CMOs, Stop Trying to Create Thought Leadership Content

Tim Hines is the CMO of AmTrav and a global keynote speaker. He is also the author of the book “The Marketing Starter.” Tim is passionate about applying an entrepreneurial mindset to marketing and helping other marketers excel in their careers.

Introducing Tim Hines, the CMO of AmTrav. Tim is a marketing expert, global keynote speaker, and author of the book “The Marketing Starter: How an Entrepreneurial Spirit Will Make You a More Savvy Marketer.” In this interview, we discuss the importance of thought leadership and why CMOs should stop trying to create it and simply start implementing it today!

Tim recommends that one of the core pillars of a brand’s thought leadership strategy is radical honesty, building tremendous authority and authenticity at the same time.

Tim Hines, CMO @ AmTrav Cyber – Follow Tim on LinkedIn

“We try to say, hey, this is what’s going on in the industry. We’re not going to sugarcoat it. This sucks, or this is great, or this could be better. And here’s a piece of content that we think from our radically honest approach is our take on that.” – Tim Hines

According to Tim, thought leadership is about positioning your brand as an expert that is worthy of being noticed and listened to, providing valuable insights and information to your audience that educates them. It is the best way to build trust and credibility with potential customers that not only differentiates you from the competition but provides reasons to believe in your salespeople and the quality of the products you sell.

Listen to the full podcast or watch it on YouTube.

Introduction to Tim Hines

Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the B2B Marketing Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve McDonald, your host, and we’re here today with Tim Hines.

Now, Tim is not only the CMO of AmTrav, Tim is a global keynote speaker. And Tim, I think you recently wrote a book called The Marketing Starter. Maybe you can show us that book and explain a little bit more about your background and what got you here today. And then we’ll jump into the podcast.

Tim Hines: So here’s the book. It’s called The Marketing Starter: How an Entrepreneurial Spirit Will Make You a More Savvy Marketer. And yeah, it came out last year in – what year are we in? We’re in 2023. It came out in 2022. So it’s been out for about a year. But yeah, I’m what you call the marketing starter.

So I’m a marketer who sees the world through an entrepreneurial type of worldview or lens. I try to apply that entrepreneurial spirit to what I do to succeed in my career and better myself within my organization and what I do within marketing. And so I try to bring that to the table, share that idea with other marketers.

I speak about that a lot. I talk to marketing and sales folks about how they can do that to excel in their careers, just be better in their business, and be better humans overall. And I try to cover that a bit in my book and talk about the different stories and ways that people can think like a startup founder.

Either like you’re Elon Musk on the billionaire, big, well-known side, or the mom-and-pop store down the street. All of those people embody this entrepreneurial spirit, which I’m just super passionate about. And so I love talking about that. I love sharing those types of ideas. And so I love getting on stage, being on podcasts, and doing things like this.

And yeah, I’ll have to have you on my podcast, too, Steve, because it’s all about how marketers can think like entrepreneurs. I love interviewing people. And so we’ll have to have you on, and we’ll do an episode too. What do you say?

Steve MacDonald: That sounds great. I’ll hold you to it. And this is why Tim and I click so well because I’m also a startup.

I’m a Martech SaaS startup founder, and we’re just coming into our beta stage. So Tim and I think quite a bit alike. I’m passionate about the entrepreneurial space as well. But what we’ll be talking about here today is something that is always on the mind of senior marketing executives, but it’s not easy to do.

It’s not something easy to sell in. It’s not something that most companies are doing well, and it’s documented. So what is that? Well, we’re talking about thought leadership, and the title of this podcast is stop trying to create thought leadership with the goal of not trying; you’ve got to get out there, and you actually have to start doing.

Aligning Thought Leadership to Strategy

Steve MacDonald: So maybe you could tell us a little about your experience and what you’re doing now at AmTrav. What is the role of thought leadership, and why is it important before we start talking about what it takes to get the job done?

Tim Hines: Yeah. Similar to yours, my background is in this SaaS or the B2B tech space. I’ve done a bit on the consumer side, but this thought leadership thing and using content to position yourself is much more used in the B2B space. So people can garner that attention that builds that trust with you because the buying cycles are usually longer.

