GEOFF SHAMES - Ad Strategy & Content Tips From Marketing Agency CEO - Headliner Mindset

Episode Transcript
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Geoff Shames (00:00):
the most immediate, most tangible thing

(00:01):
you could do would be takingyour audience that you have
creating a lookalike audienceand saying, show it to more
people.
That is something again, you cando on pretty much every ad
platform.
So when you say, I wanna looklike audience, it's like, cool,
here's people that are basicallystatistically identical to what
you're looking for.

Nik Cherwink (00:29):
What's up everybody?
Welcome to the Headliner MindsetPodcast.
Now I know so many of you areartists that are looking to
build your audience, and so youguys are going to absolutely
love this episode.
It is with the owner of CrowdControl Digital, which is a
marketing agency that's beenworking with artists and huge
brands for over 10 years.

(00:49):
In this episode, we're gonnadive deep into social media
strategy and how to createcontent that actually gets
engagement.
How to create ads that peopleactually click on, and so much
more.
So, I hope you guys enjoy thisepisode.
If you do find it valuable,please subscribe, leave a
rating, share it with a friend.
All of that helps so much.
Now, without further ado, thisis Jeff Shame.

(01:12):
Jeff, welcome to the show.
My man, I am so excited to divein with you because you are one
of the many guests that I haveon here that are like old, long
time, you know, friends andindustry homies from like 10
years ago that we haven't talkedin forever.
But we get to dive in and, and,and really, uh, yeah, really
catch up.

(01:32):
So I'm so stoked that you'rehere, man.
Welcome.

Absolutely, man.
Uh, thanks for having me.
This is, this is gonna be fun.
I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah.
Yeah.
We were just saying how this is,it, it literally is about 10
years since you started theagency, and uh, congratulations
on that, man.
A decade of awesome business.

Yeah.
Thank you, man.
It's been, uh, yeah, I actuallyhadn't thought about that until
you mentioned it, so, yeah.
Just, just about almost exactly,uh, 10 years and it's

So cool.

a journey to say the least.

Now, I was just thinking about this before we
started, but I was reflecting onwhen we initially met probably
about 10 years ago, or, or, oraround then.
You guys were like affiliatedwith Circle, uh, talent Agency,
which has now gone on to becomeUTA.
I mean, arguably one of the, youknow, really the biggest, uh,
booking agencies that arerepresenting, you know, so many

(02:20):
huge DJs.
And so that was kind of where itall started, if I'm not
mistaken, right

I was the, uh, I was the arguably like or sixth
employee, depending who walkedin the door, At Circle.

Wow.

there as sort of the guy that kept, kept stuff
together a little bit, but wasoriginally hired, to basically
run marketing.
So the, the company had grownreally, really quickly.
So I was just the like keep thisthing from not exploding guy for
a while.
And as the business sort ofstabilized a little bit, um,
ended up launching sort of themarketing department that we had
originally planned on.
and that is effectively what isnow crowd control.

(02:57):
We split off.
Halfway through that time, to doour own thing, to give ourselves
a little bit more flexibility,work with artists outside of the
Circle roster.
and then Yeah.
we are, we are the old Circlemarketing team.

Yeah.
Wow.
Dude, I totally forgot aboutthat.
'cause at the time I wasmanaging this artist, James
Egbert, shout out James,honestly, probably the best
music producer I've ever met inmy entire fucking life.
He still is Absolutely, youknow, crushing it in other
projects now.
Um, but it was, it was reallycool being an artist on that
roster.
As an agency.

(03:30):
You guys were also helping withmarketing.
'cause I remember beingencouraged.
You guys were like, yo, you guysshould do a music video.
And like, you guys even fundedlike, we'll put up the money to
have you guys do a music video.
I don't know if that's a verycommon practice for booking
agencies to actually be likeinvesting in the marketing and
supporting in that way.
That seems like kind of a rarething.

Yeah.
it was, it was a little novel.
That was kind of the concept andit was sort of the value prop of
like, Hey, if you sign with us,we also have these weird guys
over here sort of doing somemarketing.
Um, they'll just kind of helpyou out.
So it, it was either, you know,we would do a gratis, for people
that needed the help or thatmaybe didn't even have a
manager, or we'd be kind ofpseudo management,

Totally.

or, you know, we'll do it cheaper so you don't
have to hire somebody else, or,or

Yeah.

uh, it was different.
And now, uh, I think it hasbecome a little more common, you
know, I know, like, you know,our, our good friends at UTA,
um, now do have a giantmarketing department, right.
As do, uh, some of the otheragencies.
So

Cool.
Yeah, yeah,

our weird idea is now

yeah.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Um, now, so how did all of thisturn into, uh, crowd control,
right?
Going from just being thislittle, you know, small
marketing part department withinan agency.
How did that start to scale?
Uh, and tell me a little bitabout just like the story of
where you went from there.

Right place, right time, um, is, is sort of the
honest answer.
So we, uh, we originally had toincorporate and come up with a
new name, cause we wereintroduced to the team at
Weedmaps.
one of our clients was, I thinkit was Carnage.
Pre Gordo, carnage,

Yeah.

was doing a couple of events with Weedmaps or, uh,
some guys affiliated with, andthey were like, Hey, we need, we
need some marketing people, butwe don't want a traditional New
York marketing agency.
We kind of want some like weirdstoner music kids, uh, that
maybe understand what we'redoing a little bit more.
And we got introduced and, andwent to a meeting and sold'em

(05:26):
the world.
And then they were like, cool.
So who do we make the agreementout to?
We're like.

Uh,

get

yeah.

on that.
Uh, our team will send you ourpaperwork.

Yeah.

Um, so like Rush filed, some incorporation
documents and set that over.

Love that.

but that's, that's kind of been the whole story is
that that's why a lot of stuffwe do is kind of music adjacent
is, you know, we met them anddid a bunch of stuff in
cannabis.
You know, somebody would launcha merch line as an artist and we
would help them sell that andthey would introduce us to a
brand they did a collab with,

Yeah.

or their friend that had a company that Herb.
We were doing good work.
So it's, it's really been,frankly word of mouth,

Yeah,

just sort of like rock rocking down the ladder,
getting whoever we can get.
Um,'cause we've never doneliterally any outbound
marketing.

Yeah, yeah,

the, hopefully good work speaks for itself kind
of thing.

totally, So tell me specifically what types of
services were you providingthen, and what are you doing
now?
Right.
What were you, what are youactually doing for an artist if
somebody hires you as amarketing agency?
Such a big

Yeah,

broad statement.
Like, what do you actually do?

So I have two answers.
Um, one is we normally gobackwards'cause we have started
doing so much, it's almosteasier to exclude.

Hmm.

so the two things we do not do, are traditional
publicity.
Like we are not, uh, we don't dopr, we can't get you on blogs,
we can't get you on the news.
And we don't do DSP pitching.
So really anything where wecan't guarantee it or measure it
where it's more personalrelationship based, we try to
stay away from.

(07:03):
so we aren't taking your moneyand saying we're gonna do X, Y,
and Z and like, ah, you know,

Yeah.

no r bad.

