Scarcity and the need for growth

The old standby of content marketing was to bundle a large amount of information together into a single asset, then request others pay for that asset with an email and other personal information, thus generating a lead for the business.

That worked because, in the 2000s and early 2010s, bundled information was scarce. But today, the idea that someone has gone deep on any topic isn’t all that novel or rare. It’s quite common. If you want to spend 20, 40, or 90 minutes with a given topic, chances are, you not only have access — you have options.

Thus, introducing any friction to the acquisition of that bundled knowledge (like an email form) makes no sense. It doesn’t work. It may even feel like spam. The lone arena where this still works is in providing original series — hence the media and big tech’s arms race to produce so many original shows, bundled into one subscription fee.

But most of us don’t do that. What we are used to doing is bundling knowledge, not original series, and that is no longer scarce. So what is?

Community. Connecting the right people to one another around a shared belief system or value or problem to solve is rare indeed. We can’t be a bundler and packager of knowledge anymore. We need to be super-connectors of people. Our ability to give you access not to knowledge but to the collective wisdom of people, together in one place, is something our audience might opt into.

Scarcity yields desire, and desire yields action. Look for scarcity, and offer access to that. Whatever isn’t scarce, set free by making it as easy as possible to consume and share.