Headliner Mindset

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

• Nik Cherwink

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Geoff Shames has been in the game for over a decade, helping shape the marketing strategy behind some of the biggest names in bass music. From launching the marketing division at Circle Talent Agency (which later became UTA) to running his own digital agency, Geoff is a master at helping artists build their brands and following. 

In this episode, we dive deep into the real strategies artists can use to grow their audience — from running ads to creating engaging content and everything in between.

We get into:

  • How to use lookalike audiences and retargeting to grow beyond your current fanbase
  • Why so many artists waste money on ads — and how to do it right
  • What makes a brand “stick” — and how to become instantly recognizable
  • How to think about content, aesthetic, and social presence like a real business

This is a no-fluff breakdown of what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to building a real career in electronic music today.

—

🎧 Want to work with me directly to grow your audience and brand?
 Book a free strategy call here: https://www.nikcherwink.com

📲 Follow Geoff: @geoffshames
📲 Follow Nik: @nikcherwink

Geoff Shames:

the most immediate, most tangible thing you could do would be taking your audience that you have creating a lookalike audience and saying, show it to more people. That is something again, you can do on pretty much every ad platform. So when you say, I wanna look like audience, it's like, cool, here's people that are basically statistically identical to what you're looking for.

Nik Cherwink:

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Headliner Mindset Podcast. Now I know so many of you are artists that are looking to build your audience, and so you guys are going to absolutely love this episode. It is with the owner of Crowd Control Digital, which is a marketing agency that's been working with artists and huge brands for over 10 years. In this episode, we're gonna dive deep into social media strategy and how to create content that actually gets engagement. How to create ads that people actually click on, and so much more. So, I hope you guys enjoy this episode. 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, this is Jeff Shame. Jeff, welcome to the show. My man, I am so excited to dive in with you because you are one of the many guests that I have on here that are like old, long time, you know, friends and industry homies from like 10 years ago that we haven't talked in forever. But we get to dive in and, and, and really, uh, yeah, really catch up. So I'm so stoked that you're here, man. Welcome.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

So cool.

Geoff Shames:

a journey to say the least.

Nik Cherwink:

Now, I was just thinking about this before we started, but I was reflecting on when we initially met probably about 10 years ago, or, or, or around then. You guys were like affiliated with Circle, uh, talent Agency, which has now gone on to become UTA. I mean, arguably one of the, you know, really the biggest, uh, booking agencies that are representing, you know, so many huge DJs. And so that was kind of where it all started, if I'm not mistaken, right

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Wow.

Geoff Shames:

there as sort of the guy that kept, kept stuff together a little bit, but was originally hired, to basically run marketing. So the, the company had grown really, really quickly. So I was just the like keep this thing from not exploding guy for a while. And as the business sort of stabilized a little bit, um, ended up launching sort of the marketing department that we had originally planned on. and that is effectively what is now crowd control. We split off. Halfway through that time, to do our 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 Circle marketing team.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Wow. Dude, I totally forgot about that.'cause at the time I was managing this artist, James Egbert, shout out James, honestly, probably the best music producer I've ever met in my entire fucking life. He still is Absolutely, you know, crushing it in other projects now. Um, but it was, it was really cool being an artist on that roster. As an agency. You guys were also helping with marketing.'cause I remember being encouraged. You guys were like, yo, you guys should do a music video. And like, you guys even funded like, we'll put up the money to have you guys do a music video. I don't know if that's a very common practice for booking agencies to actually be like investing in the marketing and supporting in that way. That seems like kind of a rare thing.

Geoff Shames:

Yeah. it was, it was a little novel. That was kind of the concept and it 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 some marketing. Um, they'll just kind of help you out. So it, it was either, you know, we would do a gratis, for people that needed the help or that maybe didn't even have a manager, or we'd be kind of pseudo management,

Nik Cherwink:

Totally.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

uh, it was different. And now, uh, I think it has become a little more common, you know, I know, like, you know, our, our good friends at UTA, um, now do have a giant marketing department, right. As do, uh, some of the other agencies. So

Nik Cherwink:

Cool. Yeah, yeah,

Geoff Shames:

our weird idea is now

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

was doing a couple of events with Weedmaps or, uh, some guys affiliated with, and they were like, Hey, we need, we need some marketing people, but we don't want a traditional New York marketing agency. We kind of want some like weird stoner music kids, uh, that maybe understand what we're doing a little bit more. And we got introduced and, and went to a meeting and sold'em the world. And then they were like, cool. So who do we make the agreement out to? We're like.

