Matt Heinz | Heinz Marketing
Heinz Marketing founder Matt Heinz is well known throughout the B2B marketing world for his work helping businesses to build predictable pipelines. But he’s also gained a reputation as a community builder by virtue of his involvement in creating and growing the CMO Coffee Talk group.
In this episode of the Inbound Success Podcast, Matt talks about what it takes to win with inbound marketing at a time when it seems like every brand is creating content. From how to create content that stands out and helps build a following and a reputation, to creating communities as a long term marketing investment, Matt shares lessons from his own experience, as well as examples of other brand that are doing it right.
Check out the full episode to hear more from Matt.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
Visit the Heinz Marketing website
Follow Heinz Marketing on Twitter
Email Matt at matt[@]heinzmarketing.com
Matt and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:03):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Matt Heinz, who is the president of Heinz Marketing. Welcome to the podcast, Matt.
Matt (00:25):
Oh man. Thank you so much for having me.
Kathleen (00:27):
This is ridiculously long overdue. I need to start by saying, for those listening, I told Matt before he got on that there's a, there's a small list of people that I've interviewed over the years. Cause now it's been over four years that I've been doing this where I, for some reason, assumed that I had already interviewed them. And then that one day came and I was like, wait, I didn't though. And Matt is one of those people. So again, long overdue, but I'm really happy you're here. For those who may not know you, or know what you do, can you provide a little background on who you are your career and really what Heinz Marketing is?
Matt (01:04):
Sure, sure, sure. So founder and president Heinz Marketing. Started it about 13 years ago, just me and a laptop and a bus pass. In bar speak, we help companies sell stuff. We developed a predictable pipeline methodology that we can help, help companies really sort of build more of a foundation of revenue, responsible marketing and sort of work more closely with their sales and product teams to drive repeatable, scalable, predictable, and profitable growth from marketing efforts moving forward. This is not what I intended to do. However, I am a journalism and political science major from the university of Washington. My first job out of school, I was a reporter for a Western Washington newspaper covering state government. That's what I wanted to do. And then have become, then became that began this downward spiral to where I am today. But yeah, I'm very, very happy to.
Kathleen (01:56):
I'm a poli sci major.
Matt (02:00):
I'll tell you what I I just, I studied what I thought was fun and was interested in and and, and I'm really proud of the journalism degree because I think, you know, a lot of, you know, we teach a lot of marketers how to write, but journalism school teaches you how to tell stories like, Hey, listen, here's this super complicated thing. You have six inches. This is back when I had to put it in a physical newspaper, you have six inches to make it relevant to the people in this district and to make it so that they understand what they're talking about. And by the way, it's due in three hours. Right? I mean, so you've got this crucible of time and you have to condense something into a small amount of space to make it, make it understandable and interesting.
Kathleen (02:39):
Yeah. And actually, I always, I hire a lot of journalism majors because I believe in them for, in terms of like people who write content and the thing I've also learned about journalism majors is they are taught how to ask the right questions to draw out the information that is necessary to create really good content.
Matt (02:55):
Absolutely. Yeah, no, those are, those are skills. And there's a reason why actually, I mean, it's not easy. I mean, you can, you can get a job without having a journalism degree, but there's a reason why people go to school for that, because I think there's like a lot of things there's a discipline and a real set of academics and rigor behind it that makes it work.
Kathleen (03:11):
Yeah, totally agreed. So story behind this interview, one of the ways that I got to know Matt better is that I, I don't remember when it was somewhere deep in the dark black hole of COVID. I joined the CMO Coffee Talks Slack channel community, and which has been really a lifeline for me through COVID and I think it will continue to be afterwards. And then I started joining the calls that you were organizing every Friday morning and it's just been great. And and that actually ties in with some of what we're going to talk about here today, which is this concept of renting or owning or buying or building your audience. And so I'll, I'll turn it over to you to just kind of frame the discussion around what we mean by that. And also maybe you could talk a little bit about the community.
Matt (04:01):
Yeah, no happy to. And I think it ties into sort of the first thing we were talking about as well. So, you know, I started this business 13 years ago. You know, there's no budget, there's no money. Like I don't, I, you know, so I can't, I don't have any budget to rent attention from anybody, but I'm like, well, I'm a journalist. I can't do a lot of things. Well, but I can write. So I started a blog. I started a newsletter, eventually figured out some social channels and 13 years later, I'm still just, that's, that's mostly what I do is just trying to create content and, and figure out who is my audience, what are they trying to figure out? What are they trying to solve? And can I help inter help them interpret that? So kind of unintentionally really sort of by economic necessity.