Yeah,

so that said, we originally started out as.
Basically a social media agency,

yeah.

when that was kind of the, the buzzy thing and just
running somebody's Facebookpage, was a big value add.
So still do some social mediamanagement a little bit less.
Everyone has gotten quite goodat it.
So they don't need as muchoutside of maybe some strategy.
Do full service advertising.
All of your, your paid mediaacross digital as well as
traditional, uh, we have somegreat partners in out of home.

(07:42):
So if you want billboardsskywriting, you wanna take over
the, the Las Vegas sphere, wecan do stuff like that.
You know, we just quotedsomebody a drone QR code, um, to
fly above something, to dosomething weird.

Wait, wait.
So is this like a series ofdrones in the air that forms a
QR code

that will

Q.

a QR code

Holy shit.
Okay.
The, the future is here.
Everybody.
That is insane.

Yeah.

Yeah.
Literally flying, flying robotsin the air that you can point
your phone up to and like scan aQR code.
That's blowing my fucking mind.
That's awesome.

fun.
We're having

Yeah.
Yeah.
And you said, I love that yousaid, uh, you call it out of
home marketing.
Right?
So there's obviously digitalmarketing, everything that we're
doing on our phones.
And then outside of that,billboards, fucking drones, you
know, the, the, uh, thebillboards on the way out to
Coachella, or you just said,yeah.
I even said like sky riding.
I love that stuff.
That stuff excites me of like,you know, experiential

(08:41):
marketing, right?

Well,

Yeah,

So, you know, you gotta think like, the world is
every, we're so saturated byeverything, right?

yeah,

even if it's a little less targeted, a little
more fun, like it might standout, it might be the

yeah.

of like actually sticks in somebody's brain when,
you know, it's like, if I lookaround the room, there's
probably, I don't know, athousand logos, just right here.
So.
Yeah, so we do that.
And then creative services, uh,

Mm-hmm.

and creator marketing.
but I'd say if our, our, oursweet spot these days is we're,
we're really trying to be sortof that strategic partner.
work with somebody on theirproject, figure out what they
should be doing, help them comeup with that plan, get it done.
And then we can certainlyexecute on all of the above, but
we can also sort of point peoplein the right direction.

Yeah.

you know, I think particularly with, you know,
we're talking about the future,It's like we can point you
towards AI tools that'll helpyou do a lot of the work
yourself.
So we can just kind of come inwith some of the know how then
the doing.

Yeah.

of great tools out there that are, you know, at
some point probably gonna makeless irrelevant,

Yeah.

outside of some strategy.

And I'm sure as the agency has grown, you know
what I mean, you guys areworking on some really big
projects.
I was looking at like your casestudies and what you guys are
doing on the site and you know,you've got some big brands and
big companies that you'reworking with.
you still working with, brandnew projects that haven't been
launched yet and artists thatare just coming up?
Okay, so that's awesome.
'cause you know, I think there'sa lot of artists that are
listening to this podcast thatare, they're coming up, they're

(10:09):
coming up in the game, they'retrying to figure out, you know,
I love the statistic.
I don't love the statistic, butI love sharing the statistic
that there's a hundred thousandsongs getting uploaded to
Spotify every single day Blowsmy fucking mind.
That's insane.
There's so much music out there.
So everyone's trying to figureout like, how do I stand out?
Right.
How do I, how do I createsomething that's actually going
to get attention, that's goingto actually, find the right

(10:30):
people and build a fan base?
And, you know, a lot of peopleare, you know, trying to maybe
just use social media and do itorganically.
But there's a whole other worldout there when it comes to
actually, you know, actuallyadvertising.
Right.
Um, so I, I'd love to just, youknow, really spend this time
today to walk through what canan up and coming artist do?
What's some strategy that wecould be looking at, you know,

(10:52):
if I was a, brand new artistcoming to your agency, let's
just start here.
Like, what would be the firstthing that you would walk me
through?
Where would we start in thatprocess?

So it's, it's always kind of fun, honestly.
Um, we get to play when we firststart where it's truly what do
you want your project to be?
that's a surprisingly difficultquestion.
you know, a lot of people arelike, Hey, I made the banger of
the century.

(11:21):
fantastic.
What does your album art artworklook like?

Yeah.

it black and white?
Is it color?
Is it illustrated?
Is it 3D?
Does that mean something?
Should it always be 3D?
You know,

Mm-hmm.

What do you care about?
a lot of people will follow anartist just because of what they
stand for or what they're into.

Mm.

the music, but that person sucks, or That
person's rad because of this.

Yeah.

So an artist is not just the music they put out,
there's everything else.
Like, okay, well both dateourselves here.
Like, okay, diesel boy, oldschool, Drummond based dj, also
chef of the century, right?
Like

Yeah, yeah.

foodie, like has a black book with every restaurant
and chef's name, like in everycorner of the world.
Like, but that's a huge part ofhis brand.
You know, went out to do aDungeons and Dragons clothing
company, he's really passionateabout, you know, crazy
illustrators like, but peopleare drawn to him for that as
well as, So if he happened toput out a Dungeons and Dragons

(12:25):
cookbook, would be like, oh,that makes sense.
Like,

Hmm.
It really comes down to figuringout your brand.
Right?
Like, I always like, I like thesaying that, that Chris from
Cult Creatives always says, butlike, the music is just the
soundtrack to the movie, right?
What, what's the actual movie?
What's, what is your brand andyour story and your narrative?
Before we can figure out themarketing strategy, we need to
figure out like, what are weactually marketing beyond just,

(12:50):
you know, that you got a newsong.
Everybody and their mom has anew song.
There's a hundred thousand ofthem being uploaded to Spotify
every day.

Exactly.
So,

so so it starts with,

is

yeah, it starts with the brand.

does it smell?
Exactly.
So develop that brand and sortof do that thing.
And it could change, right?

Yeah.

change, you change as a person.

Yeah.

but we need something.

Hmm.
Let's, let's dig into that alittle bit more.
'cause I, I help a lot of peoplewith this process.
I, I love walking through kindof the brand therapy process of
like, you know, kind of, I callit like, digging for gold.
I'm just looking for like,where's that, where's that
little piece of gold that makesyou you, that nobody else has?
Right?
What are some of the questionsthat you ask people?

(13:31):
Or like, how do you really helppeople actually find that thing?
Because for, for some peopleit's really easy.
For some people it's reallyhard.

It goes both ways.
You nailed it,

Um,

people were just like, it is.
Here's the answer.
I know

yeah.
Yeah.

some of the other stuff is, is like, frankly just
hanging out,

Mm

it's, we're just gonna have a conversation and
try and ask questions like, oh,that's cool.
Like, what'd you do lastweekend?
they're like, oh, I wentsurfing.
Like, oh, that's interesting.
into surfing?

Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.

to you?
Is it a

Yeah.

or is it a beach thing?
You know, what did you do?
Uh, what'd you do for theholidays?
You know, what do you

Yeah.

for fun?
Do you play video games?
What kind of shoes are youwearing?
Um, what brands do you buy?
What do you eat?
What do you, what else do youlisten to?
Who's your favorite artist?