Nik Cherwink:

Uh,

Geoff Shames:

get

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Love that.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah, yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

Yeah,

Nik Cherwink:

broad statement. Like, what do you actually do?

Geoff Shames:

So I have two answers. Um, one is we normally go backwards'cause we have started doing so much, it's almost easier to exclude.

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm.

Geoff Shames:

so the two things we do not do, are traditional publicity. Like we are not, uh, we don't do pr, 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 we can't guarantee it or measure it where it's more personal relationship based, we try to stay away from. so we aren't taking your money and saying we're gonna do X, Y, and Z and like, ah, you know,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

no r bad.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

when that was kind of the, the buzzy thing and just running somebody's Facebook page, was a big value add. So still do some social media management a little bit less. Everyone has gotten quite good at it. So they don't need as much outside of maybe some strategy. Do full service advertising. All of your, your paid media across digital as well as traditional, uh, we have some great partners in out of home. So if you want billboards skywriting, you wanna take over the, the Las Vegas sphere, we can do stuff like that. You know, we just quoted somebody a drone QR code, um, to fly above something, to do something weird.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

that will

Nik Cherwink:

Q.

Geoff Shames:

a QR code

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

Yeah.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

fun. We're having

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Yeah. And you said, I love that you said, uh, you call it out of home marketing. Right? So there's obviously digital marketing, everything that we're doing on our phones. And then outside of that, billboards, fucking drones, you know, the, the, uh, the billboards 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 marketing, right?

Geoff Shames:

Well,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

and creator marketing. but I'd say if our, our, our sweet spot these days is we're, we're really trying to be sort of that strategic partner. work with somebody on their project, figure out what they should be doing, help them come up with that plan, get it done. And then we can certainly execute on all of the above, but we can also sort of point people in the right direction.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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 help you do a lot of the work yourself. So we can just kind of come in with some of the know how then the doing.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

outside of some strategy.

Nik Cherwink:

And I'm sure as the agency has grown, you know what I mean, you guys are working on some really big projects. I was looking at like your case studies and what you guys are doing on the site and you know, you've got some big brands and big companies that you're working with. you still working with, brand new projects that haven't been launched yet and artists that are just coming up? Okay, so that's awesome.'cause you know, I think there's a lot of artists that are listening to this podcast that are, they're coming up, they're coming up in the game, they're trying to figure out, you know, I love the statistic. I don't love the statistic, but I love sharing the statistic that there's a hundred thousand songs getting uploaded to Spotify every single day Blows my fucking mind. That's insane. There's so much music out there. So everyone's trying to figure out like, how do I stand out? Right. How do I, how do I create something that's actually going to get attention, that's going to actually, find the right people and build a fan base? And, you know, a lot of people are, you know, trying to maybe just use social media and do it organically. But there's a whole other world out there when it comes to actually, you know, actually advertising. Right. Um, so I, I'd love to just, you know, really spend this time today to walk through what can an up and coming artist do? What's some strategy that we could be looking at, you know, if I was a, brand new artist coming to your agency, let's just start here. Like, what would be the first thing that you would walk me through? Where would we start in that process?

Geoff Shames:

So it's, it's always kind of fun, honestly. Um, we get to play when we first start where it's truly what do you want your project to be? that's a surprisingly difficult question. you know, a lot of people are like, Hey, I made the banger of the century. fantastic. What does your album art artwork look like?

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah, yeah.

Geoff Shames:

foodie, like has a black book with every restaurant and chef's name, like in every corner of the world. Like, but that's a huge part of his brand. You know, went out to do a Dungeons and Dragons clothing company, he's really passionate about, you know, crazy illustrators like, but people are drawn to him for that as well as, So if he happened to put out a Dungeons and Dragons cookbook, would be like, oh, that makes sense. Like,

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm. It really comes down to figuring out your brand. Right? Like, I always like, I like the saying that, that Chris from Cult Creatives always says, but like, the music is just the soundtrack to the movie, right? What, what's the actual movie? What's, what is your brand and your story and your narrative? Before we can figure out the marketing strategy, we need to figure out like, what are we actually marketing beyond just, you know, that you got a new song. Everybody and their mom has a new song. There's a hundred thousand of them being uploaded to Spotify every day.