Matt (04:40):
You know, I started to sort of create a content channel and, you know, I think just, just, I mean, we're a tiny little consulting firm, but you know, 13 years in we've grown to, you know, 16 plus people and we just hired our first salesperson. Cause we've always had sort of this referral sort of inbound engine from the content. So, you know, it's, it's, it's how long does it take you to build that? I don't know, 13 days and whatever today is, right? Like it keeps going. But I think this, this point of, if you need leads in business right now, and you don't have your own channel, if you don't have a brand, if you don't have a presence, then you have to go buy it from someone else. Like someone else Google has that attention to Facebook has that attention. Someone else has that in your industry, publications, your, your trade pubs, your trade mags, your trade conferences, they have the attention, you buy it from them.
Matt (05:28):
But in while you do that in parallel, you start to invest in content channels. You start to invest in content, you start to invest in community. You start to sort of invest and build a body of work that is essentially your gift to your audience. It's the kind of marketing that people would pay for. It's the kind of marketing that people enthusiastically look forward to. And so look, I mean, there's, there's so many companies that are doing quote unquote, content marketing right now, right. There's way too much content out there, but there's a lot of content that doesn't make it hit and misses the mark. That to your point, doesn't ask the right question that doesn't do what Brent Adamson calls, sense-making all this stuff out there. What's most important to me, what's the stuff I need to be paying attention to. So, you know, years ago we had been doing these, you know, B2B CMO breakfasts, where we literally were just going around and doing like in-person breakfast. And we started doing these four or five years ago. And we, we, we came up with a beginning of 2020 a series of doing these, we were going to do with 6Sense and we had said, okay, we had 10 cities we wanted to start with, let's start 2020. Well, we got through eight.
Kathleen (06:35):
That's actually, now that you say that that's how I got involved because I went to your breakfast in Tyson's corner. And then I think like, what a month later COVID hit.
Matt (06:46):
It was, no, it was literally that. So, so I'll tell you a funny story. So like the night before that breakfast, I was in whatever hotel we were at there and Tyson's corner. And I'm sitting at the hotel bar having some, having dinner and, you know, working a little bit and up on the TV was like the life center, like, you know, a little convalescent hospital in Kirkland, Washington, where like, it was the first known case. And it was a huge deal. I'm sitting here across the country, watching this. I'll tell you right now. So we, as we record this, I'm in my basement office studio. That place is a half mile from here with my dogs all the time. I did not say that out loud at the time. That would probably not go. But that, I mean, that was my last trip until last week really.
Matt (07:30):
And that was a year and a half ago. But yeah, I know it was, that was a scary time. So we, so we took, you know, what were in-person breakfasts are forever. And like a lot of companies could no longer go in. Perfect. And then we said, well, what if we just, you know, for those two markets, we couldn't go to, let's just buy people some Uber Eats gift cards for breakfast and we'll just, you know, see what kind of a mess doing it on Zoom is. And to your point, sort of, you know, it was, then you can imagine the context of when we started doing this too, right? Like we, it was a Friday morning. The first one, we were just gonna be a one-off Friday morning in the midst of everything falling down. It was after that date in March, when, you know, like the NBA shut down, Tom Hanks has this crazy thing. I mean, everything was falling apart and you've got marketing leaders that are trying to lead their teams, trying to lead their, go to market strategy, trying to like, not freak out their board and their leadership team and then going home and trying to lead their families and are exhausted. And, you know, I remember those first few coffees. I mean, we had people crying, like there were some pretty cathartic moments.
Kathleen (08:27):
Yeah. And those, I mean, especially I, to this day remain. So I'm grateful that I didn't have little kids because my youngest is 15. And I would see these other people who were in similar jobs to mine, which I know is already busy and stressful. And then they had to deal with homeschooling their children. And I was like, God, bless you. I don't know how you're doing it.
Matt (08:50):
I, you know, my wife always says, you know, you don't know what you're capable of until you don't have a choice for a lot of us with young kids. That was the case. And so you just did it. But I think, you know, back to our conversation about sort of, you know, sort of, you know, sort of building a channel and sort of, you know, sort of creating value for an audience. One of the things that I think that moment and that, you know, a lot of the, you know, sort of CMO Coffee Talk sessions, since of reminded me that it's not just about the content and community, it's about the relationships. Yeah. It's about the connectivity you have. I mean, you can sit here and say, you can talk about numbers because, oh, this many people are joining and this many people follow.
Matt (09:23):
I don't care how many people follow you. I don't care how many people it goes to. Who thinks who, but who has an authentic relationship with who do you have an authentic reciprocal relationship with? Because those are the connected tissues. I mean, we've had Zoom for what, five, six years we've been building relationships with each other. Face-To-Face primarily for tens of thousands of years. Like we're hardwired to want to have engagement. I don't think Coffee Talk would have worked in a virtual format if it was just a phone call, right. If we couldn't see each other, if we couldn't really build relationships with each other, even though we're not in person I think it's, it's more than the content is more than the community. It's the connective tissue between people in that community that really doesn't just create the content is the content.
