How to learn everything — Kelford Labs Weekly

Last week I scrambled atop my soapbox to declare that you should change your marketing in response to a changing market.

Then, I cleverly scampered away before telling you what to actually do.

I worried that trying to do the why and the how in the same newsletter would be prohibitively verbose, and I proved myself right this week.

Because once we’re past the principles, we’re bedevilled by the details.

So, I should warn you, this is a long one. You might want to save this and come back to it when you’ve got a few minutes.

And what I’ve done is, instead of trying to give generic, one-size-fits-all advice, I’m going to tell you the process I’m following with my own marketing. So you can see how I’m planning to adapt to a changing market.

Beginning with the principles and then getting into the particulars:

Make decisions and act

The problem is time.

It’s what forces us to make decisions, because indecision wastes the resources we need to persist. Our hand is forced by the the clock’s.

As Marcus Aurelius put it, “We need to hurry. ... Because our understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there.”

So the first principle of this process is a bias toward making decisions.

Notice that it is not a bias toward action, as, sometimes, the worst thing we can do is anything at all. Sometimes, the right move is waiting.

But we need to decide we’re waiting, if we are, and we need to decide to act if we should.

But how am I making these decisions, how am I taking these actions? As experiments.

Donella Meadows and her co-authors wrote in Limits to Growth that, “Whatever you do, do it humbly. Do it not as immutable policy, but as experiment. Use your action, whatever it is, to learn. ... Learning means exploring a new path with vigor and courage, being open to other people’s explorations of other paths, and being willing to switch paths if one is found that leads more directly to the goal.”

So that’s the first thing I’m doing, the first thing I’ve done:

I’ve decided I’m going to act, to respond to a changing market by changing my marketing.

And that decision is not just intellectual or mental, it’s practical and manifests in the real world in these ways:

• At Kelford Inc., we’ve decided to test entering new markets by forming strategic partnerships. Like the old saying goes, we’ve been able to go quite fast by going alone, but as we want to go (geographically) farther, we’re going together.
• As Canada’s interprovincial trade barriers fall, we’re preparing for an influx of out-of-province competition for the industries and businesses in our local community, who we can help. So as we go further, we also want to keep a strong position at home by reinforcing our differentiation.
• To make sure we stay accountable and confident as we stretch ourselves and steer outside of our comfort zone, we’re enlisting support and training from trusted experts. We know what we can do for others, and we need to remember we also need outside support from time to time to help us achieve our full potential.

So, what are you deciding?

Focus on unique value

The other problem is capability.

Entrepreneurs like me, like you, we’re good at a lot of things. And when things get dicey or uncertain, we can often have the instinct to fall back on our ability to do lots of things and try to market all of them.

But that’s a trap, because everyone else gets the same bright idea. We think we’ll set ourselves apart by offering lots of different things to lots of different customers, but instead we blend right into the background noise of the market.

Everyone else is doing the exact same thing and the market will become increasingly flooded with generic and similar services.

But what are they not doing? They’re not focusing on their unique value, and their unique ability to provide a level of certainty to their ideal clients. They’re not focusing on the unique tradeoffs they’ve made to focus on just what they do best, and just for those who value it most.

So we should.

Like Clayton Christensen et al. wrote in Competing Against Luck, “When a customer decides to buy this product versus that product, she has in her mind, a kind of resume of the competing products that makes it clear which does her job best.”

Customers rarely want the product or service that does everything for everyone. They usually want the one that does one thing best for one particular type of customer.

I’ve got extensive experience in media buying, crisis and reputation management, social media strategy, and product marketing, on top of my speciality in marketing communications. My partner Leah has experience in internal communications, corporate social responsibility, event planning, and public relations, on top of her expertise in marketing.

The temptation, to grow our business even further, would be to offer or promote those capabilities as distinct services with as many clients as possible.

But, instead, we’re fuelling our growth by focusing even more on our ability to show experts the way to always knowing what to say.

