Talking Content Marketing With Matt Heinz
Talking Content Marketing gives a very warm welcome to Matt Heinz.
Matt is the founder and president of Heinz Marketing, a B2B sales and marketing consulting firm that helps companies build and manage sustainable, repeatable and predictable sales pipelines.
In Matt’s words, “We’re a bunch of math marketers who embrace revenue responsibility and help our clients develop the systems, habits, disciplines and execution capacity to win.”
In our chat, I wanted to look at the fundamentals of creating a message that is different from everyone else in the marketplace and the role a content approach plays for businesses.
Is it easy to become fixated on the past because that is the way that businesses have always done things ie. renting advertising space and using traditional media channels?
It’s easy to keep doing what you’re comfortable with, what you know how to do, versus embracing any kind of change. But that doesn’t mean we throw out everything that’s “traditional” just because it’s old.
The psychology of sales and marketing remains fairly constant.
The fundamentals behind why some advertising works, why some message are more compelling than others, hasn’t changed much in the last 50-100 years.
The trick is to embrace universal truths while remaining agile in how you implement them.
You highlight that a compelling message isn’t enough. What do businesses need to do to become recognised as being different from the rest of the marketplace?
Well, a compelling message is still important and many companies simply don’t have one. But you know what they say about screaming in the forest when nobody’s around.
Great messages without distribution don’t achieve much. Great distribution without a compelling message wastes everyone’s time.
Interpreting both successfully requires a deeper understanding of your target audience. Who are they? Where are they? Who and what influences them? What problems or pains or challenges are they facing that keep them from doing their job, from experiencing happiness, from achieving success (in whatever way they interpret that)?
What do you believe is the biggest reason why content marketing fails for businesses?
Content fails when it’s fails to be compelling.
When it fails to address and convert on a specific need for a specific target audience at a specific stage of their buying journey.
The tools & technology we have today allows us to be more precise than ever before about content targeting. If we take advantage of that, we create not just better business results but greater customer intimacy, loyalty and retention.
You highlight the importance of email marketing. Is the key to a faceless medium still being personable?
Put yourselves in your customer’s shoes, right now.
If you’re sending an email to that customer or prospect, right now, how will it be received? What are the circumstances into which you have just tried to wrestle away a few seconds of their time? What does your subject line need to do and say, what does the introduction and first sentence need to say to draw them in, get their interest, keep it for just a second or two longer so you can earn enough more of their attention to make an impact, drive home a point, generate an action.
This relates to I versus you of course but also when and where the email is received, how long it is, how it appears, who’s sending it, etc. It all matters.
In your ‘difference between advertising and marketing’ article, do businesses still think that they’re both the same? What is the biggest difference?
I don’t think many people consider the nuanced difference between these two.
It may be a thin line, but it’s an important once. In my mind, advertising is more direct. It’s about your product or service.
Advertising tells you to buy Coca Cola. Marketing tells you why you need it, tells you how you’ll feel when you drink it, tells you what groups or feelings or affiliations you’ll experience when you consume it.
Good marketing subsidizes the need for advertising as well.
Where are your sources of inspiration to create and think?
I try to read as much as I can, and a variety of content.
Tons of sales & marketing content of course but also news, politics, art, music, history. I also believe in giving yourself a new perspective or literal view point occasionally to shake up your thinking. This includes everything from attending a conference to working from a coffee shop for a couple hours.
Many thanks to Matt for being part of the Talking Content Marketing project. To find out more from Matt, have a look in these spaces:
Matt on Twitter: click here
The Modern Marketing Field Guide (recommended read): click here
Heinz Marketing: click here