Kathleen (10:10):
So I want to break this down because I think this is, it's really powerful to talk about it at the high level, but it, it, the, the thing that always springs into my mind is if somebody is listening, how do we make this actionable? And I want to start with the content side of it because obviously people who listen to this podcast are already bought into the notion of inbound marketing. You know, they've, that's, that's been a thing for a long time. And, and I always say on this podcast also that like my definition of inbound is pretty broad. It's like anything that, that attracts the right audience to you. It's not just, you know, writing blogs and having gated eBooks and all that stuff that it used to be a long time ago. So assuming that folks who are listening are already creating content, can you try to get a little bit more detailed and actionable on like, what, what needs to happen to go from, I am bought in, on inbound and creating content to I'm really building something that's greater than the sum of its parts.
Matt (11:12):
So I have two answers to that. I'm gonna try to land the plane on this. And I think one is sort of the perspective you take to, to create that content. And the other is sort of how you go about executing that content, the best, most successful sustainable companies for generations have been those that obsessed about customers and problems, not about products and services. Like we're all selling a product and service, but it's, but if, if all you do is obsess about what you're building and, and don't ensure that it is rooted in the people you are trying to impact and the, and the problems that they have and you're in trouble. So I think if you want to think about like what content, what content is going to be valuable, like just the better you understand your customers, the better you understand their problems.
Matt (11:54):
You're going to have an unlimited source of things you can talk about, right? So customers and problems as your basis, and then when it comes to the content itself, I mean, we can talk about editorial calendars and frameworks on it. There's three things I think about right. To try to keep it simple. It's variety, frequency, and agility variety means like you're, you're, you're thinking about like different formats, different touch points, different approaches. It's not all just a blog. It's not all just a bunch of social media stuff. Like get yourself on radio. Like do LinkedIn live posts you know, sort of, you know, I have, I'm so happy. This is an audio only podcast. I've got a face for radio.
Kathleen (12:31):
I don't like having my face on video.
Matt (12:32):
I don't, I hate it. So I bought it, but you know what, I've leaned into the video because, you know, in a remote world where I'm, you know, just personally have made a commitment to travel us, to be around with my family, I need the video to make a more direct connection with the people I want to have a relationship with. So, okay, fine. You got to stare at my ugly mug. I'll try to shave more often. So the variety sorta just talks about just the different ways people can engage with you. Frequency means just do it more often. I think the more people see you, the more you stay top of mind, the more they're familiar with you. I mean, what's great about a lot of the channels we have today is if you treat them right. You know, if you were to email, if, if, if Kathleen, if you were to email me four times a day, like, I'd be like, okay, that's like, I like you.
Matt (13:13):
I like your content. That's a lot. Right. But like, if I'm like, oh, I see that you just posted something on LinkedIn, or I see, you know, LinkedIn tells me, you just commented on something that a friend of mine wrote or, you know, I happened to notice in my Twitter feed that you just retweeted another person's article about something. Right. Well, I think I just named four things. Right. And, and those don't feel like four interruptions. So variety of channels and frequency of content allows you to stay top of mind. There's gotta be a body of work. That's sort of a narrative or a through-line there. And sort of like, okay, he's not just randomly tweeting or writing about stuff. There's a general central theme, again, customers and problems of what you're talking about. And the third is agility just don't overthink it. Perfect. Is the enemy of good, like turn on your LinkedIn live and sort of just share something like, you know, don't worry that you don't, this is not getting published in a, in a trade journal that has to go through peer review. Right? Like produce something, get it out there, see what people react to. Some of the things that I've published that I spent a ton of time on, and I'm sure are going to go viral, go, no. And sometimes the thing I will write in five minutes before getting on a plane is, is sort of, it hits a nerve enough that people are like, no, that's good. Right. So just to get it out there and be agile in your approach. So that's my, I guess that's a framework, right?
Kathleen (14:30):
Yeah. No. And I think it's funny that you say five minutes before getting on a plane. Cause some of the content that I've created that has, I mean, outside of the podcast, obviously, but like articles I've written that have really hit home, hit home, have been things where I was like ticked off by something. And I was just like, I'm going to sit down and put this on paper. And I, it, it comes, it just pours out and the articles write themselves. I feel like, and anytime you have a challenge or, you know, it's something that frustrates you. I feel like there's definitely going to be at least 10, if not a hundred, if not a thousand other people out there who are feeling the same way.