Geoff Shames:

Exactly. So,

Nik Cherwink:

so so it starts with,

Geoff Shames:

is

Nik Cherwink:

yeah, it starts with the brand.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

change, you change as a person.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

but we need something.

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm. Let's, let's dig into that a little bit more.'cause I, I help a lot of people with this process. I, I love walking through kind of the brand therapy process of like, you know, kind of, I call it like, digging for gold. I'm just looking for like, where's that, where's that little piece of gold that makes you you, that nobody else has? Right? What are some of the questions that you ask people? Or like, how do you really help people actually find that thing? Because for, for some people it's really easy. For some people it's really hard.

Geoff Shames:

It goes both ways. You nailed it,

Nik Cherwink:

Um,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah. Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Geoff Shames:

to you? Is it a

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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 their studio, what's there? it can tell you a lot about the person, the environment. So lot of, like you said, kind of mining.'cause sometimes what we're gonna hear in something like somebody didn't even realize about themselves.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

to it.

Nik Cherwink:

yeah, yeah, yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

well, I think it, it's, we can, we can break an industry channels, right? Organic, which is kinda what you're saying. Everybody's posting on social, doing whatever, and then paid, right? So I kind of look at it as a, as a piecemeal function. Like we have to get the organic dialed in before I would even start spending money. Simple way to think of paid is amplify something that's working. don't just spend money for the sake of spending money. It just won't go anywhere. so if you're putting out content that isn't doing well, probably don't spend money on it. It's just the reality. It's platform that you're posting on has an algorithm. It rewards high engagement and people caring, basically, can be at a very micro scale, right? It doesn't mean that you posted something and it reached a million people. It could be you have 200 followers, but it reached 400 people. It's like, okay, you actually overindexed like you, you serve more than your own followers. And if you've got a huge amount of comments like that is working,

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm.

Geoff Shames:

it's working at a, at a very small scale, that's where you might wanna deploy some money. So I actually like, it's almost easier sometimes to work with a newer artist because we like to say like, you can trip and nobody's looking. I. And it, and it's not that literally nobody's looking, but there's not 30 million people micro analyzing every single thing you post. And like noticing a fly in the background of a picture.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

'cause you also don't want second something feels like homework. You're not gonna do it and it's gonna suck and people are frankly gonna feel it. You know, if somebody's posting like 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 have those friends where they post something online and it just looks like they're having a great time. You're like, oh, that's awesome.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

it's tough. It's, it's admittedly super tough. I think the, the two things that I find the most people stumble over is like, I. One, like kind of imposter syndrome of some sort, like feeling like, why would anyone care what I have to say? Or just like kind of decision paralysis, like, if I post

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

gonna happen?

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

that

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

that sucks. and I guess kind of the, the third one I'll throw in there is unfortunately what you like might not be the thing that works. So you kind of need to, need is a crappy word, but like, if you're playing the game, um, there's a balance, right? It's, you know, we would all love to just put like, I really like weird monochrome, black and white, beautiful photography and like. That might not work super, super well. It might not

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah, yeah, yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

at some point enough people are gonna gravitate towards that,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

to like

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

It's again,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

dating myself here, but back in the day with brills, pre L Stri and when he was 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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

Then it was a thing and

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

knew what it was. Everybody knew what the brand stood for, what it looked like, what it felt like. It, it grabbed all the right people and it was huge.

Nik Cherwink:

yeah. Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

mm.

Geoff Shames:

that was truly authentically you, and it worked.

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm. Well, I love, first off, I wanna highlight what you said. You know, the first piece about getting over the imposter syndrome, it's a mindset thing. You know, it's like I, me as, as a life coach and mindset coach, I always bring it back to that. I'm like, none of this strategy matters. If your mindset isn't there in the first place, you gotta get over your shit. You gotta be willing to put yourself out there, be willing to fail and fall and stumble. And especially in the beginning to experiment. This is your time to just like, try, try things out. But if you have a mindset block around that, you're never gonna get over step one. Um, this other part of it that you're talking about, I think is interesting where, because on the one hand you're kind of saying it's like. You want to pay attention to the market, right? Sometimes what you are into isn't necessarily like landing and people don't really care. So it's like you, you kind of want to pay attention to the market. Uh, but also at the same time, you know, like you're saying with, with Brills, it was like you just kind of own who you are, do your thing, and, and, and really also just push almost until people pay attention. Right. So it sounds like there's, there's a little bit of a balance of like Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

