A Conversation with Mike Maynard About Content Marketing

Mike, thank you so much for joining me here on the Content Amplification Podcast. When I read your bio, I was excited to have you on as a guest. You know, your experience in marketing, you're, as you say, a self-professed geek or nerd of data and marketing knowledge. I think you're going to provide a lot to our audience in this episode.

Well, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It's really exciting.

So, let's get right into it. I know a lot of the talk or the narrative about what you speak about is around finding the right audience, getting the right content in front of them, and that's really going to help you grow your business. So, my first question that I want to talk to you about before we get into more details about who you are is what in your opinion is good or great quality content?

That's such a good question. There's so many ways to answer that. So, you know, the first answer would be it's content that helps the audience. And to me, I think that's probably the first thing when it comes to content marketing, which is slightly different from marketing overall. It's like driving through content. The audience got to care about it. And the way to make the audience care about it is to make it helpful. So I think it's a lot about making the content helpful, but It's also about what results that generates and ultimately the content's got to make the audience think more positively about your brand. And that's not by forcing your brand down there and doing the old style kind of advertising type approach. It's because you've given them something. So to me, content marketing is somewhat like an exchange. You are giving the audience something that's valuable to them. And the fact they consume it actually gives you something back, which is the audience thinks more positively about your products, your technology, or your view on the market.

Absolutely. And we've seen a lot of change in the last, even 12 months with where marketing has gone, content, podcasts obviously still on the rise, video being more relevant these days. In your view and the experience you've seen, What is the most engaging type of content that somebody can put out there if they're just starting kind of a marketing strategy around content?

That's such a, you know, another great question because I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, to me, you know, I think it's wrong to try and think about content in silos. You know, it's a bit like if you look at marketing today, You know, just thinking we're going to do a PR campaign, that's the wrong thing to do. You should think across multiple channels. And I think the same is true of great content. You shouldn't be thinking the most effective content today is video and therefore everything I'm going to do is video because if you're trying to communicate, you know, something deeply technical, actually maybe the best format is a PDF white paper. You know, not the most exciting, not the most innovative way to communicate things, but actually for something deeply technical works really well. And that's why it stood the test of time. So, I mean, to me, I'd say think about what you're trying to communicate and think about the best way for the audience to consume that and then choose the right format rather than try and come from a point of view of, you know, this format is best. The one caveat to that is you're absolutely right. Things are definitely changing. And so don't just do what you've done before. Podcasts is a great example of where a load of different businesses, whether large or small, they've seen podcasts have a huge impact and that seems to be still growing very rapidly. But equally, if we look at things like written content, we're seeing more and more companies come in with new technology to present written content in different ways. And so, Yeah, maybe a PDF white paper is the right idea, but actually perhaps one of the new formats is a far better way. So to me, I think it's don't try and have a favorite, but try and think through what's gonna work for your audience and use that as the basis for deciding the format of your content.

You answered that perfectly. And that's what I was hoping you were gonna go down that road because I get people asking me all the time, like, what should I do? Like, what type of content? Should I be blogging? Should I be doing videos? Should I do a podcast? And the whole premise of what I do with this podcast and help people do is let's just figure out what the content and the message needs to be. And let's figure out what ways can we amplify it and cross-use it, right? So, this podcast, prime example. We're doing this over video. It's going to have an audio format. It's going to have a video format. There's a transcription of it. So, it has multiple uses that's out there. And I think that's where we can work a lot smarter than harder these days in marketing.

Definitely. And I love your reference there to reusing content. I mean, to me, that's the biggest secret of any content marketing campaign is reuse and repurpose because creating everything from scratch is just gonna kill you. It's just too much work. So totally agree. I mean, multiple channels, reusing content, that's definitely the way to go.

You know, and reposting your content as well. I mean, a lot of people just, they set it out once and they kind of forget about it and they're like, I can't repost it 'cause people are gonna see it twice. Well, the audience you have at 10 in the morning is not the same audience you have online at 6 PM at night, right? So you can reuse a lot of this content. You can get a lot larger reach and exposure that way.