Matt (15:04):
If we had to break that down, I would say a couple things. One, if you get a little emotional about something and you've got an opinion that other people may have as well lean into that, and that emotion will come through in your content and will make you authentic, it will make you seem real and people will, might likely lean into it. Oftentimes, you know, we think about problems in terms of the, how and the, what, if you were to peel back the engine, onion and find the why of that problem. Like, why not just like, how do I stop? Like, you know, getting up in the middle of the night, like, how do I stop? Like, you know, not, you know, not be able to go back to sleep between o'clock in the morning. Like, why am I doing this? What, what feeling or what emotion or what fear is driving this.
Matt (15:44):
Right. So I need another prompt. You could just do a very simple thing just in terms of creating content is as you go through the world, see things, hear things. What is your response to that? What is your perspective on that? How do you think differently about that problem or that opinion or whatever? Like, that's what people want to hear now, if you have data and concrete evidence to back it up way better. Right. But I think just, I mean, if you understand your customers and problems and understand an industry and an audience well enough, and you can translate what you see through that lens, sort of through that filter in your head into something in a written or audio or video format. That's interesting.
Kathleen (16:24):
Yeah. And I think one of the things that tends to stop people is that they there's like a, almost a degree of imposter syndrome where they're like, but I'm not the world's foremost expert in this thing. And I, my whole feeling about that is like, you don't have to be the world's foremost expert. You just need to share the expertise that you do have whatever level it is, because there are guaranteed to be people who have a lower level of expertise in it than you, and they will appreciate it.
Matt (16:48):
And we were, before we started recording, you were talking about some people we both know. Well, that I think are that I consider like the peak of authority in areas. And they're the same people that are saying, no, I'm just making this up. Right. We're just almost like everything, all these new variables keep going on a regular basis. The people that are the authority are those that are brave enough to click publish. Yeah. Right. It's in there. I guarantee they're not always right. Like one of my favorite social media experts, like again, tip of the pyramid for a long time has been Chris Brogan. Like he's just from the, from when I first started just learned a ton from him, not just about social channels, but about just why they matter and how they work. He was so big on Google plus he was convinced it was going to go big. And so he wrote all these guides on how to take advantage of it. And is he less of an influence or was he the less of an authority? Because I used the wrong, good. That doesn't exist anymore. No. So sometimes you have to put yourself out there and be a little bit and say like, oh, I was wrong about that.
Kathleen (17:44):
Yeah. Same with all those people who thought clubhouse was going to be the biggest thing going,
Matt (17:49):
I've heard the LinkedIn, I dunno, this may date me, this podcast, little, what I've heard LinkedIn is considering publishing some kind of an audio only format, like clubhouse, like feature will be interesting to see if in a different context or a different time maybe at work.
Kathleen (18:03):
I don't know. All I know is when clubhouse came along, I was like, I don't have the energy for another platform. So for better, for worse, my laziness saved me from investing too much in
Matt (18:14):
Like, I don't have that kind of time.
Kathleen (18:17):
Yeah, exactly. Well, so, okay. So we've talked about the content aspect to this and how, and sort of how publishing frequency and not letting your doubt stop you from moving forward and doing it with a degree of regularity, et cetera, then comes what I guess, but before we get to community, cause I that's an aspect I want to talk about too. I feel like there's that in-between step of like, how do you, how do you make consuming your content? A habit? Because to me that's always been the other piece of this, which I, I always call it like brand publishing or a media strategy. If you will, it's not enough to have great content that people find and consume. You refer to work. You really need to, to almost build a habit with your audience where they're consistently coming back for it. And there are different ways to do that. And I'd love to just get your take on what you well, a, whether you think that that is important, maybe you disagree and that's fine and we can debate it. But if you do, like what have you seen work?
Matt (19:19):
I know, I do think you have to get there. And I think that you mean the, the short answer is you have to earn it. I mean, you, you see, I've seen a lot of companies and a lot of channels, a lot of brands with a force, it on people say, oh, we're going to make it. So you have to sort of see all these, if I don't want it, then I'm going to have a negative reaction. When I see that. I mean, sometimes we'll get the question what's too frequent to send an email to, to my customers. I'm like, well, I've seen the emails come out. You know, every other week that I think are too frequent, I've seen emails come out every day that I can't wait to read. Right. And so, you know, if you're, if you, if you nails or the earlier con you know, conversation around sort of customer problems, interesting point of view, a little bit of an entertainment factor as part of that.
Matt (20:00):
Yep. You go from like an unknown to like, well, that was an interesting piece of content to, I just happened to see a second piece of content. That was also kind of interesting, right? I mean, this is kind of like driving by someone's house at 40 miles an hour and trying to get something into their mailbox to miss a lot. But you want to, when they check their mailbox and see gets from you, it's consistently good. And then they start to look forward. Oh, I hope there's something from Matt. I'll do something from Kathleen there today. Right. And then sometimes they don't check their mailbox, but they see your car drive by. And they're like, oh man, I miss that. And I don't mean that a creepy way, but let me, this is how you start to build reputation for having something good. And no one expects you to be perfect or totally on your game every time.