There, there is a balancing thing. So

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

'Cause there's also people that are, they are just hammering away every single day and they're doing it. But it's not working. So you also gotta pay attention to, is, is this actually working? Are people engaging? If not, you know, they say the definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing, uh, and expecting different results, right? So that, I guess that that is where that balance is of like, okay, if it's don't, maybe jump right away if it's not working. But if you, for six months you've been posting the same shit and nobody's paying attention, like maybe start to change your strategy and, and start to look at, you know, I, I like to say like, if, if you wanna be good at marketing, you need to know who your market is. Who are you actually marketing to, and what are they responding to? What are they into? But also not at the expense of losing yourself and only catering to the market. So it's a, a tricky balance there.

Geoff Shames:

It's tough. It's why we

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

Um,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Hire Jeff. If you can't figure this shit out, 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.

Geoff Shames:

Hope so. it's hard.

Nik Cherwink:

yeah. Yeah. So, you know, one thing I was thinking about was back to like the, the, the, the, the circle days where, you know, they were really like investing and saying like, 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 can succeed in today's music industry without having a budget behind them?

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

Yes. Some of those are manufactured by horrible people like me, but. There are also people that just genuinely do it, right? So I think it's fewer and further between than it was, you know, 10 years ago where could just put out a cracking track on SoundCloud and it just worked. That said, it's just an amplifier. is sort of the way we always describe advertising. It's, you still need the content. You

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

if you have a trash product,

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Totally.

Geoff Shames:

it's still gonna be trash.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

Yeah. we

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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 working in gaming might work in music or something we see working in hip hop might work in country or

Nik Cherwink:

Mm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

you know, it's easy for us to kind of spot some of those trends, some of those things that are kind of bubbling, to help with that or, you know, sort of work, just workshop with people, Hey, you want this to be? Here's four different things you could drive. Do any of these feel natural to you? So yeah, the creative strategy is a big part of it. And then sort of once we, once we land on something that either we're just genuinely really excited about that everybody is like, this is, this is the piece. Okay, fantastic. We can certainly try some advertising, um, or retroactively. get phone calls, texts, emails a couple times a day. Hey, we just put something out and it's going ballistic. perfect. That's honestly the ideal place to put money

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

people.

Nik Cherwink:

talked about that in a recent episode as well. I think this is a common mistake where. People want to just dump money into something, trying to get eyeballs at it, where it's almost like, it's like, oh, nobody really saw this piece of content, so let me run some ads so more people can see it and I want to boost it. And it's like the complete opposite thing of what you wanna do is, it's like what's organically already proving to show that people are interested. You're getting a lot of engagement. Like the algorithm is is proving that like, hey, this is, this is interesting. Now let's get it in front of more people.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

spent a bunch of money and it sucked. We're like, okay. One, there may have just been some structural stuff you could have changed on, on the advertising itself, that's fine. But more often than not, we hear the story. It's like, okay, what were you boosting? What were you adding to spend behind? They're like, ah, and these three posts that were just like, really, really tanking. and I just showed'em to way more people. well,

Nik Cherwink:

There's a reason they were tanking.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

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.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

Right. Like, it, it's something will work.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Now you guys are super plugged in. You're seeing what's working in all these different indu industries. You've got all of these clients. One, I'd love to hear about what is working, and also how quickly do you think that changes?'cause I can ask you this question right now, it feels like. You know what's working right now? I don't know, three months later. Six months later probably is gonna be different. Do you feel like that's accurate?

Geoff Shames:

Yeah. Um, I feel like faster than that these days.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

you know, instead it's like two weeks something

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Okay. So by, so I'm gonna ask you what's working right now, and then by the time this podcast comes 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 working out there?

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

static is, is performing the best. Short form is always your friend. On the paid side, of a mixed bag is the honest answer. It depends on who you are and kind of like you said, knowing your market, right? So we, I, I get this question all the time and we kinda have to flip it back on people and it's like, what are we doing? So what is working for who? So prime example, we do a lot of work 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.