Yeah,

you know, you can see like, I like certain types
of street art, right?
You can see in people's rooms,you know, if you go to their
house, if you go to theirstudio, what's there?
it can tell you a lot about theperson, the environment.
So lot of, like you said, kindof mining.
'cause sometimes what we'regonna hear in something like
somebody didn't even realizeabout themselves.

yeah.
That's what I find for mostpeople.
It's really hard to see it foryourself'cause you see through
your own eyes.
So like, I'll, I'll send peoplelike a little branding
questionnaire that I've made,um, but it's just sit there by
yourself with like your journalor something and trying to do it
in a, in a silo.
It's really hard.
It's so much easier when youhave another person to offer a
perspective and have that be a,a true conversation and

(14:51):
dialogue.
Right.

Yeah.
I mean, we are, we are amarketing agency with no front
facing marketing

Yeah,

to it.

yeah, yeah, yeah,

I, I get it right.
People ask me, they're like, whydon't you post on social?
I'm like, I can't.
I don't know how, like I, Iliterally don't know how to
promote myself.
but I'm also such a sticklerthat when the team is like, Hey,
we'll run it.
I literally won't let it go outthe door.
I.
So get it.
Guilty,

yeah,

can't do it myself.
I can do it for other people.

Once we've really dialed that in, though, we've
gotten clear on this is who Iam, this is what I'm all about,
this is what makes meinteresting, besides just the
music, this is my story.
This is my, my vibe and thevisual aesthetic that I, that
I'm into now, how do we actuallytake that out into the world?
How do we actually market that?

well, I think it, it's, we can, we can break an
industry channels, right?
Organic, which is kinda whatyou're saying.
Everybody's posting on social,doing whatever, and then paid,
right?
So I kind of look at it as a, asa piecemeal function.
Like we have to get the organicdialed in before I would even
start spending money.
Simple way to think of paid isamplify something that's
working.

(16:01):
don't just spend money for thesake of spending money.
It just won't go anywhere.
so if you're putting out contentthat isn't doing well, probably
don't spend money on it.
It's just the reality.
It's platform that you'reposting on has an algorithm.
It rewards high engagement andpeople caring, basically, can be
at a very micro scale, right?

(16:23):
It doesn't mean that you postedsomething and it reached a
million people.
It could be you have 200followers, but it reached 400
people.
It's like, okay, you actuallyoverindexed like you, you serve
more than your own followers.
And if you've got a huge amountof comments like that is
working,

Hmm.

it's working at a, at a very small scale, that's
where you might wanna deploysome money.
So I actually like, it's almosteasier sometimes to work with a
newer artist because we like tosay like, you can trip and
nobody's looking.
I.
And it, and it's not thatliterally nobody's looking, but
there's not 30 million peoplemicro analyzing every single
thing you post.

(16:59):
And like noticing a fly in thebackground of a picture.

Yeah,

it's your time to sort of do your thing, to have

yeah,

to experiment with what does work online that you
also enjoy making.

yeah,

'cause you also don't want second something
feels like homework.
You're not gonna do it and it'sgonna suck and people are
frankly gonna feel it.
You know, if somebody's postinglike really awkward photos
online, like, you're gonna,you're gonna not like it, it's
gonna feel awkward to you too.
Versus, you know, we all havethose friends where they post
something online and it justlooks like they're having a
great time.
You're like, oh, that's awesome.

Why do you think most people struggle with social
media and creating stuff thatactually gets engagement?
Because it seems like mostpeople are really spinning their
wheels.

it's tough.
It's, it's admittedly supertough.
I think the, the two things thatI find the most people stumble
over is like, I.
One, like kind of impostersyndrome of some sort, like
feeling like, why would anyonecare what I have to say?
Or just like kind of decisionparalysis, like, if I post

Yeah.

gonna happen?

Yeah,

and it's like, it, it honestly doesn't matter.
It's just

yeah,

important.
Like, you're gonna be okay.
Everything's gonna be fine andlike that.
Or just like the internet can besuper toxic, right?
Like you might put something outthere and people might be super
mean

yeah,

that

yeah.

that sucks.
and I guess kind of the, thethird one I'll throw in there is
unfortunately what you likemight not be the thing that
works.
So you kind of need to, need isa crappy word, but like, if
you're playing the game, um,there's a balance, right?
It's, you know, we would alllove to just put like, I really

(18:39):
like weird monochrome, black andwhite, beautiful photography and
like.
That might not work super, superwell.
It might not

Yeah,

engaging, right?
So like, as much as I like it,it might not be the thing that's
really gonna move the needle.

yeah, yeah, yeah,

to present your brand, something you care about
in a way that also

yeah.

And also knowing you're gonna attract the right
people over time.

Mm-hmm.

even if it doesn't work, do something that's
authentically you.

Mm-hmm.

at some point enough people are gonna
gravitate towards that,

Yeah.

to like

Yeah.

It's again,

Yeah.

dating myself here, but back in the day with
brills, pre L Stri and when hewas doing the twink thing,
Forget who gave him this advice,but they were just like, just do
it.
Just do it hard.
Do it every day.
Just push this thing.
Don't explain it to anyone, just

Yeah.

it.
It's your thing.
for it.
And it took a year.

Yeah,

Then it was a thing and

yeah,

knew what it was.
Everybody knew what the brandstood for, what it looked like,
what it felt like.
It, it grabbed all the rightpeople and it was huge.

yeah.
Yeah.

like, there you go.
You, you forced your way intothe conversation with

mm.

that was truly authentically you, and it
worked.

Hmm.
Well, I love, first off, I wannahighlight what you said.
You know, the first piece aboutgetting over the imposter
syndrome, it's a mindset thing.
You know, it's like I, me as, asa life coach and mindset coach,
I always bring it back to that.
I'm like, none of this strategymatters.
If your mindset isn't there inthe first place, you gotta get
over your shit.
You gotta be willing to putyourself out there, be willing

(20:11):
to fail and fall and stumble.
And especially in the beginningto experiment.
This is your time to just like,try, try things out.
But if you have a mindset blockaround that, you're never gonna
get over step one.
Um, this other part of it thatyou're talking about, I think is
interesting where, because onthe one hand you're kind of
saying it's like.
You want to pay attention to themarket, right?

(20:34):
Sometimes what you are intoisn't necessarily like landing
and people don't really care.
So it's like you, you kind ofwant to pay attention to the
market.
Uh, but also at the same time,you know, like you're saying
with, with Brills, it was likeyou just kind of own who you
are, do your thing, and, and,and really also just push almost
until people pay attention.

(20:54):
Right.
So it sounds like there's,there's a little bit of a
balance of like Yeah,

There, there is a balancing thing.
So

yeah,

again, that's the tricky part, right?
Is threading the needle of thething that is you, that is also
working,

yeah,

be changing a format, right?
It's just like, okay, like thistemplate sort of style is
working right now, but how can Imake it mine?

'Cause there's also people that are, they are
just hammering away every singleday and they're doing it.
But it's not working.
So you also gotta pay attentionto, is, is this actually
working?
Are people engaging?
If not, you know, they say thedefinition of insanity is to
continue doing the same thing,uh, and expecting different

(21:36):
results, right?
So that, I guess that that iswhere that balance is of like,
okay, if it's don't, maybe jumpright away if it's not working.
But if you, for six monthsyou've been posting the same
shit and nobody's payingattention, like maybe start to
change your strategy and, andstart to look at, you know, I, I
like to say like, if, if youwanna be good at marketing, you
need to know who your market is.

