What do they want to be true? — Kelford Labs Weekly

“Meaning is not a thing; it involves what is meaningful to us. Nothing is meaningful in itself. Meaningfulness derives from the experience of functioning as a being of a certain sort in an environment of a certain sort.”

— George Lakoff in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind

“A being of a certain sort in an environment of a certain sort.”

That’s who I am, that’s who you are. That’s who your prospects are.

We’re all just beings of a certain sort, in certain environments, finding things meaningful based on how they relate to us.

So for your prospects to find your work, and the content through which you promote it, meaningful, it has to connect to their experience.

And that starts with a question:

What does your prospect want to be true about your area of expertise?

My prospects want it to be true, for instance, that marketing is about more than spending as much money as you can on as many things as you can.

They want, to some degree, to think there’s more to it than that.

They want to believe that they can exert some control over it. That it’s not just about who has the most money or who can stir up the most controversy.

My prospects want it to be true, for instance, that controversy isn’t the way to credibility.

It happens to be the case, surprise surprise, that I also believe this is true.

I also think it’s true that unlimited fame is more harmful than helpful for most people. That making a splash is only the first part, you also have to think about what happens when you hit the bottom of the pool.

This came up in a conversation with my pal Pranav the other day. We were talking about content marketing, and about the idea that you need a consistent, coherent content practice that demonstrates that your expertise isn’t just interesting, it also works.

But works in what way? What kind of “working” should your work demonstrate?

And that’s when it clicked: You demonstrate that your work makes true what your ideal clients want to be true.

Okay, let’s step back into another example. Let’s say you’re an accountant. What do your best prospects and clients want to be true?

Well, your worst prospects might want it to be true that accounting is simple, easy, and cheap. If someone comes into your office or hops on a Zoom with that belief, you’re going to quickly realize they’re not a good fit.

But if someone talks to you about something you also want to be true (like, say, that accounting is a discipline, that it matters and is meant to help) you might think they’re perfect for you. If, indeed, you share that belief.

Now, wouldn’t it be easier to get more of those types of clients if they could already see that you believe it’s true? That you make it true?

Well, how would you do that?

You could make modern, current, marketing content that shows your ideas are consistent and connect to the real world, and cause things to happen.

And you could do that in a way that your best prospects are most likely to understand you and want to learn more.

Here’s how to do it:

1) Identify what your ideal clients want to be true — And create a deep and consistent body of content about that topic

2) Articulate how your process makes it true – By connecting your content to the real world experience of your prospects

3) Show them why you care that it’s true — By talking about it in a style that appeals and relates to how your prospects learn

1) What They Want to be True — Internal Connection

Example time again:

This newsletter is all about how you can control the outcomes of your marketing.

At the end of the day, and at the end of every newsletter, that’s the point, right?

That’s what I’m driving at: That there’s more to marketing than money, that there’s more to reputation than fame. And that you can exert meaningful control over it, by understanding it as a system, a process.

One that benefits more from slow, steady influence over time instead of rapid or forceful intervention.

I’ve written around 800 newsletters on the subject over the past few years. If you read this issue and like it, there are dozens, maybe hundreds more that you’ll like. Which demonstrate to you that I’ve thought about this. That I have enough experience with it to have more stories, more examples, more ideas, every single day.

2) How You Make it True — External Coherence

But that’s not enough, right?

Because, for all you know, this could all just be elaborate marketing fanfiction. Maybe this is just the hallucinations of a language model gone haywire. Spewing out consistent-sounding concepts that don’t actually work, don’t actually map onto the real world.

That’s why I’ve got to coherently connect my ideas to real-world examples, to real things that you’ve experienced and know about.

Most often, what I’ll do is share an example of a client or friend taking my advice and having it work. But it can also take the form of commenting on someone else’s LinkedIn post and sharing an example of the ideas connecting to their experience.

At its most bold, it takes the form of making predictions about the future or the person I’m talking to, based on my understanding of events and people and how they connect to my ideas.