Matt (20:40):
Like, I just don't think anyone has an expectation, but I, you know, I think in that, and then you start to sort of put tools in place. It's like, well, I really like Kathleen's podcasts. Like I really hope I don't miss any, like, what's a way to make sure I don't miss any subscribe. Right. Have it in your RSS feed, make sure it shows up on your smartphone on a regular basis. Hey, why don't I get it find out when Matt posts another thing on his blog, sign up for the newsletter. Here's an RSS alert for that too. Right. So I think there are tools that make it easy for people to accept. And then I think you say, okay, how do you start to accelerate that? Well, Hey, did you like this? Would you share this with other people that are like you? Right?
Matt (21:13):
And now all of a sudden I'm like, Hey, what is, I want to know what Kathleen is listening to. I want to know what Latane is reading, right? Stuff that you guys are paying attention to on a regular basis, people and brands you think are worthwhile by association. I think you're interesting as well. So there's a natural web, I believe in terms of how this works. And if you understand or can map that again, we're not forcing people to anything, but if you're going to earn that attention and respect and earn them the want to see you more often, now you can put the mechanics in place, newsletter, signup, RSS feeds, subscription, et cetera, to facilitate greater follow-up.
Kathleen (21:49):
But I think you raise a really good point, but I very much agree with which is that you have to really take seriously the obligation to maintain the level of quality and the content that you're sharing. Because like, especially if you're, when you're trying to build a habit, you're, you're earning the trust to become a part of someone's regular routine. And when you put out crappy content, that's like one way of vioLataneg that trust. And it's not, I don't think it takes very much for people to churn. And it goes back to what you've talked about in the beginning, which is like, you know, if you do have a newsletter and it's too much about you, for example, like it needs to be about the audience for sure. And I think then people tend to stick with it. But
Matt (22:29):
Yeah, if it's about the audience of it, you're giving value to other people, counterintuitively. It is about you, right? Because now they're like, this is really good. This stands out from what I may see from other people that may be a little more self-serving or you know what, every time I see this thing, like it's always good. But then they eventually get around to talking about their product or they have any teacher. I feel like they need to be explicit about like creating some kind of call to action. No, just like just be the car that people want to throw something in the mailbox. So they drive by, I mean, like be marketing that is not interrupted, but it is irresistible. I mean, that, that is a, that is an option. This is, and again, like back to Mike, me with a laptop and a bus pass and zero marketing budget, anybody can do this.
Matt (23:11):
It will not generate a bunch of pipeline tomorrow, but over time, this becomes not just a business driver, not just a subsidized way of credit, creating more pipeline, massive competitive differentiation. I could give. I mean, I could give someone who wants to sort of compete with our business. I can give you my newsletter list. I can give you my contact list. Actually, this is probably a bad example because I have all kinds of privacy bells going off right now, but this is all hypothetical, but like, you can have my list. You can't have my relationships. You can't have the trust and credibility that we have built as a business over 13 years. Like knowing what you can't, you can't replicate that. So anybody can go on rent, Google, anybody can go put a place in the trade show booth, right. But like, it's that, that long-term trust and credibility and authority that comes with owning a channel and building a channel over time. That's just impossible to replace.
Kathleen (24:03):
So I want to put a pin in that and we're going to come back to it. Cause I have a specific follow on question, but before I ask it, I want to go to the third leg of the stool that we started talking about, which was the community leg. Because you've really built a, I think a, an incredible community with CMO Coffee Talk. And I don't even know how many people are in it now. Is it hundreds?
Matt (24:25):
I think we're a little over 1,200.
Kathleen (24:25):
Yeah, that's amazing. Because I remember those first Zoom calls and I don't know if we could fit all of us on one screen when it's tiled Brady bunch style, but it was darn close. Yeah. so talk a little bit about that, because that is something that I think a lot of people think about and think that would be nice, but I feel like for most marketers that that's new territory and they're not really sure how to go about doing that correctly.
Matt (24:52):
Yeah. well I think some of it was just being in the right place at the right time. You know, we had you know, we've been doing CMO breakfast for years before that, you know, the, the Coffee Talk community started the Coffee Talk Slack. It is for years as well. I just, I created it years ago as sort of a CMO breakfast alumni group saying like, you know, if you've been to one of our breakfasts, you joined the group and now your network with other CMOs and other markets, and you can do whatever. It was a pretty dormant channel for a long time. It just, it didn't have enough volume. It didn't have a lot of sort of chatter going on. And, you know, just, I got to give a lot of credit to sort of Latane in some sense for sort of leaning in on this idea.