(21:56):
Who are you actually marketingto, and what are they responding
to?
What are they into?
But also not at the expense oflosing yourself and only
catering to the market.
So it's a, a tricky balancethere.

It's tough.
It's why we

Yeah.

Um,

Yeah.
Hire Jeff.
If you can't figure this shitout, you guys, what?
We're, go hire an agency.
Hire Jeff.
He's been doing it for 10 years,probably much better than we
are.

Hope so.
it's hard.

yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, one thing I wasthinking about was back to like
the, the, the, the, the circledays where, you know, they were
really like investing and sayinglike, Hey, we're gonna help
like, pay for a music video,and, you know, actually putting
a budget behind an artist.
Do you think that an artist cansucceed in today's music

(22:44):
industry without having a budgetbehind them?

yes, happens.
It's harder, uh, you know,transparently, it's, you know,
it has gotten harder to get theimpressions right.
There is more saturation,there's more stuff.
So it's just harder to get outthere in general.
But we've all seen TikTok, starX,

Yeah.

Yes.
Some of those are manufacturedby horrible people like me, but.
There are also people that justgenuinely do it, right?
So I think it's fewer andfurther between than it was, you
know, 10 years ago where couldjust put out a cracking track on
SoundCloud and it just worked.
That said, it's just anamplifier.

(23:33):
is sort of the way we alwaysdescribe advertising.
It's, you still need thecontent.
You

Yeah,

need something that's resonating and it can
dial it up to 11.
Like it can just show it to morepeople.
But you also can't just spend itto work,

yeah,

if you have a trash product,

yeah.

kind of doesn't matter how much you throw at it,

Totally.

it's still gonna be trash.

So this is where I bet a, I mean, a lot of the
emphasis really starts on theactual creative, right?
What are we getting in front ofa hundred thousand people or a
million people, right?
We gotta make sure that that'sgood in the first place.
We can get it in front of amillion people, but if it's not
good and captivating andinteresting, it doesn't, it
doesn't matter.
We can spend all the money inthe world, right?
So you guys help people withthat, like getting their

(24:21):
creative really dialed in andmaking sure that that's like,
that's interesting in the firstplace.

Yeah.
we

Yeah.

it's, you know, we sit, you know, sort of one of
our superpowers is we do have a,a pretty wide breadth of what we
work on.
So something that we see workingin gaming might work in music or
something we see working in hiphop might work in country or

Mm.

whatever it might be.
So just being in it day in, dayout, you know, we have, we're
saturated, it's all we see.
It's all we do.

Yeah.

you know, it's easy for us to kind of spot some
of those trends, some of thosethings that are kind of
bubbling, to help with that or,you know, sort of work, just
workshop with people, Hey, youwant this to be?
Here's four different things youcould drive.
Do any of these feel natural toyou?
So yeah, the creative strategyis a big part of it.
And then sort of once we, oncewe land on something that either

(25:13):
we're just genuinely reallyexcited about that everybody is
like, this is, this is thepiece.
Okay, fantastic.
We can certainly try someadvertising, um, or
retroactively.
get phone calls, texts, emails acouple times a day.
Hey, we just put something outand it's going ballistic.
perfect.

(25:33):
That's honestly the ideal placeto put money

yeah,

this thing is already working.
Just pour gas on it,

yeah,

people.

talked about that in a recent episode as well.
I think this is a common mistakewhere.
People want to just dump moneyinto something, trying to get
eyeballs at it, where it'salmost like, it's like, oh,
nobody really saw this piece ofcontent, so let me run some ads
so more people can see it and Iwant to boost it.
And it's like the completeopposite thing of what you wanna
do is, it's like what'sorganically already proving to

(26:04):
show that people are interested.
You're getting a lot ofengagement.
Like the algorithm is is provingthat like, hey, this is, this is
interesting.
Now let's get it in front ofmore people.

Yeah.
It's, it's the number one thingwe hear when we have to convince
somebody to trust ads.

Yeah.

spent a bunch of money and it sucked.
We're like, okay.
One, there may have just beensome structural stuff you could
have changed on, on theadvertising itself, that's fine.
But more often than not, we hearthe story.
It's like, okay, what were youboosting?
What were you adding to spendbehind?
They're like, ah, and thesethree posts that were just like,
really, really tanking.

(26:39):
and I just showed'em to way morepeople.
well,

There's a reason they were tanking.

Yeah, the, the, you know, the first 300 people
hated it, and now you're justlike, Hey everyone, look at this
thing that everyone else hates.
Um.

yeah,

so it's like logically I get it right.
And that, and

yeah,

is sort of that, like, that fear that like
failure, like you're like, ah,this sucks.
I need to fix it.
It's like, you don't, you really

yeah, yeah, yeah.
Go back to the drawing board.

Yeah.
Go back to the drawing board.
Don't, don't invest in that.
Figure something else out.
Try it.
You will get a winner.

Yeah.

Right.
Like, it, it's something willwork.

Yeah.
Now you guys are super pluggedin.
You're seeing what's working inall these different indu
industries.
You've got all of these clients.
One, I'd love to hear about whatis working, and also how quickly
do you think that changes?
'cause I can ask you thisquestion right now, it feels
like.
You know what's working rightnow?
I don't know, three monthslater.
Six months later probably isgonna be different.

(27:37):
Do you feel like that'saccurate?

Yeah.
Um, I feel like faster than thatthese days.

Yeah.

you know, instead it's like two weeks something

Yeah.
Okay.
So by, so I'm gonna ask youwhat's working right now, and
then by the time this podcastcomes out, we're gonna have to
change the answer.
Yeah.
But right now, as of today,what, June 3rd or whatever it
is, like what's actually workingout there?

Organically, I'd honestly have to go look at
what's quite literally workingtoday.
As a broad stroke statement, Ithink no, no surprise to anyone
like video.

Yeah.

static is, is performing the best.
Short form is always yourfriend.
On the paid side, of a mixed bagis the honest answer.
It depends on who you are andkind of like you said, knowing
your market, right?
So we, I, I get this questionall the time and we kinda have
to flip it back on people andit's like, what are we doing?
So what is working for who?

(28:32):
So prime example, we do a lot ofwork in K-pop.
K-pop it on Twitter.
Absolutely murders it.
And that is where K-pop lives.
It is where it all happens.
The ads work, the organic works,everything works Not great for
country.

Okay.

in most of our experience.

Yeah.

just not quite as much there.

How about for electronic music artists?

uh,

be focusing

live sets

live sets?

of the one thing we have actually seen, I guess
as a, as sort of a meta trendover the last like six months.

Yeah.

people doing some sort of live performance in a
cool setting is working.
Look at your, I mean, boilerroom.