We don’t do many things or perform occasional miracles, we do one thing extremely well, all the time.

These are a few ways in which we’re focusing further:

• To focus more on our position as showing experts the way to always knowing what to say, we want to be more visible in expert environments. Places and spaces where experts and specialists gather to share industry knowledge, innovation, and encouragement. That means re-assessing the organizations and associations we currently belong to, and making sure we’re visible, vocal, and helpful in environments where our expert prospects play.
• More of our marketing will focus on the specific moments of struggle our prospects experience, like not knowing what to say when asked what they do, or being uncertain that their website, pitch deck, proposals, or processes are clear, consistent, and compelling. We’re going to continually reference the specific times that we’re most helpful and most valuable, and help our prospects identify those moments as well.
• In a world increasingly inundated with AI slop and generic platitudes, our words become more valuable, not less. Experts are expected to choose their words carefully, and the right words make all the difference. So we’re going to continually and increasingly focus on our ability to craft unique, creative, and copyrightable words for the people for whom the right words matter.

What are you focusing on?

Demonstrate expertise

Now we get to the heart of it. And the hard part of it.

We can’t just have value. We’ve got to demonstrate that we can deliver it.

Customers need clear signals in a crowded market. We can’t assume they’ll notice scattered, occasional messages about scattered, occasional value.

They need consistent, clear, and compelling messages about consistent, clear, and compelling offerings.

And, sometimes, that means simply showing our customers what we’ve done for others, so they can see themselves in the work.

The weird thing about humans is we find specifics relatable, not generalities. So instead of saying, “I do this and this and this for whoever wants it,” we want to find more and more ways to say, “I did this, for them.”

Then, prospects need clear signals about what to do next. And that can’t be just to buy, there needs to be a clear and consistent middle step they can take.

For me, all of this means getting more and more specific about the work I’ve done and being extremely clear that the thing to do next is sign up for this newsletter.

This means more examples in this newsletter about what I’m doing and for what types of clients (or, as in this case, what I’m personally doing for my own marketing), so readers can more easily see themselves in the stories and imagine the value the same process could create for them.

This is how I’m demonstrating expertise:

• Instead of simply giving perspective on my process or general purpose advice, I’m going to do more demonstrating of value by talking more about specific delivery of value. How and why I helped clients make specific decisions, and how and why I’m making specific decisions myself. 
• Along those same lines, I’m going to get more and more specific about the real questions real clients and real prospects ask (obviously preserving all confidences) and the real answers (or follow-up questions) to them. Which includes sharing more of the lessons I’m learning along the way, instead of approaching everything as a teachable moment from on high.
• And in those messages, I’m going to make sure the newsletter is the call-to-action every time. Instead of assuming or hoping prospects will skip the middle step and get right down to business, I want to remember and reinforce that the newsletter is what gives them the confidence to become a client. It’s how I put my ideas on “toothpicks” so they can be benefited from.

How are you demonstrating your expertise?

Adapt, adapt, adapt

In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders wrote, “It’s hard to be alive. The anxiety of living makes us want to judge, be sure, have a stance, definitively decide. Having a fixed, rigid system of belief can be a great relief.”

This goes for marketing, too. The uncertainty of it all and the anxiety that creates makes us want to have a fixed, rigid system of beliefs and actions.

But because everything’s always changing, we need to be flexible.

For me, this means not making declarations like, “We’re now focusing all our efforts on this particular market,” or, “We’re permanently switching our focus to this particular client type.”

Instead, decisions are more akin to, “We’re going to test whether this market contains opportunity,” or, “Let’s see if there’s demand from this customer type.”

Which means we’ve, I’ve, got to keep taking measurements of the situation. I’ve got to have simple, clear systems for measuring my marketing and its effects. And I’ve got to have simple, clear processes for making decisions based on those measurements and those effects (or lack of them).