Nik Cherwink:

Okay.

Geoff Shames:

in most of our experience.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

just not quite as much there.

Nik Cherwink:

How about for electronic music artists?

Geoff Shames:

uh,

Nik Cherwink:

be focusing

Geoff Shames:

live sets

Nik Cherwink:

live sets?

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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 person behind the DJ having a good time or not. It's a little less polished. You can't, you know, it's kind of like you never know what's gonna happen on live TV sort of thing.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah, yeah.

Geoff Shames:

interesting experience. So we've, I've just seen more people really blowing up because of a, of a live set, a live performance,

Nik Cherwink:

Totally.

Geoff Shames:

than

Nik Cherwink:

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 we talked, 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 a sit club, and we talked about it and he's like, yeah, man. He's like, I, I invested back to like. 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 he spent like a couple grand to get like really good high quality videographers and all this editing done. And so he is like, I just invested a bunch in filming all of that. But he is like, now I've got all this sick content and, and he's, you know, putting it out regularly. And now other promoters are seeing him crushing it in front of this crowd and now he's starting to get more bookings. Right. So Just to kind of explain, I think the chess game, uh, of, of how people are thinking around that. It's like, yo reinvest what, whatever you're making, and, you know, that's like showing the world, you know, showing fans, Hey, this guy, this is super, this is a super fun artist. You gotta come see this guy when he comes to town. And, you know, promoters that might be checking you out are like, oh, okay, this guy is, is killing it. Right. Let's, let's hire him.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm.

Geoff Shames:

that's it. Like, wouldn't,

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Now what about the artists that aren't performing yet? You know, there's that kind of like, I, I, I always say it's like. It's like you gotta get yourself from like zero to 25 and then hopefully when you, when you're creating some buzz and some mo some momentum, you can find like a manager, an eight and an agent, and build a team and they can take you from 25 to a hundred. But it seems like you gotta get yourself from zero to 25. And that's like the rocket ship bursting out of the earth's atmosphere. It's like that is so much like push 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 to film. All they're doing is sitting around in their studio all day making music, you know, how does somebody create buzz around that?

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah, throw, throw a party in your apartment.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Yeah. True, true.

Geoff Shames:

do it in, do it in your garage,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Geoff Shames:

30 people and it was insane. It was the most fun I've ever had. show people the fun show like at some point. Sure. Though, it's honestly, I think that content is more fun than I used to call it the hands in the air photo where every single DJ after every single show would stand in front of the crowd and post this photo and we're just like, we get it. Like you did that Thursday, Friday, Saturday, every week for

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

hundred weeks.

Nik Cherwink:

For sure.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Totally. Totally.

Geoff Shames:

I want to be

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it also kind of comes back to, you know, something I find myself talking about a lot is it's like, all right, it's cool that you have a song coming out and 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 and they're playing shows. So what else? What's gonna make me fall in love with you? Right? Not just fall in love with the music, but like, what's gonna make me fall in love with you? And I think that's where it goes back to like, oh, is it, is it the, are you into surfing? Are you into fashion? Are you like, what else are you into? What are you doing on the weekend? Are you playing video games? Like you said, like,

Geoff Shames:

right,

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

right? And it was,

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

Just not, not for me.

Nik Cherwink:

I had the same experience with, uh, I had a little Texas on my, on the podcast, like pretty early on, and I told him straight up. I was like, bro, like, I'm gonna be honest. I'm like, I'm not actually like a 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'm like, okay, I'm more of like a melodic, I like a vichy and shit, you know? And I was like, but I was like, but I'm a huge fan of you. Like I'm a huge fan. Like, I fo I follow you on all your shit. I love following you. And I'm like, I don't like the music, but I like you. And like, that's where like, you have crushed it as a brand. I was like, I, if you can get people to, to, to, to like you. And not even like the music. I'm like, all right, you got the brand 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 fun to follow and to watch and very clever. It's like,

Geoff Shames:

fun. like,

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

is having such an awesome time

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah, totally.

Geoff Shames:

are also just like, I want you to win.

Nik Cherwink:

Fuck. Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

you, you are rad.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. So, okay, let's, dive into a little bit of the, ad strategy. I guess. Uh, if I were to, maybe I'm just taking my first steps in running ads. Um, Let's talk about the ad itself, right, of it needs to be something that's interesting that's gonna get attention. What kind of stuff is working for running an actual ad that actually is going to get somebody to stop and click on it? Do you have any tips for people that are running ads?

