcast through. Until next time, I’ve been your host Matt Byrom.