It takes more decision-makers, so you really have to be good at telling a story, which I think is one of the secret talents of B2B marketers. They have to be just super good storytellers. Right? And be able to understand the customer’s problem and then translate it into a message that will drive value for them.

And thought leadership, I think, is such a broad-stroke topic. Everybody’s like, we’ve got to focus on thought leadership, but what does that mean? And I think it really boils down to what your goals are as an organization that then translate into your goals of marketing and what the unique position that you’re in as a company and as a marketing department and understanding what you need to do as far as a tactic on that content or that thought leadership front to position yourselves.

And I found myself in a lot of different spaces like that, trying to figure out, okay, what is the thing that we need to do? What do we need to say to get the name out there or to attract new business, drive demand, whatever it is?

But I find that, as a whole, it’s just such a great branding and awareness tactic because sometimes unless it’s something that’s gated or something like a big report that someone’s buying because that’s thought leadership, right? You’re not necessarily going to make money from it. You’re not necessarily going to be able to totally track it, right?

Because if you’re driving value, if you’re doing it right, people will eat up all your free stuff and eventually come back to you and buy from you. So at AmTrav, that’s one of the things we’ve been really focused on is trying to get the name out there a little bit further within some of the key industries we sell into, but also in the corporate travel industry in which the business operates. And one of the ways we do that is just by creating really cool, robust content that’s driving massive value for our customers. And it continues to position us as that thought leader.

And so, depending on the content, whatever the piece of content you’re writing, you have to think about how it will support your overall thought leadership strategy that fits into your goal. That’s kind of how I always look at it.

Differentiating Your Brand

Steve MacDonald: So tell me, and we talked about this before we hit the record button, I asked you what was the importance of content to the company where 1 is it’s not important at all, 10 is it’s vital to the success of the company.

And how would you rate that and why?

Tim Hines: Yeah. I mean, for our goal this year and long term, but especially near term this year, I would say it’s a 10. And that’s because where AmTrav was at, as far as its case study goes, it wasn’t super known within this core industry. There was a lot of brand confusion.

We were talking about this. There’s a competitor travel management company called ADTRAV, A-D-T-R-A-V; we are AmTrav, A-M-T-R-A-V. And then there’s Amtrak, the rail company, A-M-T-R-A-K. You know, funny little anecdotal story about where we had this big conference coming up, and I was looking at the conference map, and we shared a booth wall with Amtrak.

And I was like, oh god, either that’s going to be a branding explosion or a great branding opportunity. But then I looked later, and they got moved, so I said, ” oh, okay. I don’t have to worry about it—one less thing on my plate to have to figure out.” But I thought it was pretty funny that they put Amtrak and AmTrav right next to each other.

But anyway, so differentiation has been a big important piece for AmTrav. And there’s been a lot of really interesting shakeups that have been happening in the industry this year that we looked at, and we said this is something that we can champion and really own and position ourselves as the thought leader in by putting out great information, great data, explainers, all of these things that buyers will eat up as a value add and then look at us and go, they were the first to say this.

They were the first to think about this on top of our great product, and that was also the first to implement it. So, it’s supporting some of our product-led initiatives in tandem, which is kind of cool. So long story short, it’s very important to us near term and continued long term because it’s a wild space we’re in.

There are a lot of weird things happening, so we can use it to differentiate ourselves a lot.

Defining Thought Leadership

Steve MacDonald: Well, I’m going to ask you to unpack one part of that: the importance of thought leadership and being positioned as a thought leader, as an expert. You can read all the Forrester and Gartner reports and everything that comes out. They talk about how the organization and its sellers must be perceived as advisors and industry experts.

Do you do that by talking about your product, or how do you do that? What positions the company with that thought leadership? What kind of content is that?

Tim Hines: Interesting question. So I think it’s multifaceted. We use the content and the thought leadership as a kind of that gateway to the brand, that gateway to learn more.

And then, we position our people in the decision-making funnel after that. We have that content. If you’re first finding out about the brand or curious about our services, we have that as kind of the carrot, the teaser, which is very common.