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, if you look at Twitter, for example, I'm pretty sure that nobody is remembering the tweets they saw a month ago. So reposting is cool on Twitter, particularly on Twitter. I think it is the obvious platform to repost. But some people seem to want to think that actually their tweets will be remembered. It just doesn't work like that. You've got to be humble. You've got to look at reposting and pick a different time or a different day and see if that works. So yeah, don't be afraid to reuse stuff that's been good in the past.

Absolutely. Now, I want to ask you this. What's your view on the power of authenticity in your marketing versus production value?

Yeah, that's a really interesting question because I want to say it's all about authenticity. I want to say, you know, actually, just be authentic. You know, it's okay. Hold up an iPhone, record video. It's all cool. But in our industry, it's not always the case that that's right because people use a lot of cues to decide credibility. And I think the best example is airlines. If you want people to perceive that your airline is less safe, you don't clean the tray tables. And there's a distinct correlation between people seeing a dirty tray table and people thinking the airline is less safe. Now, is the same person making sure the wings aren't going to fall off as they clean the tray table? No, probably not. But people use those cues. So I think Authenticity is important, but the way you actually make things authentic needs to bear in mind the other cues that people are looking for. So if you're selling a system that's going to cost somebody $100 million, and we have clients selling systems in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of value, actually a shaky iPhone video really doesn't cut it. And what you need to do is you need to think about production values. But if you're selling at the other end, I mean, we've got clients who sell into hobbyists, actually someone getting super excited about a product on a shaky iPhone video is probably the best way to market. So, you know, it's really hard to say, think about your audience again. This is gonna be the thing I say in answer to every question I think now.

Yeah, so just to kind of recap that, it has a direct correlation to the value of which the product or service you're selling.

I think it's the value, but it's also the importance. It's also whether there's safety issues. There's lots of different factors where actually production value matters more. So you've just got to think about expectations of the audience.

Okay. Now you keep throwing out the word audience. I think you just really want to talk about the audience side. And I do as well. How important is understanding your audience? And I think a lot of businesses just say, they think of I need more customers to come and pay me and all that, but they don't really take a lot of time to understand who the audience is. Let's talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, so I mean, that, Shaun, for me is such a crucial question because if it doesn't matter, there's no point in my agency existing. My agency Napier is built around understanding the needs of a technical B2B audience. So predominantly engineers of one form or another, basically. And they may be called engineers, they may be called specialists, but they're looking They're looking at a technical product and they're making a technical decision based on technical factors. And communicating to them is very, very different to selling a chocolate bar to a consumer. It doesn't mean it's easier or more difficult, it's just different. And so, understanding the audience for us is everything. If we can communicate in a way that resonates the way the audience understands, the way the audience likes, then our marketing is going to work. I've talked a lot about audience because it matters to me. That's how we've built our business. But I think actually it matters to every agency and every client as well.

Let's talk about your agency. How long have you been doing this?

So I actually bought the agency in 2001. Free business tip for everyone, the wrong time to buy an agency in technology is 3 weeks before the dot-com crash. In 2001. That was not a great experience, but, you know, bought the agency in 2001. We got through the really tough times. There have been a few more tough times, not least the pandemic, but we've managed to get through all of those. So that's when I bought them.

Now, what do you do to market, you know, to your audience? You know, what are some of the ways you go about finding new clients? And let's hope you just don't say, you know, We're all referral-based, we don't have to market, but I guess that would just be an empty-ended question there. But let's give us some kind of the lessons you've learned or the tools or the techniques that you've developed that can help others.