Yeah,

look at your boiler rooms, look at your drum
and bass, all stars.
Look at your,

yeah,

now no short, we've all seen like the stuff
just popping off on reels whereit's three kids that look like
they're in an elevator playing aset, right?

yeah.

people wanna see the performance, the energy, and
I think.
Taking a step back from that,that's very real.
Like you can see the personbehind the DJ having a good time
or not.
It's a little less polished.
You can't, you know, it's kindof like you never know what's
gonna happen on live TV sort ofthing.

Yeah.

it's a fun experience.
Like I literally caught myselfwatching a live set on my meta
quest or whatever they're calledthese days, like a month ago.
And it was crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

interesting experience.
So we've, I've just seen morepeople really blowing up because
of a, of a live set, a liveperformance,

Totally.

than

Yeah, I just, I just had my good friend Wes
Mills on the podcast recently,and I was going through his
content before the, before wetalked, and he had a lot of
really good high quality.
It was kind of like, uh, 360.
It was like a 360 set at like asit club, and we talked about it
and he's like, yeah, man.
He's like, I, I invested back tolike.

(30:32):
Having a budget.
You know, he is like, he's like,I invested whatever he got from
that show.
And I think more, I think hespent like a couple grand to get
like really good high qualityvideographers and all this
editing done.
And so he is like, I justinvested a bunch in filming all
of that.
But he is like, now I've got allthis sick content and, and he's,
you know, putting it outregularly.

(30:53):
And now other promoters areseeing him crushing it in front
of this crowd and now he'sstarting to get more bookings.
Right.
So Just to kind of explain, Ithink the chess game, uh, of, of
how people are thinking aroundthat.
It's like, yo reinvest what,whatever you're making, and, you
know, that's like showing theworld, you know, showing fans,
Hey, this guy, this is super,this is a super fun artist.

(31:15):
You gotta come see this guy whenhe comes to town.
And, you know, promoters thatmight be checking you out are
like, oh, okay, this guy is, iskilling it.
Right.
Let's, let's hire him.

That used to, used to be one of our hacks, when a
lot of DJs first started goingto China, Is we would literally
take performance footage andjust run ads in China.

Mm.

that's it.
Like, wouldn't,

yeah,

be asking for anything, wouldn't be doing
anything.
We'd just be trying to drivewhatever impressions we can,
just showing people a reallycrazy experience.
So three to six months laterwhen you're finally in market,
everybody's like, I feel likeI've seen this guy before.
Like, those look crazy.

Now what about the artists that aren't performing
yet?
You know, there's that kind oflike, I, I, I always say it's
like.
It's like you gotta get yourselffrom like zero to 25 and then
hopefully when you, when you'recreating some buzz and some mo
some momentum, you can find likea manager, an eight and an
agent, and build a team and theycan take you from 25 to a
hundred.
But it seems like you gotta getyourself from zero to 25.

(32:14):
And that's like the rocket shipbursting out of the earth's
atmosphere.
It's like that is so much likepush and grind and jet fuel to,
to get out.
So for the artists that aren't,they're not playing shows yet.
There's not really anything tofilm.
All they're doing is sittingaround in their studio all day
making music, you know, how doessomebody create buzz around
that?

You can still make that look awesome.
I think you can do that.
Like I said, I've, I've, I'vestumbled across and found myself
watching videos that areliterally person with CDJs, six
people behind them just ragingplaying a set.

Yeah, throw, throw a party in your apartment.

literally, and like, that's gonna look awesome.

Yeah.
Yeah.
True, true.

do it in, do it in your garage,

Yeah.

a good time is a good time is a good time.
Like,

Yeah,

you know, I'm a, I'm an old.
kid.
And like one of the best showsI've ever went to was at a place
called The Brown Eye Barn, whichwas literally like a sketchy
standup venue in the back ofsomebody's house.

yeah, yeah, yeah.

30 people and it was insane.
It was the most fun I've everhad.
show people the fun show like atsome point.
Sure.
Though, it's honestly, I thinkthat content is more fun than I
used to call it the hands in theair photo where every single DJ
after every single show wouldstand in front of the crowd and
post this photo and we're justlike, we get it.

(33:37):
Like you did that Thursday,Friday, Saturday, every week for

yeah.

hundred weeks.

For sure.

not in that city.
It does not mean anything to me.
Like, cool for you

Yeah.

Oh wow, you and your three friends were just
like raging and having a greattime.
Like, that's infectious.

Totally.
Totally.

I want to be

Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it also kind of comes backto, you know, something I find
myself talking about a lot isit's like, all right, it's cool
that you have a song coming outand that you, and, and even if
you're playing shows, like,yeah, you're a dj, you make
music and you play shows.
Cool.
So does every other dj.
Everybody else is making music.
They're putting out tracks andthey're playing shows.

(34:18):
So what else?
What's gonna make me fall inlove with you?
Right?
Not just fall in love with themusic, but like, what's gonna
make me fall in love with you?
And I think that's where it goesback to like, oh, is it, is it
the, are you into surfing?
Are you into fashion?
Are you like, what else are youinto?
What are you doing on theweekend?
Are you playing video games?
Like you said, like,

right,

you create content around that and, and show that
stuff to your audience becausethat's gonna make you very,
like, relatable and, and developmore of like an emotional
connection with the people thatare following you, right?

right.
Like you said, I, I just.
I had this conversation earlierabout one of our clients and uh,
I was talking about it.
I was like, Hey, genuinely notmusic I would listen to on my
own.
It's just not my thing.
One of my favorite live shows,

Yeah,

right?
And it was,

yeah,

like, because the show and the brand and the
visuals and everything is soawesome that like, I don't care.
Like

yeah,

It's great.
Like they're very successful.
It's great.

yeah,

Just not, not for me.

I had the same experience with, uh, I had a
little Texas on my, on thepodcast, like pretty early on,
and I told him straight up.
I was like, bro, like, I'm gonnabe honest.
I'm like, I'm not actually likea huge fan of the music.
I mean, it's like hardcore hard,you know?
It's hard style.
Just like, don't, don't, I'mlike, okay, I'm more of like a
melodic, I like a vichy andshit, you know?
And I was like, but I was like,but I'm a huge fan of you.

(35:39):
Like I'm a huge fan.
Like, I fo I follow you on allyour shit.
I love following you.
And I'm like, I don't like themusic, but I like you.
And like, that's where like, youhave crushed it as a brand.
I was like, I, if you can getpeople to, to, to, to like you.
And not even like the music.
I'm like, all right, you got thebrand figured out.
'cause he is just like, yeah,he's wild.
He's funny, he's hilarious.
Like he's, it's, it's super funto follow and to watch and very

(36:00):
clever.
It's like,

fun.
like,

yeah.

is having such an awesome time

Yeah, totally.

are also just like, I want you to win.

Fuck.
Yeah.

you, you are rad.

Yeah, totally.
Totally.
Yeah.
So, okay, let's, dive into alittle bit of the, ad strategy.
I guess.
Uh, if I were to, maybe I'm justtaking my first steps in running
ads.
Um, Let's talk about the aditself, right, of it needs to be
something that's interestingthat's gonna get attention.

(36:33):
What kind of stuff is workingfor running an actual ad that
actually is going to getsomebody to stop and click on
it?
Do you have any tips for peoplethat are running ads?