And then we make sure that our people will be talking about that, but it’s the sales, SDR, whatever, that they’re well versed in the issue or the piece that we’ve enabled them with that they can continue that conversation and consult. So one of the things that we’re trying that we believe in as a core pillar of our brand is radical honesty.

And so we try to say, hey, this is what’s going on in the industry. We’re not going to sugarcoat it. This sucks, or this is great, or this could be better. And here’s a piece of content that we think from our radically honest approach is our take on that. This is our hot take, right?

So we try to put out stuff that’s kind of this hot take thing that people are like, Oh, that’s interesting that they’re saying that that way. Sometimes we’ll say, hey, you know, so and so competitor is better at X, Y, Z, but we’re better at one, two, three. So we may not be for you, or they may not be. We try to come out and be honest about that stuff and have real comparisons.

And then allowing our people to continue that conversation and do kind of that consultation to help see if things are right fit and guide them in the right direction. Our overall philosophy on service and support is top-notch as well. One of the pieces of our business is really focused on what we call relationship management, which I mean, I guess you see that in a lot of other industries too. So account management, but these people are white glove, making sure that the nuance of travel policy and that the travelers are happy and booking and onboarded properly.

And they’re basically always at the beck and call of our customers. I’ve sat in on their calls. I’ve gone to some of their meetings. It’s awesome. And so they are like the living embodiment of that, too. Be that consult type of person to say, hey, maybe you guys should try this. Maybe you should try that.

And it just helps to build trust and credibility. And so that’s kind of like taking the thought leadership into the real world and into the conversation.

Steve MacDonald: And that illustrates what all the studies are saying too, that thought leadership hits every level of the buyer’s journey because, at the end, somebody is trying to actually make a decision between, say, you and a competitor.

Equally as important as what you do is your level of expertise because there’s a risk, right? There’s a risk in making a choice. And we have to remember that buyers are emotional. They’re people, right? And they’re making emotional decisions all the time, and their careers being on the line could be one of them.

Right. Yeah. I love that. I love the idea of this radical honesty. Forbes, when they were talking about thought leadership, that it had to have a point of view and appropriate level of controversy because you don’t want to be saying the same thing everybody’s saying, right? You’ve got to have a point of view.

It stretches a little bit. It stretches what you think about the industry and what you should be doing. But it has to be an appropriate level of controversy because it must be founded on something that makes good sense. And if you’re the thought leader leading that charge, then that’s why you’re having the success you’re having.

Thought Leadership in Action

Steve MacDonald: It’s fantastic. In fact, tell us the story of what happened at the conference when some of your thought leadership content was actually used.

Tim Hines: Oh, yeah, this is a win. I think it’s important for marketers, especially those in content, and those working on thought leadership strategies, to celebrate those wins whenever they can because sometimes those KPIs can be a little ambiguous, you don’t necessarily know how to measure that. I was at this conference in April after we launched this thought leadership campaign around this big industry change, which is called NDC or new distribution capabilities on how airline tickets are purchased and changed and booked and different flight options and things like that.

Anyway, there’s a big shakeup in the industry. So we jumped on that. We said we have an opportunity to be the thought leaders on this. Let’s actually share our internal data. Let’s get our internal data so we can see the fare differentials between if you’re using this new capability or if you’re staying with the old.

And the bottom line is we had access to the new, not everybody had access to it. So we wanted to say, Hey, look, if you were with a company that has the new, you’re saving this much money. It was kind of our story. And so we were doing blogs and press, and we had built this great landing page that published all of our data and made our data available to the press.

And so we were pushing it and sharing it as much as we could for about four weeks into that campaign. And it’s still going right now, actually, by the way, if you go to amtrav.com/NDC, you can see this page I’m talking about. And we went to this conference called ProcureCon Travel, where all these procurement people from different walks of life, universities, large corporations, you name it, they go there, and they’re all looking to procure travel solutions.