Matt (25:28):
And I think it was, you know, right time right place, because it was the crucible of the beginning of the pandemic. I think finding a community, finding a group of peers where you can be open and honest. I mean, as you know, we don't record the Friday sessions. We, you, you can only get into the Slack group if you're a CMO or a head of B2B marketing that has been extremely hard. We turned down probably four or five requests for everyone that we let in because they just, they don't match group. But I think that's making it a true birds of a feather group that is a safe environment. Your team isn't here, your boss isn't here. You know, I belong, I guess, as an analogy, I belong to a group called EO stands for entrepreneur organization, and it's a, it's a group of entrepreneurs and founders, just different businesses.
Matt (26:13):
And it's an organized system. And every month in different markets, you meet with a group of 10 other entrepreneurs, same 10 every month, over time, it's a completely confidential session. And there are things that are discussed in that room that like my, my, my, my spouse wouldn't understand my team. Wouldn't understand my board wouldn't understand, but founders who have that same perspective. Right. So I think there's that CMO perspective that has made it valuable. I think also the fact that we, I very much appreciate Latane and 6Sense for not commercializing it. Right. And so we've talked like it's free, but it's not entirely free. Cause like we're all investing in this because ultimately we want people to trust us enough to do business with us. But I really appreciate that, you know, Latane has seen this as the long game that this is, this is about building relationships.
Matt (27:01):
This is about building trust. This is a, this is a bit of a gift to an audience that some will convert over time. But as a worthwhile investment for short and long-term gain. And I think that was unique. I, you know, I don't know that every other company or COO partner in this would have thought about it that way. And I think also we, we, we've just sort of aligned around the fact that the community is the content is the audience. Like those Friday sessions are not presentations. They're discussions. We'll bring in experts that have, that have a point of view on whatever topic is for that month. But we literally tell them, like you got five, maybe 10 minutes to share, and then it's a free for all, because everybody in this room is going to have an opinion or a question or a contribution or cautionary tale.
Matt (27:47):
And so what really is not a show up and listen, it's a show up and participate. And I think, you know, what started as just the Friday mornings now it's happening literally every day on Slack. So in a variety of different topics, including what my favorite channel, I know you're going to bring up, it's the rants channel. Like I took two weeks off this summer and I was so behind on email signups, like everything, I saved the ranch channel for the end of my catch-up because it was so good. I knew it was going to deliver and it did. But no, I think it's you know, I've seen a lot of really good communities over the years. I think, you know, top liners from Eloqua was really, really good. It felt like a family, it felt like a real community. It felt like people that cared about each other and maybe, you know, Kevin that's the other, it's not pontificate too much your mess. The other thing is like, I think people in this community really care about each other and it's, and again, back to the relationships and the connective tissue between people, I think that's something that makes it special and you can create conditions for that, but you also have to allow that to flourish and then not commercialize it.
Kathleen (28:49):
Yeah. So that is, you just set it up so perfectly, because that was when I said, I want to put a pin in it and come back, my question was going to be, I couldn't agree more with everything you just said. And I feel like this is, this is the kind of marketer that I am, but where you run into challenges is when you're the marketer in a company that you talk about this kind of an approach and their responses, but where are the leads, you know, like where we need leads. Now, this is all great. But but it's too long-term or it's, you know, like show me the ROI of that, that event or that community, you know, like, I feel like there's a lot of heads of sales and CEOs who would, who would hear this plan and just say rubbish. Like, I need something that's much more focused on the here and now. And so how do you address that conversation?
Matt (29:45):
Well, I mean, I mean, I am, I am a hundred percent committed to the long game in this community to making it so that it is a hundred percent about the audience, about the content to the point where, I mean, I will tell you, there are people in this group that have no idea what my company does, and it is just candidly, it's super frustrated at one level where I just like, they're like, oh, really appreciate you being part of this. Your content is good. Really appreciate that this community, like, are you just a speaker? Or do you just like, no, dude, I got consultants back here that I got to pay their bills. Right. So like, so, but I'm like really hands off in terms of sort of, I'm not pitching, I, I gotta figure, I gotta figure out how to solve that problem.
Matt (30:24):
But like, it's, it's not going to be like talking about what we do that said, I mean, we're still tracking all of this, right? Like, I mean, everybody who's in that community is in Salesforce as a, you know, as part of a campaign. They are explicitly excluded from other Heinz Marketing emails because as you know, every Wednesday we do sort of a preview email for the next topic. And then we do a recap with links because if we've been talking about in the last week so a I'm like, okay, like, even though it's not generating like immediate SQLs every week, it's like, dude, I'm emailing 1200 B2B CMOs every week with like a 40% open rate. So like there's something there be, even though I'm not pitching, even though I am explicitly not talking about what we do and I won't get into details, but like I know what my associated pipeline and business is from Coffee Talks.