Yeah.
I mean, it, it varies a little.
First I'll give you a, the, thehack in the century, on pretty
much every platform, is a way toactually look at what other
people are running.
So if you go on Facebook, and itdoes have to be Facebook, you
can look at their ads library.
If you just Google literallyFacebook ad library, take you to
the link.

(37:02):
You can literally put in yourfavorite artist's name it'll
show you every ad that they'reactively running.

Hmm.

not be running an ad at that point.
Search some other artists, um,or search for brands that you
like, and you can literally seeall of the creative that they're
running.
You can do

Wow.

you can do that on Facebook.
You can get an idea of sort ofwhat's out there.
that said.
Video over static as, as sort ofa general rule for the most
part.
and you did kind of nail it.
It's, I don't like to goclickbait, but you do need to
think of kind of like the scrollstop,

Hmm.
The, the hook.

Yeah.
You have a second.
One second little less than asecond probably to grab
somebody's attention.

Yeah,

So we very frequently will get, you know,
somebody will send us an assetand it's this beautiful
cinematic slow thing, and ittakes 10 seconds to get to any
explanation as to what you'redoing.
I'm like, it's gorgeous,

Yeah,

tank.

I already, I already, I already scrolled by
three seconds ago, you know, Ialready, I already passed it up.
Yeah.

Yeah.
I zoomed past it.
I was like, ah, no.
Um, versus like, give people anidea of what they are looking at
in the first three seconds, ifnot the first second,

Yeah.

Artist show.
You're like, okay, artist show.
Got it.
Now what?
Ah, city.
Okay, cool.
Like I'm still on board.
Um, you know, it's like you'rebasically gonna lose people
every couple seconds.
so it needs to, all, it needs toall be there, it needs to be
visually grabbing again, quite abit by genre.
Need to keep it on brand, butjust kind of keeping in mind

(38:42):
that people are doom scrolling

Mm-hmm.

much at, at any given point.

Yeah.

You just kind of nailed it.
Is there is, there is no Right,right, right answer.
And it will change and you cansort of play with it.

Hmm.
what are some good hooks?
What are hooks that you find areworking to get people's
attention in those first coupleseconds?

We've had a lot of success with people just saying
like, stop and like people, likewhat, um, anything is you're
looking for.
Pattern interruption.
I,

Yeah.

kind of like, the best advice I can give people is
try something that's a littlebit different than the other
person.
Like if everybody's posting thesame ad all the time, it's not
really there.
So for a lot of people, likelive show footage again has
worked pretty well as adcreative, just'cause it's
generally pretty loud, prettypretty fuzzy.
So any sort of hook there withliteral pyro lasers, something

(39:33):
is that itself.
Is there, again, sort of thedirect stop or leading somebody,
like, I'm gonna teach you to dosomething in the next 60
seconds.
They're like, I've prefaced thisis only gonna take 60 seconds.
I've sort of told you whatyou're gonna get by the end of
it.

Mm-hmm.

we're gonna get there.

Yeah.
It's, it's, it's so important isthis is all psychology.
I mean, this is what advertisershave been doing since the
beginning of time is theyunderstand human behavior.
They understand psychology Whenyou talk about a pattern
interrupt, right?
It's like we're just gettinginto people's brains and, and
as.
An artist that's, especially inthat first stage of your career

(40:14):
where you're doing it allyourself, like you have to learn
how to become an advertiser.
Right?
I, I, I've been just having thisconversation more and more that
like, if you want to besuccessful in the music
business, you have to reallystep into that business owner
mindset.
Understand that it's like, I ama self-employed entrepreneur,
now I'm running a business, andI don't care what business

(40:35):
you're running and whatindustry.
If you wanna have a successfulbusiness, you have to be good at
sales and marketing, right?
And branding.
It's like, just likefundamentals for, for anything.
So to kind of start really likethinking like an advertiser,
right?
And, and I think back to thatkind of like, not just thinking
about like, what do I think iscool and, and what do I wanna
say?
But like, well, what, what'sgonna stop people from

(40:56):
scrolling?
What are, what are they gonna beinterested in?
Or at least how can you kind of,you know, get them to stop for a
minute and, give them a chanceto be interested in what you've
created, right.

Yeah.
I mean, I saw, I saw like aparticularly good one the other
day.
They kind of checked like threeboxes where it was two
musicians.
It was some sort of pop funkysort of band, playing one of
their songs, and it just had anoverlay that was like point of
view.
You just found the nextParamore, but

Mm.

small enough that they respond to every comment.
I was like, okay, that's, that'spretty interesting.

Yeah.

you're now calling out another band that people
might know.
So if they do like them, they'regonna stick to it a little bit.
Say, oh, I love Paramore,

Yeah.

interested and.
If you're gonna respond to everycomment, okay.
They didn't say, please leave acomment.
Something, something very pushy.
kinda led you with, if you doleave a comment, maybe we'll
respond.
So not too salesy, not toopushy, but did have a call to
action

Mm-hmm.

of subliminally, like you should comment,

Yeah.

And did use somebody else's name to sort of,
again, preface what you'relooking at to explain.
You're like, ah, I know whoParamore is.
This is like Paramore.
I understand what I'm lookingat.
So it is those, like you said,there's, you know, I'm a, I'm a
huge marketing nerd, clearly.
Um, but like, even the, even theold like Ogilvy books and stuff

(42:18):
like that, like, like basicmarketing still works.
It's just changed its face.

Mm.

you know, so like fear marketing, like termites
suck.
We can get rid of them.
You're like, oh, well I don'twant termites.
Um, like termites are bad.
You can fix it.
Amazing.
Like

yeah,

call that company.

yeah.

so it's, it's the fomo, it's, it's, a lot of that
stuff does work and it's justreworking sort of old frameworks
into world.
Today's mediums, today's stuffstill does work.

Totally.
So once we've really got thecreative dialed in, now we gotta
actually start running the ads.
Me personally, I've opened up,uh, ads manager and I took
fucking, you know, three minutesI looked at, I'm like, oh shit.
Like, I'm super overwhelmedright now.
What are some basic just tips, Iguess, for getting started in

(43:11):
running ads?
To me, it seems superoverwhelming.
It seems like a whole, foreignlanguage out there.
How do we get started andactually running ads?
What do we need to know?

So I have a visual in my brain every time I'm
building a campaign.
It's kind of like a weird treethat keeps branching.
So anytime you're building acampaign, there's kind of two,
two portions of the campaign.
There's prospecting, which isnet new people, somebody who's
never heard of you, neverengaged with you, they don't
know who you are.
It's kinda like cold traffic.

Yeah.

second would be remarketing.
It's your existing fans, youremail list, people have engaged
with you on social, et cetera.
So at the very top, you kind oftheoretically starting with two
campaigns.
You got new people, old people.

Mm-hmm.

Within each one of those, you can test a couple of
different things.
And this applies to pretty muchevery ad platform you have
campaign ad set, which is kindof your audiences.
within the audiences you haveyour ads themselves, which is
like the literal creative, whatthe post looks like.
So kind of your ideal structuremost of the time is campaign.