In Quit, Annie Duke talks about “kill criteria,” the definition of success we’ll use to determine whether something is actually working. We need to avoid indecision by knowing what would need to be true or false about the situation, and by when (“state and date”), to change our actions.

Persistence is a virtue right up until the moment it’s a vice, so we need to consider ahead of time what that moment is. So we don’t miss it.

Here’s how we’re staying flexible so we avoid stubbornness:

• We’re finally upgrading our website, something we’ve been actively avoiding, to make it more measurable and more memorable. So we have more ways of taking stock of our marketing’s effects, and more ways of marketing to our best prospects.
• We’re approaching any new efforts from a perspective of play, not perfection. Many experiments will flop, so we can’t let that make us falter. We’re going into our experiments with the mission to understand what doesn’t work, so we can continually focus on what does.
• To make sure our experiments don’t cause existential failures, we are going to set clear state and date “kill criteria” as we embark on new strategic partnerships, new measurement efforts, new messages, and new markets.

How are you staying adaptable?

Prepare to keep changing

The frustrating thing about marketing is how personal it needs to be: No one can make these decisions fully for us.

Others can help you take stock of your current marketing situation and figure out what to do next.

But only we can know our own customers as well as flexible marketing requires.

We have to be endlessly curious about our own unique value and our unique ability to deliver it consistently to our very best clients.

YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok all have the same thing in common: They’ve been poisoned with generic growth hacks, ads for courses that seem startling close to pyramid schemes, and outright get-rich-quick scams.

The economics of social media mean the advice that gets the most traction is the advice that gets the most traction, not the advice that helps you the most. Nobody’s checking if any of this stuff actually works, it only matters that it’s seen.

So, because the supply of marketing information has been tainted, we need to go directly to the source of marketing truth:

We need to constantly take the measure of our marketing’s effectiveness by talking to our customers, trying out new messages, and exploring new markets. 

Letting our very best clients lead us toward the next ones, wherever they might be.

Here’s how we’re preparing to keep changing:

• To be led somewhere, you have to listen. So we’re going to do more formal and informal interviews with our clients to better understand their specific challenges, opportunities, personalities, and buying preferences.
• We’re going to embark on what I’m calling “Routine Rut Avoidance” (based on Saunders’ banality avoidance). When something is working, but only barely, it’s easy to let it ride without making changes. But if it doesn’t make the boat go faster, it’s slowing it down. So we’re cutting back on memberships, associations, software, and services that aren’t actively helping, they’re just comfortable, so we can make room for new experiments.
• And we’re going to more intensely notice, record, and reference the messages we make that land with our best prospects and clients. It’s easy to just feel good in the moment when say something that really makes an impact, but it’s only useful in the future if you remember to use it again. So we’re creating a database of impromptu messages, examples, and anecdotes that our prospects particularly prefer so we can perfect and repurpose them.

How are you preparing to keep trying?

How to learn everything

Margaret Heffernan wrote in Uncharted that, “You could say that experiments are how we learn everything. We try to stand up, fall over, recalibrate, and next time find we can teeter for a second or two. Keep at it and mastery emerges.”

All of this comes down to energy and optimism, because all of this comes down to (as it began with) time.

Making sure we have enough of it, and making sure we make the most of it.

For me, that means, more than anything, and more than ever, I’m thinking about perspective. Mine, yours, and the market’s.

I’m making sure my perspective is one of playful experimentation, so I stay optimistic, energized, and curious in a changing market.

I’m making sure I continually remember your perspective, and how I can specifically reference it, so you can see yourself in the words and the work.

And I’m making sure I measure and adapt to the market’s perspective, so my position within it remains uniquely valuable and increasingly visible.

Because the way we learn what to change about our marketing is the way we learn everything:

By trying.

What will you try?

Did you find this newsletter useful or interesting? Please take a moment to forward it along to a friend or colleague who might enjoy it, too.

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