Matt (31:11):
I'm very happy with that, even though we're not pitching. Right. And so I think to me, this, the lesson from this is long game. Like I could, I can't sit there and wait for business to come in and hope that I can feed the team of consultants, you know, not working behind me in the craft closet, but like, you know, I can't wait for that, but I can also lean into a channel that I think is kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity. And know that this could have ripple effects for a year if we do it. Right. And, and, and there's also the element just of, I dunno, like we're like I'm running a business, I have to make payroll, but also like the amount of joy and value in relationships I've gotten out of this group, you know, the, and again, back to the community and the relationships we talked about earlier, friendships people that I still haven't met in person, I've only known for a year. So like yourself and others are just like, well, you know, we got to be once a, in Tysons corner and thankful, I didn't tell you that I was living so close to like-
Kathleen (32:11):
Patient Zero.
Matt (32:12):
Right. But like, you know, like, cause you know, like we've got our, you know, our first in-person gathering for this group coming up in December in Austin. And like we were, we were, had a stretch goal. Could we get a hundred people to sign up? We've got a wait list that people think they're are waiting for the lottery at this point, it's it's nuts. And I think it's, it really is again, this is I, I share all this because like we've been doing this for about a year and a half and the potential to build a community. When you focus on the community as the content, when you focus on the authentic relationships there that community can't help, but drive business for you, especially if you don't force,
Kathleen (32:51):
Does there ever come a time for someone listening? If does there ever come a time where there's the quote, unquote, handoff to sales outside of somebody saying, Hey, I want a demo, right? Like, is there ever a time where you're like this person's been in the community for a year, call them up and see if they want to buy, like, how does that work?
Matt (33:10):
I don't know. I think it's a slippery slope, but I will say like, you know, I've been pretty hands-off on it. I would say that if you're, if you're, if you are the birds of a feather partner in that, like, if you are, if you're running like a CIO group and your company's CIO is part of it, I think your CIO has to be directly involved in any kind of related conversation that happens there. Like I would imagine that, you know, let's say you got to community people and you've got a CIO and a deal you're trying to work. And someone on her team is like, you know, engaged with your sales rep. Is there an appropriate way to like bring up to that CIO, Hey, you know, we're talking to your team. Is there something we can let us know if there's something we can help with?
Matt (33:45):
I think so, but I think it's gotta be a peer to peer conversation. You know, I think you gotta be really be careful. Like, you know, I think we, we, you know, I think there's, there's oftentimes in the community. So the complaints about bad sales tactics from certain analysts communities, we won't, we won't really get into. But the sales tactic of saying like, I'm not hearing from you, so I'm going to email everybody on your board and make sure they all know that you're not renewing with us, like going over the head of the buyer, to the CIO. Very bad idea. But you know, if you, if you have stored value in a community like this, I mean, again, I don't mean I firmly believe in not keeping count and saying, wow, you know, you've been to five of our coffin tacks.
Matt (34:25):
We gotta have a demo now. Like it doesn't work that way, but I think you build enough value over time. If there's an ask, if there's like a, Hey, you know, someone on your team, it looks like has been sniffing around, you know, if there's anything we can do to help them or anything we can do to clarify that and let us know people look for opportunities to give back. Right. And I'm not asking you to pay for this community and asking me for like, I'm just, I'm just saying like, Hey, just if there's anything in there we can do to help just a little bit of grease, let us know. I think you've done the right way done in an authentic way from the right level. It could work. It is not inefficient process. This is not a Marketo drip campaign. Right. But we're not looking for efficiency here. We're looking for authenticity, authenticity and value. Just like what you're trying to build in the community to begin with.
Kathleen (35:09):
Yeah. I love all of this. And this is a topic that I'm super passionate about. Can you give me some examples of, you mentioned, we talked about CMO Coffee Talk and, and 6Sense involved in that, but can you give me any examples of other companies that are doing this really well?
Matt (35:30):
Yeah, no, I think a couple of examples I know like, you know, Eloqua used to have the Top Liners. It was very much a birds of a feather organization. I mean, there were Eloqua users, but they really did sort of care about each other. You know, I think CamelBak the company that sells the backpacks with the, you know, the water bags in them they have a community that isn't, I mean, I remember this was years ago, they were, they showed some interest in a community and they said, we're going to create a community around the issues of hydration. Like, that sounds awful. Like no one wants to talk about hydration forever, but like, again, back to customers and problems, customers and interest, what if you created a community around weekend warriors, people that, you know, have a day job, but then on weekends, want to go do some crazy stuff that might not just be a water bottle in your hand, but a backpack full of water. So you can go and do whatever crazy things on a bike or whatever. So that kind of a community that again is not about what they do, but it's about the audience and what they're interested in. I think there's some, there's some clues and evidence to where you can be successful.