Geoff Shames:

Yeah. I mean, it, it varies a little. First I'll give you a, the, the hack in the century, on pretty much every platform, is a way to actually look at what other people are running. So if you go on Facebook, and it does have to be Facebook, you can look at their ads library. If you just Google literally Facebook ad library, take you to the link. You can literally put in your favorite artist's name it'll show you every ad that they're actively running.

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Wow.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm. The, the hook.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah,

Geoff Shames:

tank.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

Yeah. I zoomed past it. I was like, ah, no. Um, versus like, give people an idea of what they are looking at in the first three seconds, if not the first second,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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're basically gonna lose people every couple seconds. so it needs to, all, it needs to all be there, it needs to be visually grabbing again, quite a bit by genre. Need to keep it on brand, but just kind of keeping in mind that people are doom scrolling

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

much at, at any given point.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

kind of like, the best advice I can give people is try something that's a little bit different than the other person. Like if everybody's posting the same ad all the time, it's not really there. So for a lot of people, like live show footage again has worked pretty well as ad creative, just'cause it's generally pretty loud, pretty pretty fuzzy. So any sort of hook there with literal pyro lasers, something is that itself. Is there, again, sort of the direct stop or leading somebody, like, I'm gonna teach you to do something in the next 60 seconds. They're like, I've prefaced this is only gonna take 60 seconds. I've sort of told you what you're gonna get by the end of it.

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

we're gonna get there.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. It's, it's, it's so important is this is all psychology. I mean, this is what advertisers have been doing since the beginning of time is they understand human behavior. They understand psychology When you talk about a pattern interrupt, right? It's like we're just getting into people's brains and, and as. An artist that's, especially in that first stage of your career where you're doing it all yourself, like you have to learn how to become an advertiser. Right? I, I, I've been just having this conversation more and more that like, if you want to be successful in the music business, you have to really step into that business owner mindset. Understand that it's like, I am a self-employed entrepreneur, now I'm running a business, and I don't care what business you're running and what industry. If you wanna have a successful business, you have to be good at sales and marketing, right? And branding. It's like, just like fundamentals for, for anything. So to kind of start really like thinking like an advertiser, right? And, and I think back to that kind of like, not just thinking about like, what do I think is cool and, and what do I wanna say? But like, well, what, what's gonna stop people from scrolling? What are, what are they gonna be interested in? Or at least how can you kind of, you know, get them to stop for a minute and, give them a chance to be interested in what you've created, right.

Geoff Shames:

Yeah. I mean, I saw, I saw like a particularly good one the other day. They kind of checked like three boxes where it was two musicians. It was some sort of pop funky sort of band, playing one of their songs, and it just had an overlay that was like point of view. You just found the next Paramore, but

Nik Cherwink:

Mm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

of subliminally, like you should comment,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

And did use somebody else's name to sort of, again, preface what you're looking at to explain. You're like, ah, I know who Paramore is. This is like Paramore. I understand what I'm looking at. 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 the old like Ogilvy books and stuff like that, like, like basic marketing still works. It's just changed its face.

Nik Cherwink:

Mm.

Geoff Shames:

you know, so like fear marketing, like termites suck. We can get rid of them. You're like, oh, well I don't want termites. Um, like termites are bad. You can fix it. Amazing. Like

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

call that company.

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Totally. So once we've really got the creative 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 minutes I looked at, I'm like, oh shit. Like, I'm super overwhelmed right now. What are some basic just tips, I guess, for getting started in running ads? To me, it seems super overwhelming. It seems like a whole, foreign language out there. How do we get started and actually running ads? What do we need to know?

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

Within each one of those, you can test a couple of different things. And this applies to pretty much every ad platform you have campaign ad set, which is kind of your audiences. within the audiences you have your ads themselves, which is like the literal creative, what the post looks like. So kind of your ideal structure most of the time is campaign. So let's just say we're going for new people, brand new artists. I have nobody looking for me. We really only got our prospecting audience. So whatever that is within that, a couple of different audiences. So that could be maybe a broad genre artist, we'll just go with dance'cause we've been talking about it. Great. Put in eio house music, deep house, whatever your broad, broad, broad genres are, along with maybe the regions you wanna go after. And some, some age parameters. It's

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

your core audience for the most part.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Makes sense.