(44:18):
So let's just say we're goingfor new people, brand new
artists.
I have nobody looking for me.
We really only got ourprospecting audience.
So whatever that is within that,a couple of different audiences.
So that could be maybe a broadgenre artist, we'll just go with
dance'cause we've been talkingabout it.
Great.
Put in eio house music, deephouse, whatever your broad,

(44:40):
broad, broad genres are, alongwith maybe the regions you wanna
go after.
And some, some age parameters.
It's

Mm-hmm.

we want everyone in the world to like you, but
we're looking for streamers.
It's probably 18 to 34.
Is

Mm-hmm.

your core audience for the most part.

Yeah.

Um, and maybe you wanna go after the country
you're from to

Yeah.
Makes sense.

Um.
Try a couple of different thingsthough.
Try broad genre and see if thatworks.
Try similar artists list andartists that you think are
sonically similar to you andtheir fans might like you,

Yeah.

as if you are somebody who's super into
fashion, maybe add in a controlof like streetwear.
Like if in all of your contentyou're wearing really cool
clothes,

Yeah.

test that.
And so

And

is it's gonna test all of those different audiences
to see what is resonating thebest.

so you're running, it's running an ad to each of
those audiences separately.
Right.
So you're basically basicallyrunning like the same ad to four
different audiences.

so

Yeah.

that's, you can.
Not to get too, too freaky onanyone.
You could make creative just forthat audience to see if it
works.
But as the best truest test toalso kinda learn what does work,
I would say, let's just say youonly do have one ad Yes
campaign, three ad sets andwithin each ad set have the same
ad.
if you have three ads, put thesame three ads in each audience.

(46:09):
'cause what the system is gonnakind of do is say, okay, in
general, this audience is alwaysworking the best And it's the
second ad.
So it's really gonna prioritizeall the spend for audience to ad
three or whatever it might be.

How long would you test that to kind of get that,
uh, those metrics?

somewhat budget contingent.

Yeah.

you throw at it, the faster it's gonna learn.
But I, you know, give it fivedays at

Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.

regardless of what you're doing, it'll, it'll take
some time to normalize,

Yeah.

you are spending a, a truly psychotic budget,

Yeah, yeah.

know, if you're, if you're spending 25 grand a
day, like you can test prettyquickly.
But if you're, if you're doinghey, a couple bucks a day, uh,
to sort of figure it out, cool.
You know, it'll at least giveyou some directionality of like,
okay, it does seem like isworking.
And kind of the best advice Iwould give for creative testing
is make, if you do have a coupleof different assets, make sure

(47:09):
they're pretty different.
So you can get an idea of, okay,is it black and white or color?
Is it song or this song?
Is it lifestyle or studio?
Is it, you know, to see if justkind of think about, okay, what
can I maybe learn if I trusttest a couple of different
things.
It's like science class back inthe day, right?

(47:29):
It's a

Yeah.

method.
Like see how many things you cantest and say, okay, like I think
it's kind of this thing.
Now let's go in that directionand see if that, that holds
true.

Yeah.
And so, so the two things we're,we're really looking at is which
market, little subset ofdemographic, which market is
working the best, and also whichactual creative from the ad,
which type of ad is working thebest.
And so now, now we spend fivedays gathering that scientific
evidence, and now we, werealize, okay, this one is
working the best.

(47:59):
And so then we just kind of justdouble down on that and, and
start pushing that one.

on that or change it slightly, right?
Say

Hmm

it's working pretty well.
If I add captions to it, if itdidn't have them be, have them
before, did it help or did itget worse?

hmm.

you can say, okay, like, ah, got it.
This content works the best andI need captions on it.
Or some filter or do whatever.
But you can always, you're gonnaneed to learn all the time.

What's the metric that we're basing that off of?
Like, what's the actual likenumber that we're looking at?
Yeah.

Yeah.
So I'd say it, it depends onwhat you're looking to do,
right?
So if you are looking forgrowth, it would be the number
of followers, uh, that you aregetting.
If you're looking to drivetraffic, it's probably your cost
per click as well as your clickthrough rate.
but this is actually where Ithink the most people have
issues, right?
So let's just say you are tryingto drive to streaming, which I'm

(48:58):
sure quite a few people are justbecause people are clicking.
If they aren't streaming, it'snot working.

Mm.

People kind of get stuck in some of that sometimes.
And like we see these reportsfrom major labels, um, and
everybody's spending egregiousamounts of money.
If the end result is nothappening, it doesn't matter
what those metrics are.

Yeah.

Some small caveat in there that we don't need to
get into, but yes, that is a,that's a pretty simple
statement, right?
We are spending money and we'renot getting what we want.
Something needs to change.
There's quite a bit you couldchange in there, but let's say
in general, most things you doas a musician are, are going to
be somewhere in the sort of costper click and click through
rate.
You know, the click through rateis gonna give you an idea of

(49:47):
kind of how sticky the contentis for the most part as well as
the audience.
It's, you know, out of a hundredpeople, how many people are
clicking.

Yeah.

so if amount of them are clicking, they're
liking what they're seeing,

yeah,

right?
It is, it is driving the action.
And then the cost per click iskind of part of that, right?
Uh, if you have a really, reallyhigh click through rate, it's
going to drive down your costper click.
But those two

yeah.

are kind of, the most part, what

Yeah.

we're normally looking at.

So if we had it, if we had the ad linked directly
to go to Spotify, then wouldn'tanybody that's clicking on it
wouldn't that then pretty muchbe counting as a stream?
'cause as soon as they click onit, wouldn't it?
Wouldn't they?

long enough.

Okay.
Yeah.
So it's

so two, two things at play.
One, all of these platforms wantto make themselves look good
there are bots and shenanigans.

mm-hmm.

not because you did something wrong, just
because it's a fact of life.
Um, secondly, you do need tolisten to X amount of a song for
it to count as a stream.

Mm-hmm.

If somebody listens to the first two seconds
and they're like, I hate this,and they move on, not count as a
stream.
So did they have the intent?
Absolutely.
did they stream?
No.
And it's again, like you can'tnecessarily control that.
There's not a lot of stuffthere, but

yeah.
But that's how you could.

off.

That's how you could see, yeah, this ad is
performing well, but we're stillnot getting the streams though.

Yeah, which,

yeah,

okay, the ad is performing well, but we're not
getting the streams.
Okay.
So maybe we're getting a hugeamount of people to click, but
maybe it's the wrong audience.
Maybe it's sort of gone off thedeep end and meta's like, I'm
doing a great job.
But it's not, it's actually

yeah,

that are listening.

yeah,

or maybe people only liked that hook of the song
that you

yeah,

ad and your intro was too long

yeah,

or

yeah,

like that, right?
Where it, it's of is what it is.
but you just aren't gettingpeople to that line again,
there's not a lot you can changethere.
Um, but could be that theaudience is off.
It could be that something is

yeah.

it's just something to fiddle with a
little bit.

It.

know, it's like clearly people are interested,
but why aren't they streaming?

Yeah, makes sense.
So I have not yet startedrunning ads to the podcast.
I'm at a point now where it'slike, I think growth is kind of
stagnated, and, and I'm like,all right, I need to, I need to
get this in front of, uh, a newaudience.
I've got incredible guests likeyourself.
We're providing a ton of value.
I'm getting dms all the timeabout how much people are loving
this.
I need to get it out in front ofmore people.