Kathleen (36:34):
All right. We're going to shift gears. Cause at the ends of these interviews, I always ask a couple of questions and I want to get your answers before we run out of time. The first one being one of the biggest pain points I hear from the marketers I talk to is just like, everything is changing so fast, whether it's technology changes, platform changes, regulatory changes pandemics, what have you and all, all of this influences like marketing and therefore puts a burden on marketers to, to consistently be learning and keeping up with everything. Do you have certain sources that you really rely on for staying up to date?
Matt (37:15):
Yeah. it's it's, you know, unfortunately there isn't sort of a single source. I try to just constantly be learning. You know, I would say that, you know, there's, I mean, again, in the CMO group, there's a reading list channel. That's been really valuable. I would say that there are certain publications that I get. Like I mentioned earlier, things I get on a daily basis. I read all the time. The Marketing Profs newsletter every day. There's always something interesting. There there's a handful of SmartBrief newsletters I get on a regular basis, always something interesting there, I still have a Feedly RSS set of stuff that I'm looking at. I don't read everything every day, but I'm scanning headlines every day. You know, there's certain vendors in the MarTech space that I think they're really, really good at producing thoughtful, insightful sometime research-based content.
Matt (37:58):
I think it's useful. And then also just, you know, just trying to sort of read cross-functionally, you know you know, I've been reading this book called The Confidence Code, which is all about how, how so many of us, but especially women just are, have a lack of confidence that keeps them from stepping up and speaking up and being not only achieving their potential, but also sort of helping their company. And it's super interesting to me because I mean, I feel like, you know, there's, there's a level to which sort of I have that same challenge. And as we grow, I mean, I've got my, my leadership team is other than me entirely women. And like, I, you know, when did you guys, I want you guys to step up. There's a huge for us as a company and also for you individually.
Matt (38:38):
And so like, what are the ways that I can support and empower that for you? Sort of just learning those kinds of things, super valuable. I don't know, like I mentioned that entrepreneur group, I mean, there's a, there's a couple of different places where they're reading recommendations and you've got these lifelong learners that are sort of exploring all these different areas and, you know, there's always interconnectivity between sort of science and and, and history and sort of what we're trying to do in our, in our businesses, in our, in our work and in our lives.
Kathleen (39:06):
Yeah, I am, I would agree that learning from things outside of the marketing discipline is a great way to help you become a better marketer. And I'm totally going to get that confidence book because I have major imposter syndrome. So it is a real thing. And, and most women I talk to to have it. So you're spot on with that. All right. If somebody is interested in following up and asking you a question or wants to join the CMO Coffee Talk, if they're a CMO, or a head of marketing, or if they want to learn more about Heinz Marketing, what are the best ways for them to do those things?
Matt (39:41):
You know, I'm on LinkedIn, just at Matt Heinz. You'd have to be careful. The former head of enterprise market enterprise sales at Marketo is also named Matt Heinz. Good dude, better hair. But you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm just matt@heinzmarketing.com is my email you know, at Heinz Marketings Twitter, but you know, just love to connect with anyone if you, especially like, you know, back to sort of, we talked about like how to create content, like, you know, what do you, what's your response to this? How do you, how do you feel about what you heard today? Like how does this relate to sort of what you're dealing with or struggling with or grappling with in your business? I would love to hear responses to this content.
Kathleen (40:18):
Yeah, definitely. I will put links to all of those forms of connection that Matt mentioned in the show notes on the website at kathleen-booth.com. So head there to connect with Matt and if you are listening and you know, somebody else is doing amazing inbound marketing work, you can tweet me at my very bizarre Twitter handle, which is @workmommywork. Can you tell that I created my Twitter handle when I had little kids? And if you do tweet me, I would love to have them as my next guest. So reach out that way.
Matt (40:52):
Yeah, that, that may be my second favorite social handle. I think my first is somebody in our community. I will not name names, her Peloton handle is mom cusses a lot.
Kathleen (41:02):
God, that's amazing. Yeah. I always tell people that that Twitter handle was the perfect way to describe my life when my kids were little. And at the time I owned my agency and I would wake up in the morning and work before they woke up and then I would be mom and then I would work when they were at school and then I would be mom again, and then they'd go to bed and I would work again. So I was like, well, there it is. That's my life. Work, mommy, work, mommy work.
Matt (41:27):
I heard it differently. I heard it as like kids as the slave drivers was saying, like, I'm growing out of my shoes. Work, mommy work.
Kathleen (41:33):
There's that too. There's definitely that too. But yeah, it was, it was it was an autobiography in a Twitter handle. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Matt. This was a ton of fun.
Matt (41:48):
It was fun.
Kathleen (41:48):
Yeah. Thanks so much.
