How to Use Propaganda Content to Frame Sales Calls Before They Happen

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Most businesses completely ignore the window between when someone books a call and when they actually show up. That gap represents one of the highest-impact opportunities in your entire sales process.

This article covers how to use propaganda content (not in a manipulative sense, but in the way Edward Bernays originally designed it) to give prospects the mental frameworks they need before they ever speak with your sales team.

For those who want the complete system behind these frameworks, my 7-week live comprehensive training covers the full implementation.

Results are not typical. Your results will vary and depend entirely on your individual capacity, business experience, expertise, and level of desire. There are no guarantees concerning the level of success you may experience. The testimonials and examples used are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results. We don’t believe in get-rich-quick programs. We believe in hard work, adding value and serving others. As stated by law, we can not and do not make any guarantees about your own ability to get results or earn any money with our information, courses, programs, or strategies.

What Propaganda Actually Means in a Business Context

About ten years ago, I picked up Edward Bernays’ book on propaganda. Initially, I wanted to understand how I was being targeted and what content was trying to influence me. What I learned changed how I approach marketing entirely.

People need frameworks to think with. Most believe they’re pulling unique thoughts out of thin air, but that’s not how cognition works. Thoughts form based on data already in our brains: experiences, content consumed, conversations had, everything that’s come through our senses.

Propaganda, in the Bernays sense, is feeding people data so they can think with that data later. According to research on consumer decision-making from Harvard Business Review, buyers rely heavily on pre-existing mental frameworks when evaluating purchases. The goal with propaganda content is to provide those frameworks intentionally, shaping how prospects process information before they ever get on a call.

When viewed from that perspective, it becomes easier to identify what type of content you actually need.

Why Short-Form Vertical Video Gets the Most Consumption Right Now

Reels, TikToks, and YouTube Shorts currently dominate consumption patterns. Vertically shot video content, typically 90 seconds or less, is what people are actually watching.

This is a timeless concept, though. The format doesn’t matter. Whether it’s shorts, Reels, or TikToks today and long-form video tomorrow, news segments or billboards. If people can see the messaging in whatever format is most effective, that’s what we use to distribute content.

Tactically, film vertically formatted videos of 90 seconds or less, optimized for Reels. The reason I prioritize Reels over TikTok and Shorts is because that’s typically where you’ll spend the most money. Meta owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus. They have the most distribution.

However, you can take those same short-form pieces and distribute them across TikTok and Shorts as well. Drop them on LinkedIn if you have a B2B demographic. Use them on Snapchat if relevant.

How to Use the Pre-Call Window Between Booking and Showing Up

The customer journey has distinct phases. First, you have pre-sell content (people who don’t know you yet). Cold audiences. I target people like that with content because it builds a retargeting list in the ad platforms.

Then you have direct response ads. For those unfamiliar with my vocabulary, direct response ads are the call-to-action ads. These tell people to take specific actions: opt in for your webinar, book a call, send a DM, whatever you’re doing. Direct response ads are not content. Content is content.

A common question from people only used to running direct response ads: what’s the call to action in content? There is no call to action. Content is purely intended to be viewed. Imagine watching the news when they’re presenting information about events. They don’t give you calls to action. It’s just content intended to give you data.

After our direct response ads comes the key framing window. This is specifically what I want to focus on today. Once we run our direct response ads and people actually book a call, that’s called our pre-call window. Most people on average have about a 72-hour period before they actually show up for the call they booked.

The illusion that most businesses have is that the person’s already sold and therefore going to show up to the call. We don’t want to look at it that way. We want to look at it from the perspective that these people booked a call, so they’re interested enough to have booked, but they’re not necessarily interested enough to show up yet. We need to increase their interest levels enough pre-call in order to get them to show up well-framed.

How to Set Up Your Retargeting Audience for Booked Calls

You’ll have the audience set to be the people who just booked. These are your booked calls. You need a minimum of 100 people in order to actually get an audience to deliver your ads.

There have been some hiccups with people in the EU. Based on GDPR regulations, you have some limitations about actually being able to target people that take specific actions. You likely need a greater quantity than 100. From what I’ve seen with EU operators, you likely need at least 300 to 500 people to be able to target them.

If you’re not operating at scale yet, you’re generally not going to have 100 people within a 72-hour window to be able to target. For some operating at a lower scale, it might be possible to get people in the next day.

If you don’t have 100 folks, you’ve got to extend the time window. You might go out as far as 30 days on this audience depending on the scale you’re operating at and how many calls you’re booking.

This audience can be set up in two ways: a dynamic customer list or a web audience. Either one works, but keep in mind you’re typically going to get a bit more people that actually match on a customer list versus a web audience. Web audience means people who hit your pixel (people that are on your actual website that you’ve successfully gotten the opportunity to retarget).

A dynamically updating customer list means these are people who also just booked a call, but they’re captured via your CRM or whatever scheduler you’re using and you’re then sending that data back into the advertising platform. Your marketing automation can remove those people.

If your CRM doesn’t have that functionality, you can always use Zapier to update a customer audience and remove somebody from a custom audience. Remember, this is a dynamically updating list. When people book a call, we don’t want to keep them in there forever. We want them in there for the window between when they book and when the time of the call actually happens.

Add them as soon as they book and remove them 72 hours later. For those who don’t have that 100 person minimum, you might be adding people when they book and then removing them a week later or 30 days later.