Geoff Shames:

Um. Try a couple of different things though. Try broad genre and see if that works. Try similar artists list and artists that you think are sonically similar to you and their fans might like you,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

test that. And so

Nik Cherwink:

And

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

so

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

that's, you can. Not to get too, too freaky on anyone. You could make creative just for that audience to see if it works. But as the best truest test to also kinda learn what does work, I would say, let's just say you only do have one ad Yes campaign, three ad sets and within each ad set have the same ad. if you have three ads, put the same three ads in each audience.'cause what the system is gonna kind of do is say, okay, in general, this audience is always working the best And it's the second ad. So it's really gonna prioritize all the spend for audience to ad three or whatever it might be.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

somewhat budget contingent.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

you are spending a, a truly psychotic budget,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah, yeah.

Geoff Shames:

know, if you're, if you're spending 25 grand a day, like you can test pretty quickly. But if you're, if you're doing hey, a couple bucks a day, uh, to sort of figure it out, cool. You know, it'll at least give you some directionality of like, okay, it does seem like is working. And kind of the best advice I would give for creative testing is make, if you do have a couple of different assets, make sure 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 just kind of think about, okay, what can I maybe learn if I trust test a couple of different things. It's like science class back in the day, right? It's a

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. And so, so the two things we're, we're really looking at is which market, little subset of demographic, which market is working the best, and also which actual creative from the ad, which type of ad is working the best. And so now, now we spend five days gathering that scientific evidence, and now we, we realize, okay, this one is working the best. And so then we just kind of just double down on that and, and start pushing that one.

Geoff Shames:

on that or change it slightly, right? Say

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

hmm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

Yeah. So I'd say it, it depends on what you're looking to do, right? So if you are looking for growth, it would be the number of followers, uh, that you are getting. If you're looking to drive traffic, it's probably your cost per click as well as your click through rate. but this is actually where I think the most people have issues, right? So let's just say you are trying to drive to streaming, which I'm sure quite a few people are just because people are clicking. If they aren't streaming, it's not working.

Nik Cherwink:

Mm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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're not getting what we want. Something needs to change. There's quite a bit you could change in there, but let's say in general, most things you do as a musician are, are going to be somewhere in the sort of cost per click and click through rate. You know, the click through rate is gonna give you an idea of kind of how sticky the content is for the most part as well as the audience. It's, you know, out of a hundred people, how many people are clicking.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

are kind of, the most part, what

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

we're normally looking at.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

long enough.

Nik Cherwink:

Okay. Yeah. So it's

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm-hmm.

Geoff Shames:

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't necessarily control that. There's not a lot of stuff there, but

Nik Cherwink:

yeah. But that's how you could.

Geoff Shames:

off.

Nik Cherwink:

That's how you could see, yeah, this ad is performing well, but we're still not getting the streams though.

Geoff Shames:

Yeah, which,

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

that are listening.

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

ad and your intro was too long

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

or

Nik Cherwink:

yeah,

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

It.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah, makes sense. So I have not yet started running ads to the podcast. I'm at a point now where it's like, 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 new audience. I've got incredible guests like yourself. We're providing a ton of value. I'm getting dms all the time about how much people are loving this. I need to get it out in front of more people. What would you recommend to me? I'm gonna just take personal advantage of the last five minutes of this podcast. Uh, what, what strategy would you 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?

Geoff Shames:

There you go. I just, I just had this argument with my mom recently. It is not music, but it is still kind of the same thing. You want high affinity people performing in action.

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Uh, yeah, you can sell anything.

Geoff Shames:

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, the most immediate, most tangible thing you could do would be taking your audience that you have creating a lookalike audience and saying, show it to more people. Right? And that is, that is something again, you can do on pretty much every ad platform. So if you were to go into meta, go into audience manager, create an engagement audience of people who have literally liked, commented, shared your content, and then

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

create lookalike audience.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

awesome. So when you say, I wanna look like audience, it's like, cool, here's people that are basically statistically 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% lookalike audience based on the population of the us. So now you're looking at like 3 million people, 4 million people, right,

Nik Cherwink:

Hmm.