And so we went there, we had a booth. And we were sitting in an education session, and I was actually standing in the back, observing it, and the education session was around this topic, and it was actually led by a somewhat quasi-competitive organization that was kind of leading the discussion, and my CSO was sitting in at one of the tables as well, and they were taking questions from the field, and one of the delegates raised his hand, and he said, hey, I really appreciate you guys sharing this, but it’s kind of the opposite of an article that I read from business travel news, which is kind of like the premier news website for the business travel industry.

He said, I read in business travel news that AmTrav says that the fair differential is XYZ right now. And I find that really interesting because that doesn’t seem to match up with what you’re saying, but you know, business travel news is reporting on this and blah, blah, blah. And I just went in the room, and I just lifted my hands up.

I was like, yes, when a prospect who’s sitting in the room read an article about our data and then called out a competitor in front of a forum of other people about it, that’s thought leadership. When, if I could ever say there ever was one, right? So I thought that was really neat. Now we just got to get that guy to buy from us.

So we’ll see how that’s going. I have to check with my sales team to see where he is in the pipeline. Nevertheless, how cool is that? That our idea of saying, let’s make our data public, let’s get it out there, this is going to be helpful for people, right? Drive massive value with your content and your thought leadership.

And eventually, they’re going to come back to you. Eventually, they’re going to share it. Eventually, that megaphone is going to grow. And so that was a big win for us. It was a lot of fun to see that happen. I literally just was cheering silently like this because I didn’t want to disturb the room.

Steve MacDonald: What’s great is that’s a fantastic story about thought leadership.

And all of a sudden, your expertise is being echoed. There’s also the other side where I am sure with the blog posts and the email blasts and things like that, we talked about if you could, before we started recording here if you could even just, on the click-through rate for your email campaigns, your newsletters, things like that, if you could increase that by 1%, how many more MQLs and meetings and SQLs and wins you get, right?

So there’s, there’s direct impact short term, there’s long term impact. It positions the company. So I think we’re getting it, but here’s my question. Not every C-suite member gets it.

Tim Hines: There are more times than what you are talking about, Steve?

Steve MacDonald: I don’t know. This is my radical honesty coming out.

Tim Hines: Oh, I like that. Nicely done, my friend.

Selling Thought Leadership Strategy Internally

Steve MacDonald: How do you position the thought leadership strategy, which is a vital 10 for all the reasons we’ve been talking about, how do you sell it in? Because if you can’t sell it in, you can’t get it funded. It’s not going to happen.

Tim Hines: Yeah. Well, thankfully, for where I’m at, at AmTrav, my CEO and other execs on the team really believe in content and thought leadership. They see the value in it. So I didn’t have to do much selling on the concept. Awesome. Took that off my plate. Now all we have to do is execute. That’s this experience.

I’ve been in other companies where I’ve had to do that. And I’m sure marketers who are listening to this or anyone who’s listening to this is probably like, oh man, I’m still trying to climb that tree with my exec team. And I love this question because it comes right out of my marketing starter playbook, actually, which within here, I actually highlight how you’re supposed to work with and sell your case on some of these things that you’re trying to do to the executive team.

Because they, depending on your company and your culture and the executive specifically, sometimes they’re like, you just figure it out. I trust you, whatever. I’m focused on this. Other ones are like, they want to see all the minutia, and you want to try to get them out of the weeds but also pull them down from the 30,000 feet, right?

You want to get them at that 15,000 feet level, right in the middle, in that region to give them exposure. So they know what’s going on, so they can see the value of marketing and get them out of your stuff. Right. So they’re not messing and tinkering with stuff and breaking things.

So I’ve had both where it’s very far removed and where they’re too deep. I’ll always take rather far removed than too deep. But selling to them and getting them on board with something, I think, is a challenge for all marketers and especially marketing starters who are trying to do something new within their organization.

And maybe this new thing is thought leadership. Honestly, I would find it really hard. And I don’t know all the spaces that your listeners are coming from, but in any progressive space, like SaaS or high tech or whatever, unless you’re in maybe some really old industry, which I guess there’s still a lot of those, I’d find it really hard to think, to believe that there’s a lot of executives left that don’t know the value, or at least somewhat get the value of content and thought leadership.

