400 Marketing Lessons — Kelford Labs Weekly

A few days ago, I published the 400th edition of Kelford Labs Daily.

Yes, I write and send out a newsletter every single weekday.

Once a week, weekly subscribers get this edition, and on the other days I send out a daily edition to those subscribers.

And that seems... excessive, right? I mean, I get it. Who would want to read, let alone write, a daily newsletter?

So, as I tend to do around these milestones, I thought I’d put together a list of lessons I’ve learned by writing it every day, which will hopefully clarify why I do it.

But, more importantly, it’ll give you some useful tips for making your marketing consistent, profitable, and useful.

1) This number matters more

I’m pretty sure nobody is satisfied with their number of newsletter subscribers.

Once you hit a milestone number, you just start pining for the next one. I mean, maybe that’s just me, but I suspect it’s pretty universal.

But seeing the number 400 and knowing I did that? That feels great. It’s motivating, and that’s actually really important.

Because marketing rarely fails, it usually just stops.

So finding a way to make your marketing intrinsically motivating isn’t trivial, it’s step number one to doing great work.

Marketing performance comes from practice, so spending the time, every day, to deliver real value to the people who’ve trusted me with their time is incredible practice for consulting and writing.

The lesson here is that, when you’re making marketing content, you want to make sure you’re actually doing it and actually enjoying it before you worry too much about the other numbers.

Because the important thing is that you keep going, keep practicing, and keep improving.

2) This is what I do for a living

Okay, stay with me here. Two things are true:

• Our largest single referrer of consulting work is this newsletter
• This newsletter is how I workshop and create the concepts we consult with

So even though consulting is how we make money, there’s an argument to be made that no newsletter, no consulting.

In a roundabout way, this is what I do for a living.

But, the lesson is, it’s not just me. In the same roundabout way, or in a very small way, your marketing is what you do for a living.

Because the better we get at talking about what we do, the better we get at noticing what our best customers actually value about what we do. Which allows us to focus even more on what they value most.

Which means we want to, not just take our marketing seriously, but approach it as something that can make our “real” work even better.

Great marketing can create a virtuous cycle between your actual services and the way you describe them.

So marketing isn’t just something you do. In some small way, it is what you do.

3) This isn’t enough

Okay, I do a daily newsletter, so why do I also do these longer weekly editions?

Because, and I know this sounds ridiculous, the daily isn’t enough. They’re shorter and more frequent, so they necessarily take less time to make. They necessarily take less study, less exertion.

Which means they provide less practice. So, once a week, I create a longer piece like this. One that takes more time, more effort, more research, and more study.

In a world of AI, I don’t want to accidentally slip into autopilot mode and just become a middleperson between clients and LLMs.

I want to stay capable of creating novelty, synthesizing effectively, and providing real value for real people. That’s why I don’t use any AI when I write these.

Because, at the core, my job is to help other people find the words to say to demonstrate their value, in any situation. I can’t just wing that in the moment, it takes some form of dedicated practice. For me, it’s taken the form of this newsletter.

But here’s the thing: That’s just how I do it. There’s almost certainly a method of marketing that would help you get better at the “real” thing you do for your clients.

Because, if you could do one thing that both makes you better and helps clients find you, why wouldn’t you try to do it?

Those are just a few of the lessons I’ve learned after publishing more than 400 editions of Kelford Labs Daily.

I’d love to hear what you think, so reply to this email with any feedback, questions, or comments you might have.

If you’d like to subscribe, you can add it to your weekly subscription here.

And if you want to know the way to always knowing what to say, we’d love to connect.

Kelford Inc. shows experts the way to always knowing what to say.