(52:23):
What would you recommend to me?
I'm gonna just take personaladvantage of the last five
minutes of this podcast.
Uh, what, what strategy wouldyou recommend for me to get to
get a podcast out?
A little, little different than,you know, than a song, but this
is my art and content.
So how do we blow this baby up?

There you go.
I just, I just had this argumentwith my mom recently.
It is not music, but it is stillkind of the same thing.
You want high affinity peopleperforming in action.

Yeah.

she's trying to convince me I couldn't sell
books, but

Uh, yeah, you can sell anything.

there we go.
Exactly.
so I think you're, you're.
Halfway along the journey,right?
Like this, this is working.
You do have a following.
There's there kind of the, themost immediate, most tangible
thing you could do would betaking your audience that you
have creating a lookalikeaudience and saying, show it to
more people.
Right?
And that is, that is somethingagain, you can do on pretty much

(53:15):
every ad platform.
So if you were to go into meta,go into audience manager, create
an engagement audience of peoplewho have literally liked,
commented, shared your content,and then

Yeah.

create lookalike audience.

Ooh, that's easy.
One button, one click.

a reason.
Yeah.
There's a reason that, you know,Zuck keeps needing to go in
front of Congress and getgrilled.
'cause he has too much data like

Yeah.
Yeah.

awesome.
So when you say, I wanna looklike audience, it's like, cool,
here's people that are basicallystatistically identical to what
you're looking for.
So if you, let's just say your,your audience is 10,000 people.
I.
You can create a 1% lookalikeaudience based on the population
of the us.
So now you're looking at like 3million people, 4 million
people, right,

Hmm.

think are the highest affinity group of
people.

Cool.

and then drive traffic towards either your
content, right?
So you're not even drivingdirectly towards the podcast,
like drive back to the socials.
So maybe people hit of yourreels and just kinda like what
they're seeing and then on theirown accord, go check out the,
the long form or just kinda, youknow, raw dog,'em straight over

(54:24):
to, to Spotify or Apple orwherever they're listening and
hopefully they just convert.
Or a combination of both, right?
If we do this whole experimentand you just like explode your
socials, there's also somesocial proof there where
everybody's gonna stumble acrossand be like, whoa, student.
Nick's a legend.
I should probably be listeningto this'cause everyone else is.

(54:45):
So I think it's, it's a littlebit of both.
And then, yeah.
like you said, you have a hugeamount of, of different guests.
Try a couple clips fromliterally everyone, you know,
see

Yes.

of topics are actually working, you know, if
somebody is speaking aboutmarketing, target some sort of
marketing based keywords.
If somebody's talking aboutproduction target, Ableton
logic, you know, people, peoplewho have an affinity for that.
So I think you're, you're in aninteresting position where you
might actually want to sort ofrun creative against very

(55:17):
specific audiences.
'cause you kind of do touch

Got a couple different,

stuff.

yeah, a couple different topics here.
Amazing, man.
Awesome.
Well that gives me some greatideas, dude.
I'm going to take that and runwith it and, and finally get
over my mind, my, my mindsetblock of, you know, being scared
of the technology and the metaads and, getting to really like,
as I say, get in the arena andjust, uh, yeah.
Experiment and, and, and trysome shit out.

(55:43):
So thank you so much for that.
Now there's one more thing Iwant to talk about.
You have a software that youguys are offering through crowd
control, so tell me a little bitabout that.
Who's that for?
What does it do?

Yeah, so it was four people that hate ads.
Um, so we, we launched acompany, uh, that we've been
sort of operating in stealth,uh, we actually just wrapped up
called Event Sheet.
and it is for really anybodythat is touring, or looking to
just run localized ads.
Um, know coming from circle backin the day.

(56:14):
We have a lot of sort of historyand, and touring.
A lot of people come to us fortour marketing, but even
internally, even with a staffthat does this professionally,
when somebody hits us with a 10date tour, a 20 date tour, the
literal execution and, andmanagement of said horrible ads
manager, uh, takes a massiveamount of time.

Because you gotta run different ads for every
single one of those cities islike its own campaign that
you're doing that, right?
Yeah.
That's a lot.

Um, so it's, it's exactly like you said.
You launch Austin, get the wholething perfect.
Then you're literallyduplicating, going in, changing
Austin to la, changing the copy,updating the flyer, doing the
thing, and it's like absolutelyroom for human error.

Yeah.

just a lot of, frankly, like menial data entry.
It just sucks.
So our, our idea was takebasically the spreadsheet that
we normally get from either anartist, a manager, or a booking
agent, and be able to launch,you know, theoretically an, an
infinite number of, of ads injust a couple minutes.
So we sorta, our, our idea, wecall it, they're calling it

(57:17):
like, uh, bumper bowling

Mm.

sort of give people just enough control.
be able to put their own thingin there, but we're gonna kind
of deal with all of the nonsenseon the backend.
Make sure that any dollar thatgoes out is spent as efficiently
as humanly possible.
So you don't really need to knowhow to use Ads Manager, you just
need to kind of know your ownname, know where you're playing,

(57:41):
and like maybe a couple ofsimilar artists and we will kind
of do the rest of the work.
So Yeah.
it was really meant to, youknow, frankly we had a lot of
people coming to us that maybewe were transparently
unaffordable to.
and we still wanted to be ableto help.
and, or even internally we get a50 day tour that, that stings a
little bit.

(58:01):
Um, you know, we're, we'reexcited to do it, but we're
gonna have a couple peopledrilling down on laptops for six
hours.
so even to, even to add someinternal efficiencies, it was
something we, we thought wouldbe helpful.
So.
Love for anyone listening to, tocheck it out.
Uh, it is just event sheet.com.
We'll put together some sort ofcode.
I should probably talk to mypartners, but I do what I want.

(58:22):
Um, we'll go,

Hell yeah.

I like that.
Um, we'll get you guys like a, afree month.
We're just not gonna talk toanybody.

Let's go.
Let's go.

uh,

Yeah.
Well, that's.
That's what I love, uh, I loveabout this podcast is it is not
only, you know, like up andcoming, you know, artists, but
there definitely are, touringartists that are listening as
well.
Um, so shout out to all of youout there that are playing shows
and if you've got a tour comingup, you've got a bunch of dates
that you need to advertise to,you know where to go and we're

(58:55):
gonna hook you up with, with adiscount for that as well.
So I'll put that link at the topof the show notes.
Just go ahead and click on thatand, um, yeah man, thank you so
much for hopping on, for justsharing all of this knowledge,
all of this wisdom.
Like I'm personally gonna goback and just take a bunch of
notes on this.
And like I said, Finally gettingin the arena, start running some
ads myself.
We're gonna blow up thispodcast.

(59:16):
All of you out there are gonnago get on event sheet and start
blowing up your shows and let'skeep fucking growing.
So yeah, thank you so much forhopping on, man.

Absolutely.
Dude, it was a pleasure and, uh,glad you're killing it.
This is, this is fun.
I like this.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}GEOFF SHAMES - Ad Strategy & Content Tips From Marketing Agency CEO