You just kind of have to ignite that fire underneath them. But the biggest way that you do this is the same way you market the company. You tell stories. You find out the problem and then show them how thought leadership can help solve it. And maybe they have a favorite set of competitors that they’re always like, Oh man, if we could just beat XYZ company, and then you go, Hmm, they’re really obsessed with XYZ company.

Let’s see what XYZ company is doing. Oh, wow. Look at XYZ. They have all of these great white papers. They have this great video library. They’re putting out these reports and other things. And you go to them and go, Hey, remember XYZ company? Part of why they’re doing so well is creating all this massive value with the thought leadership stuff.

Remember when I brought that up before, and you were like, I don’t know about that. Look at what your favorite competitor is doing. I think that one tactic right there is to look in the field and see what other people are doing. And it’s a little bit of cognitive bias. Find the one that proves your case and then bring it over to them to get them to buy into it.

I think that that’s definitely one good step right there.

Stop Planning and Start Doing

Steve MacDonald: If we could wrap this conversation up with a takeaway. What would you want the listeners here, the SaaS companies, it’s B2B companies all throughout the industry, that are running marketing for their company? What do you want them to take away from this podcast?

Tim Hines: Well, it’s your show, Steve, but I would say from this conversation and from kind of what I bring to the table to at least help share some of my background and what I do is that you can do it. You just have to get started. You can’t idle. You can’t just sit and plan forever.

You actually have to take the leap and make that start happen. There’s a lot of minutiae that marketers get caught in all the time. It happens to me. You’re just bogged down, and you’re like, man, I would love to sit down and write this plan out. You have to budget the time to figure that out and then make the move.

So that’s actually the last thing I have in my book. So I have this set of tips. And the last tip is to put down this book, roll up your sleeves, and get started. So getting started doing something and it’s not going to be right.

The first time, don’t expect perfection. It’s going to break. It’s okay. Because that’s what startup owners, founders like yourself, right? You’re in beta, you’re testing, you’re trying something, but it’s not going to be perfect when you finally go live. You’re going to have to iterate and make changes to your tool.

People are going to tell you this sucks. Hey, the UX is like this, it’d be cool if it had this feature. It’s always going to change. So it’s never going to be ready. It’s never going to be right. You just got to get it started and get something out there and then be quick to iterate on it. So that’s what I say, just get started like an entrepreneur would.

Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Well, Tim, thank you so much for coming on. If somebody wants to get a hold of you, should I put a link to LinkedIn, your profile?

Tim Hines: Yeah, definitely can get me on LinkedIn. Sure, you put that in the show notes, but if you search TN Hines, T-N-H-I-N-E-S on everything, all socials, you’ll find me.

So LinkedIn is one. You can also find me at tnhines.com. That’s my site where you can find more information about me. You can find my show there, which hopefully we’ll have you on soon, and find your recording there. And also my book and all the things. So yeah, tnhines.com is the spot. Fantastic.

Steve MacDonald: Again, thank you for coming on and sharing all of this and the stories and the enthusiasm behind it.

Tim Hines: It’s fun. Well, thank you, Steve. Really appreciate being on.

Next Steps

Tim Hines recommends that thought leadership content requires a distinct viewpoint and a healthy dose of radical honesty, not just echoing others. Unique perspectives and challenging norms build trust and distinguish you. To elevate your content’s ROI and revenue impact, don’t miss the opportunity to CLICK HERE and schedule a 20-minute strategy session with Steve MacDonald, founder of ConstentStrategies.io.

ELEVATING CONTENT MARKETING STANDARDS RAISES A CRUCIAL QUESTION:
Why shouldn’t the very act of creating thought leadership content also spark new conversations with in-pipeline deals, top prospects, and high-priority customers for revenue expansion? Or serve as the cornerstone for learning and applying voice-of-customer strategies? That’s the power of ABM Podcasting—engaging B2B buyers and customers in meaningful conversations that uncover essential go-to-market insights, support long sales cycles, reinforce your market perspective, build peer-level trust, and dismantle objections that kill deals.

Steven MacDonald

Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.

Steven MacDonald

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.