Geoff Shames:

think are the highest affinity group of people.

Nik Cherwink:

Cool.

Geoff Shames:

and then drive traffic towards either your content, right? So you're not even driving directly towards the podcast, like drive back to the socials. So maybe people hit of your reels and just kinda like what they're seeing and then on their own accord, go check out the, the long form or just kinda, you know, raw dog,'em straight over to, to Spotify or Apple or wherever they're listening and hopefully they just convert. Or a combination of both, right? If we do this whole experiment and you just like explode your socials, there's also some social proof there where everybody's gonna stumble across and be like, whoa, student. Nick's a legend. I should probably be listening to this'cause everyone else is. So I think it's, it's a little bit of both. And then, yeah. like you said, you have a huge amount of, of different guests. Try a couple clips from literally everyone, you know, see

Nik Cherwink:

Yes.

Geoff Shames:

of topics are actually working, you know, if somebody is speaking about marketing, target some sort of marketing based keywords. If somebody's talking about production target, Ableton logic, you know, people, people who have an affinity for that. So I think you're, you're in an interesting position where you might actually want to sort of run creative against very specific audiences.'cause you kind of do touch

Nik Cherwink:

Got a couple different,

Geoff Shames:

stuff.

Nik Cherwink:

yeah, a couple different topics here. Amazing, man. Awesome. Well that gives me some great ideas, dude. I'm going to take that and run with it and, and finally get over my mind, my, my mindset block of, you know, being scared of the technology and the meta ads and, getting to really like, as I say, get in the arena and just, uh, yeah. Experiment and, and, and try some shit out. So thank you so much for that. Now there's one more thing I want to talk about. You have a software that you guys are offering through crowd control, so tell me a little bit about that. Who's that for? What does it do?

Geoff Shames:

Yeah, so it was four people that hate ads. Um, so we, we launched a company, uh, that we've been sort of operating in stealth, uh, we actually just wrapped up called Event Sheet. and it is for really anybody that is touring, or looking to just run localized ads. Um, know coming from circle back in the day. We have a lot of sort of history and, and touring. A lot of people come to us for tour marketing, but even internally, even with a staff that does this professionally, when somebody hits us with a 10 date tour, a 20 date tour, the literal execution and, and management of said horrible ads manager, uh, takes a massive amount of time.

Nik Cherwink:

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

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Mm.

Geoff Shames:

sort of give people just enough control. be able to put their own thing in there, but we're gonna kind of deal with all of the nonsense on the backend. Make sure that any dollar that goes out is spent as efficiently as humanly possible. So you don't really need to know how to use Ads Manager, you just need to kind of know your own name, know where you're playing, and like maybe a couple of similar artists and we will kind of do the rest of the work. So Yeah. it was really meant to, you know, frankly we had a lot of people coming to us that maybe we were transparently unaffordable to. and we still wanted to be able to help. and, or even internally we get a 50 day tour that, that stings a little bit. Um, you know, we're, we're excited to do it, but we're gonna have a couple people drilling down on laptops for six hours. so even to, even to add some internal efficiencies, it was something we, we thought would be helpful. So. Love for anyone listening to, to check it out. Uh, it is just event sheet.com. We'll put together some sort of code. I should probably talk to my partners, but I do what I want. Um, we'll go,

Nik Cherwink:

Hell yeah.

Geoff Shames:

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

Nik Cherwink:

Let's go. Let's go.

Geoff Shames:

uh,

Nik Cherwink:

Yeah. Well, that's. That's what I love, uh, I love about this podcast is it is not only, you know, like up and coming, you know, artists, but there definitely are, touring artists that are listening as well. Um, so shout out to all of you out there that are playing shows and if you've got a tour coming up, you've got a bunch of dates that you need to advertise to, you know where to go and we're gonna hook you up with, with a discount for that as well. So I'll put that link at the top of the show notes. Just go ahead and click on that and, um, yeah man, thank you so much for hopping on, for just sharing all of this knowledge, all of this wisdom. Like I'm personally gonna go back and just take a bunch of notes on this. And like I said, Finally getting in the arena, start running some ads myself. We're gonna blow up this podcast. All of you out there are gonna go get on event sheet and start blowing up your shows and let's keep fucking growing. So yeah, thank you so much for hopping on, man.

Geoff Shames:

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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