✊ Can you answer this?

802 WORDS | READ TIME: 3.0 MIN

Hi friends,

I was reading the latest issue of Ashley Carman's (always excellent) newsletter, Soundbite this morning and two quotes stood out to me as worth paying attention to as creators.

The first is an excerpt from a Guardian interview with Sarah Koenig of Serial fame.

The Guardian interviewed Sarah Koenig in honor of the 10th anniversary of Serial. In their chat, Koenig talks about just how difficult it’s become to make a splash with a new season of the show given the complete content saturation that confronts creators and consumers. After the release of the show’s fourth season, about detainees in Guantanamo Bay, she says getting the word out became difficult. “Good friends and family – like, even my siblings – [were] saying: ‘Oh, did it come out? What happened with the Guantanamo story? What are you working on now?’ They haven’t clocked it. We can speculate about the topic and the quality of it, but I think it’s also just the [podcast] universe is completely different. There are so many choices. We are in a sea of podcasts.”

The second is related to a series of tour and festival cancellations by big, name-brand bands and artists.

The story of live music this summer has two varying narratives. On one hand, revenue has never been better. On the other, festivals and individual artists continue to cancel their tours. The reasons have varied. Jennifer Lopez canceled hers earlier this year to take “time off to be with her children, family and close friends.” The Black Keys, who canceled the North American leg of their tour in June, wrote in a now-deleted post on X that they were “fu—” and changed management. As Pollstar put it in a midyear report: “Perhaps the best description for 2024’s midyear state of the industry is that it’s mostly pretty friggin’ great, but not for everyone.” So when earlier this week, Alex Pall, a member of The Chainsmokers, posted on LinkedIn expanding on his group’s decision to cancel their recent US tour dates, it was a welcome burst of honesty about what’s really going on. “We created an announcement video for our tour, posted it on socials, and assumed we'd do well,” he wrote. “In most cases, we hit the mark, but in a few, we missed out or got behind and couldn’t put it together in time. These days, with few exceptions, your name is not enough.” This represents a rare instance in which an artist candidly speaks about the difficulty in selling tickets. He goes on to recommend that other performers and managers conceptualize their tours with urgency – why should people buy tickets now? — and with an eye for unique experiences that can’t be re-created elsewhere.

The takeaway?

Marketing, promotion, and gaining (let alone keeping) the attention of an audience is hard.

For everyone.

If you're feeling that, know that it's not just you.

It's true for every entrepreneur, creator, brand, and person making (or trying to make) a living off their creative work.

The bad news?

Things aren't going to get any easier.

There is only going to be more noise and more competition, with the quality of that competition steadily increasing.

Which means all of us have a choice.

We can keep treading water and hope that some tool, some platform, or some discovery algorithm will come to save us.

Or we can get savvier about how we make and market our work.

We can ensure we have an answer to that all important question posed by The Chainsmokers' Alex Pall:

"Why should people buy tickets now?"

Why should they subscribe to your podcast now?

Why should they buy your product?

Watch your video?

Subscribe to your email list?

When most people think of marketing, they immediately jump to promotional tactics.

But at it's core, marketing is about having a compelling answer to the question:

Why this? Why now?

Most shows—and the brands around them—don't have one.

And until they do, no strategy, no tactic, no amount of promotion will have an ounce of impact.

If you're ready to roll up your sleeves and want my help crafting a show and marketing strategy that drives immediate, obvious urgency, hit reply with "Podcast Growth Engine" and let's get started.

Have a great weekend friends.

I'm finally heading back home to Barcelona tonight after a good but long two-month trip for my & Kelly's wedding, family meetups in the US and Canada, and Podcast Movement.

After 8 years of full-time travel, it's kind of wild how much of a homebody I've become after a year being (mostly) settled in one place.

Feels good.

Until next week...

Stay Scrappy,

If you're feeling like you're spinning your wheels when it comes to your show and are looking for an honest, no-bullshit, straight-shooting assessment, I've got 6 3 spots remaining in 2024 in my private Podcast Growth Engine program.

Here's how it works:

I spend 10-15 hours auditing your show, poring over the most minute details.
I then put together a 1.5–2 hour video report breaking down precisely why your show isn't growing and/or converting buyers, the specific problems that must be addressed, and my recommendations on how to fix them.
We meet for 90-min to debrief, answer all your questions, and start workshopping solutions.
I put together a personalized 6-week growth plan to help you solve the biggest bottleneck as quickly as possible.
We meet up 1:1 every 6 weeks to strategize together, followed by a new custom growth plan from me.

If you're interested in learning more and grabbing one of the remaining spots, reply with "Growth Engine" and I'll send you over all the details.

Long-time Scrappy Podcaster (and one of the earliest PMA Members) Sam Guia recently had me on his show, Mics to Millions to talk about how podcasters can (and should) step up their email marketing game. Among other things, we discussed why email is the ultimate sales tool (and how it forms the perfect compliment to a podcast).

Check out the episode here.

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