How to Get Content Ideas From Your Salespeople’s Feedback

This is the easiest place to start. One of my Inner Circle members reached out recently. He’s his own salesperson right now, actually a CPA. He mentioned his sales process is a little hard; people aren’t showing up super well-framed.

Results are not typical. Your results will vary and depend entirely on your individual capacity, business experience, expertise, and level of desire. There are no guarantees concerning the level of success you may experience. The testimonials and examples used are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results. We don’t believe in get-rich-quick programs. We believe in hard work, adding value and serving others. As stated by law, we can not and do not make any guarantees about your own ability to get results or earn any money with our information, courses, programs, or strategies.

I started digging into that with him. He’s an accountant, a CPA, trying to help people lower their tax burden with a different approach compared to the average CPA. He can typically help them significantly, but they’re not used to that. They also wonder how he can conclude that he can help that much with so few questions. He can typically ask about six questions, but that might create skepticism.

I suggested he dig deeper and start creating content that shows why the average CPA approach might be limited. Make content that demonstrates why certain accounting approaches might be costing people in taxes that could have been addressed through proper write-offs.

I told him stories about an accounting approach I’ve seen. Some accountants use the term “gray area.” Certain things can and cannot be written off for certain people. For people like myself who make content and generate business from being on videos, modern tax rules often allow writing off vehicles if they are used in content creation.

That would be a great example video to demonstrate some of the technically gray areas. Explain that some write-offs are considered aggressive, some accountants won’t take the deduction, and some accountants are cautious about audits.

If a prospect watched that video, they’d show up to the call differently. That’s the type of content we’re trying to create when we get feedback from salespeople.

If salespeople say the process is hard or there is a big difference between organic leads and paid ad leads, find the key videos that replicate what makes organic leads warm. Propaganda content advertising campaigns replicate the organic sales process. Organically, someone consumes a lot of content over time and then enters the sales process warm. To replicate that via paid advertising, find the key organic videos, condense them into 90-second vertical pieces, and distribute them to the pre-call audience.

The Four Content Categories: Questions, Questions from Questions, Objections, and Expectations

I believe there are four main categories when it comes to content: questions, questions that come from those questions, objections, and expectations. These are the categories to use when generating content ideas for the pre-call framing window.

I ran a weekly group call with my Inner Circle where we examined two or three businesses and their offers. I had each member articulate their offer and then put all the questions that came up into chat. You’d get anywhere from 10 to 20 questions, exactly the types of things someone needs to know before a call.

You might think a VSL (video sales letter) will answer all these questions. While it’s best practice to include answers in a VSL, many people don’t watch the entire VSL. That’s another reason short content helps: take the key VSL points and turn them into individual 90-second videos.

According to research from Microsoft, average human retention is quite low when someone doesn’t immediately act on the information. Even if someone watches your entire VSL, they retain only a fraction of it. Convert the key points into short videos.

Back to the group calls: once basic questions are answered, additional questions often arise. That’s what I mean by “questions that come from questions.” Get feedback, throw your offer out there, and collect the follow-up questions people ask.

For objection content, address common objections by giving prospects data to think with. For example, many prospects claim they don’t have the funds. Instead of telling them to come up with the money, create a video demonstrating how financing can make sense (even with high interest) by showing simple math that breaks a big payment into smaller payments. If a prospect watches that before the call, they are more likely to consider financing instead of immediately rejecting it due to perceived high rates.

Expectation content covers realistic timelines and what is required from clients. Most offers are not instantaneous; results typically take days, weeks, or months. Explain the client responsibilities (being available for calls, providing access, or doing simple tasks). Managing expectations increases the probability of success.

If you cover these four categories and format them into 90-second vertically oriented videos, you have two distribution options:

• Post them directly to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or LinkedIn.

• Run them as ads via an existing post or a dark post in ads manager.

Posting on your page helps the organic process; dark posts let you run ads without front-end posting. Both approaches can work.

Pro tip: Make sure the booked-call audiences are created (web audience and dynamic customer list) and are dynamic (people added when they book, removed after the window ends). If you’re in the U.S. or most countries outside the EU, get at least 100 people in that audience (so the window might be 72 hours, a week, or 30 days). If you’re in the EU, aim for 300 to 500 people.

Tactically, set up an exclusion so that once someone watches a specific video (for example, after 3 seconds), they never see that same video again. That way they can be shown the other videos in your propaganda campaign.

If you’re operating a business and trying to grow, the pre-call framing window is one of the highest-leverage opportunities you have. Most businesses ignore it or just send a couple of reminder emails.

In my experience, businesses that implement this propaganda strategy in that 72-hour window see salespeople spending less time on basic questions and objection handling. Instead of fighting objections and answering basic questions, salespeople have conversations with people who already understand what to expect and are ready to have a real discussion.

That’s what I mean by turning salespeople into cashiers: you’ve done much of the heavy lifting through strategic content so the actual sales conversation becomes simpler.

If you want to see how this fits into a complete client acquisition system, check out my 7-week live comprehensive training or apply for the Inner Circle if you’re ready for direct implementation support.

Results are not typical. Your results will vary and depend entirely on your individual capacity, business experience, expertise, and level of desire. There are no guarantees concerning the level of success you may experience. The testimonials and examples used are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results. We don’t believe in get-rich-quick programs. We believe in hard work, adding value and serving others. As stated by law, we can not and do not make any guarantees about your own ability to get results or earn any money with our information, courses, programs, or strategies.