Oh, do you know what? This is really interesting because back in the early 2000s when we were an agency that was turning over about $1 million, we grew by referrals. It was great. We were getting referrals and it was fantastic. We're now, you know, 15 years later, $5 million, actually a bit more than that, £5 million, about $7 million. And we cannot grow through referrals. So we're doing a lot of different things to get the agency's name out there. And we're feeling to me more like a client in many ways in terms of how we do our marketing than we did 15 years ago. 15 years ago, it was, professional service, word of mouth, and that's important. And we still do things to try and increase word of mouth. So, things that make our clients smile. I mean, I'd love to say this, we have our own baker. So, somebody actually I knew from outside the business, she started a business making, as a pastry chef, she makes the most amazing cakes. So, if anyone's wondering why they should become a client of Napier, you get scent cakes and this baker is phenomenal. So it's absolutely worth having. So we try and, you know, keep that word of mouth. We haven't given up, but we do a lot of other activities. So we are doing a lot of outbound email. We do account-based marketing, particularly on LinkedIn advertising outreach through there. We do PR, we do various media. This podcast is clearly part of our marketing activities. And it's even got to the point where we're now going to a trade show. So in the beginning of April, we're at the B2B Expo in Los Angeles. And it's our first trade show for a while. We've done a couple in the UK. And we're doing it because we're actually opening up a presence in the US. So We're looking for American clients. We still have a lot of American clients working with us in Europe, but we're looking for more business in the States. So, you know, it's the whole range of different things. And then of course there's content. And if I was to pick one thing that has consistently delivered, it's probably the least sexy, least exciting thing we do, which is our monthly newsletter email. And all we do is we take our best blog post, we put it in an email, we send it out to people. And you look at that and you go, that is just 15-year-old thought. And we've been doing it for 15 years. And it is consistently the best way to get people to engage with us. The other things, particularly in terms of the outbound stuff, can increase our reach. But this, for people who've had some engagement with us, is awesome. So I think, you know, don't underestimate the simple stuff.

I find that very interesting about the newsletter because, you know, it's, you know, all things kind of, kind of go full circle. And, you know, everybody was doing newsletters and then they kind of moved away from it as the gurus and the experts said, you know, nobody wants another newsletter, right? And they've kind of backed off and you start to see it happening again. Myself, you know, the same thing. I hadn't done it for a long time. And then I just started to put in because we're putting out a lot more video content, YouTube, podcasts, and doing almost like just like a monthly digest version of here's what you missed, right? And you start to get more engagement. You know, people even replying back or booking calls just from that, which is very interesting to— and that's, you know, if you're listening and you had one and you put it to rest, that's something you might want to put back in the plans. Now, let's talk a bit about like where we are in the current space. I know there's a lot of kind of mixed messaging out there about, you know, social media and your data and privacy and where it's at. And you've released a blog post on your website on data parties, first, second, and third. Let's just get your, your explanation of, of those first, second, and third party data definitions. Like, what do people need to know about them in their business? And is it important to know that?

That's a great question. If you're in marketing, it today is one of the most important things. I mean, I love the fact you've brought up this blog post because Actually, I wrote the blog post because someone replied to the last newsletter we sent out and said, "I'd really love to understand more about first, second, third-party data." And I said, "That's great, we'll write a blog post." So, you know, it links the newsletter there, which is great. What is happening today is you'll hear a lot about third-party cookies, but I think it's important to understand what first, second, and third-party mean. So if we look at first-party data, it's basically the data that is owned by the site or the organization you're going to. So somebody comes to your website, they fill in a form, they give you data about them, that's your first-party data. You obviously own it. And that is by far the most valuable. And that is becoming super important because on the web, they're limiting the use of other forms of data. Second-party data is really simple. It's data you've acquired from somebody else. And the classic example is you go to a publication, you rent their email list, you send emails out. That's second-party data. Third-party data is data that you're getting from someone else that is being aggregated from elsewhere. So that could be in the email sense, it could be list brokers who are buying in lots of lists, trying to build them all together and doing that. If you look at someone like a Facebook, What they're doing is they're installing tracking on other people's websites to try and understand what people are interested in. They're putting that data in and then effectively selling it to you. And Facebook's interesting because it's a bit of a mix of second and third party, as is Google. But the important thing is that when you look at the web itself, there's really only first and third party. So there's your cookies and there's cookies that someone else is putting on your website to gather data. And so Facebook is, for example, putting a cookie on your website because you're running Facebook ads and they're using that to gather data for themselves. So it's data that they're gathering from you and they're potentially selling to other people, so third party. The browsers are blocking increasingly third party cookies and it's all going to first party. And this is what's causing everyone to freak out is what's going to happen is it's going to be harder and harder to buy detail data about people on the internet where you don't hold that data yourself.