That can be done in the moment, like when a prospect tells me they don’t like their marketing and I say something like, “So you cringe when a potential client tells you they were just on your website?”

They often laugh and say, “Yes, exactly!”

Since I know that my prospects want it to be true that their marketing matters and can be controlled, I know that they’re quite sensitive to moments when their marketing is letting them down.

And, across the decades I’ve been doing this, not being proud of your website is a pretty common symptom of not being happy with your marketing. So it’s not a hard shot for me to call, but for someone without the experience, it would be.

In that moment, the person I’m talking to has a reason to think I’m just a teensy bit more credible than I was the moment before.

That’s one way to connect your consistent world view with a coherent world model. A way to show that your ideas aren’t just conceptual, they’re concrete and physical.

And they cause things to happen in the world.

3) Show Them Why You Care it’s True — Style

And now there’s one more step to go: Translating it into a form they’re likely to find compelling.

Because in communication, there is always translation. The concepts in my head are translated into language that you can understand and then that language is reconverted into ideas you can onboard and internalize.

Otherwise you’d just be memorizing words, and not internalizing their meaning.

But that translation layer is more than converting ideas into any words, it’s about choosing the right words, the right medium, through which to transmit those ideas.

And you want to choose the words that show that you care that what they want to be true, is true.

When I ask prospects about their website, notice that I try to say it in a conversational, playful way. I ask them if they cringe when someone says they’ve been on their website.

I don’t say, “Are you embarrassed by your website?” Even though it’s the same question, in many ways.

Because what it isn’t is specific. It’s a question about an abstract emotion, one that people don’t want to feel or, really, even admit they’ve felt.

But cringing is physical and involuntary. It’s a lot easier to admit to, and it’s frankly more fun to talk about than embarrassment.

I care that people get better marketing, not that they feel bad about the marketing they currently have. So I choose a style that’s more motivational than shame-fueled, more pleasant than painful.

That’s a way of translating the meaning behind my question into a question that’s likely to get answered, and therefore more likely to inspire a fruitful conversation.

Showing How it Works

So here’s a step by step example of this whole concept, using this newsletter as our model:

1) I understand that you want to believe your marketing is controllable, changeable, sustainable. So I’ve created a massive body of content showing that I believe it, too, and showing that it is true.

2) Then, in that content, on external channels, and in conversation, I connect those ideas to the real world. I show that I help make it true by demonstrating that what I say works does work. I even make predictions to show that the ideas have real-world application.

3) Finally, I choose the words and media through which these ideas are most likely to get from my brain to yours, and get remembered and internalized. I try to choose unique phrases, occasionally surprising bits of humour or playfulness, and couple it with kindness over shame or judgement.

I think this approach does more than work, though. I think this approach matters.

Because, as you don’t need me to tell you, the web, both the Internet and the comity of society, are being shredded by made up nonsense, spewed out by the unthinking.

The default approach to marketing and advertising is rapidly degrading into controversy, into getting as much fame as possible as fast as possible, even if the long-term effects are tragic and unnecessary.

That’s a path, and a popular one at that.

But I think you and I believe the same thing: That there’s another way.

One that’s more about showing how credible you are over showing how shameless you are.

In a market increasingly captivated by scams, inevitably, eventually, there must be a retreat to reality. And there are plenty of clients and customers out there who already who want something real.

So how do we show people that our work really works?

We demonstrate our lived experience by creating a consistent body of content, about what our prospects want to be true.

We demonstrate our causal effects by connecting our ideas and content to the real world, showing that we make what they want to be true, true.

We demonstrate our understanding of their world by choosing the right words and media, so that our ideas and approach can be understood on their terms.

If you’d like help making this work for you, just reply to this email and we’ll set up a no-obligation call to chat through this model and how it might work for you.

And I’m working on a worksheet that turns this into a simple exercise because, oh boy, I know this is a lot.

In the meantime, let me know what made sense, and what didn’t, and where you’d like more clarity.

Talk to you soon.

Reply to this email to tell me what you think, or ask any questions!

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