It's a great explanation of it. So that's going to lead me into my last question before we talk, um, finally about, uh, your ideal client. But what do you think's happening or going to happen in the next 6 to 12 months that we or businesses need to pay attention to in the marketing space?

So, in a way, it's actually already happened. It is around this first and third-party data. I think businesses have to take responsibility for building their own data. You know, we've seen lots of people who've trusted third parties to supply data. It's really not a great way to run a business because you're 100% reliant on someone else's platform. And yes, there are solutions coming in that will to a large extent, replace some of the lost information. So Google, for example, has tried to promote FLoC, which, you know, a version of that I think will ultimately appear and be deemed to be acceptable and will actually be predominantly the replacement for third-party data for Google. And so they will be able to tell you whether someone's interested in cricket or whether somebody's interested in ice hockey. Simple things like that. But it's not going to be as accurate as your own data. And it's probably not going to be as accurate as current third-party data. So we're going to see the data that you get from these big tech companies becoming less and less valuable. And that basically means that there's more and more value in your own data. So to me, this has all been decided. This is all going to happen. But over the next 6 months, I think a lot of businesses will wake up to the fact that actually building your own lists, owning your own data, getting your own community that's really engaged with you is the way to go forward. So I mean, to me, that is going to be a big change. And it's not so much that the world has changed, it's that people are now finally responding to the changes in the world.

And this is exactly part of what you guys help your clients do. Is to be prepared for these big shifts, right?

Do you know, I think that's what content marketing is all about ultimately. If you're creating content, it's about creating a community that wants to be with you because they're getting value. So I think that's really the secret of content marketing. Content marketing is not gated content behind a lead form. That's a very small part. Content marketing is about adding value to your customers, your prospects, your audience you're trying to reach through things that you're creating. And to me, that's what content marketing is. And that's such a huge, exciting opportunity for me going forward.

Yeah, I think content marketing is like feeding the neighborhood cats. Like every single day you're going to have a couple more and a couple more and they're just going to start to come, right? Because you're giving them what they want. Right. So, so just before we close here, let's talk about your agency, the type of clients that you're looking for and how people can get in touch with you.

Absolutely. So our agency focuses on B2B technology. So the way I describe it is we have businesses selling geeky products to geeky people in other businesses. We're really good at selling a technical product that is bought based on technical decisions. And so, you know, some of the clients we have range from semiconductor companies, we have communication infrastructure companies, we have industrial automation companies, we have the world's biggest manufacturer of baggage handling systems for airports. I mean, just all of these really technical products, and we're really good at helping those clients be successful. So I used to be an engineer. I love talking to people who make really interesting products, which is great because I just do what I love every day. In terms of getting hold of us, our website is napierb2b.com. So absolutely come to the website. I'm the only Mike Maynard at Napier, so find me on LinkedIn or, you know, I just love talking about marketing to people. So if anyone's interested, they're probably smart enough to work out my email address is mike@napierb2b.com. I will try and reply to anyone who sends me email from this podcast because I just love the feedback from, you know, things that we get to discuss.

Excellent. And if you become a client, you're going to get a cake, right?

And if you become a client, you will get cakes. Absolutely. Yeah. And Helen is an amazing chef.

Mike, thank you so much for sharing your experience, your wisdom with us today.

Thank you, Shaun. I've really enjoyed it.