There's often a healthy scepticism of anyone claiming to be a thought leader these days. However, the idea behind the buzzword, namely being a trusted voice in the industry, and a driving force for progress, remains an important feature of B2B digital marketing strategy. So, where does that leave thought leadership today?

What Is Thought Leadership Marketing?

Thought leadership marketing is a content marketing strategy aimed at building brand authority through active participation in your industry community. It centres your content marketing efforts on answering the biggest questions your target audience has on a particular topic. It uses various types of content, such as case studies, speaking engagements, video content, guest posts, and white papers to position a brand as a leader in its field.

An audience-focused intent is important. If your thought leadership content comes across as blatantly self-promotional, people will tune out. You’ll come across as self-absorbed and will lose the trust you’re attempting to build.

Whereas something like paid advertising can offer immediate benefits, thought leadership marketing takes more time to show results. However, it has the potential to build your brand in a more meaningful and sustainable way than advertising. When done correctly, your audience will want to engage with your leadership content. They become content advocates who recommend your work to their network, further spreading your influence.

The Benefits of Thought Leadership

Research has shown the benefits of thought leadership content for communicating with B2B audiences. According to a 2020 joint study by Edelman and LinkedIn:

• 89% of decision-makers reported that thought leadership was effective in enhancing their perceptions of an organisation.

• 59% of decision-makers used thought leadership to vet a company’s capabilities.

• 49% of decision-makers said thought leadership influenced their purchasing decisions.

By communicating your opinions, you become part of the conversation. Over time, potential clients and members of your industry will associate your brand with insight and authority. With your brand top of mind, they are far more likely to consider your organisation when selecting a business partner.

The same Edelman-LinkedIn study found that B2B buyers are likely to pay more to work with companies who have a strong leadership presence. Thought leadership can have a high ROI.

Status of Thought Leadership Today

The good news is that B2B decision-makers are actively looking for good leadership content. According to the Edelman-LinkedIn study, 48% of respondents read one or more hours of thought leadership content per week.

The problem is that, for every company that executes a solid thought leadership strategy, quite a few attempt it and miss the mark. According to a 2020 study by Mantis Research, Orbit Media and SurveyMonkey, 66% of marketers said that thought leadership was a priority for themselves or the brands they work for. Yet, only 26% of respondents considered their thought leadership to be very successful.

The Problem With Current B2B Thought Leadership Content

The reason thought leadership fails is because of inferior quality content. It often lacks original insights, is poorly researched, or written solely from the company’s point of view, providing the audience with little in the way of value.

Another reason thought leadership content gets dismissed is that it’s too dry, if not outright difficult to consume. Rather than energising readers, this poorly composed material only confuses and bores them.

With so much poor quality content cluttering up the internet, there is a thirst for considered, in-depth and actionable information. Modern thought leadership needs to work hard and do better to meet this need.

According to the Mantis-Orbit-SurveyMonkey study, to be considered thought leaders, it is essential that content creators:

• Communicate in a way that’s easy to understand (83%)

• Challenge the way their audience thinks (64%)

• Publish data to validate their position (61%)

• Say something new (59%)

• Have strong opinions (51%)

In order words, your content needs to have a clear direction, point of view and impact on your audience. Don’t be a brand that just publishes content for the sake of it.

The focus should be to inform decision-makers, keeping them abreast of important industry issues and helping them to take a view on the future. You also need to show empathy and awareness of the key challenges and priorities they face. To quote the Content Marketing Institute ‘What’s lacking today is not the thought, it’s the leadership’.

Rising to the Challenge of Thought Leadership

More than anything, for your thought leadership strategy to work, your material has to be worth consuming. Here are six ways to cut through the noise and establish yourself as an industry voice.

Think Fast, Move Quickly

There are two competing ways to have an impact these days. First is to focus on being found via meeting the search engines requirement of comprehensiveness. But the risk of that is producing boring, me-too content that doesn’t set you apart.

The other way is to focus on being heard, which requires staying current and saying things that are worth listening to. Your audience is looking for people who can help them understand and analyse complex questions and problems. Having a firm opinion in our fast-moving, uncertain times is a challenge, but doing so presents a clear point of differentiation.

One way to provide answers is to conduct objective, painstaking original research. However, this takes a considerable amount of time, effort and resources. Another route is to develop a reputation for turning around topical, bang up to date to content.

If you have a clear perceptual framework, you can lead opinion instead of following it. Your analysis and solutions need to have depth and rigour to avoid the pitfalls of being reductive or opening yourself up to accusations of producing a 'hot take'. But, as long as you're not reluctant to have a point of view and stand out, a news-driven layer of content can help to reinforce the brand credibility you build with your long-form content and other publications.

Don’t shy away from controversy either. As long as you can back up your claims and are willing to stand by your opinion, controversy can help you gain attention. If you want to beat the algorithms, you need reactions and to get a reaction; you need to say something of interest.

Diversify Your Format

There’s still a place for thorough analysis as long as you’ve got something meaningful to say and can say it well. However, take inspiration from your audience's divergent content preferences and their needs at different stages of the customer journey.

Diversifying allows you to satisfy different preferences. Some people like to snack and graze, while others like to go in depth. Some depend on visual information, and others require auditory content. Meet these format needs by spinning what you want to say into infographics, blog posts, video marketing, and webinars.

For instance, according to a 2020 content preferences study, during early stage research, B2B buyers prefer quick-hitting content like: Listicals (81%), Blogs (72%), Infographics (66%), and Videos (64%).

Meanwhile, the most popular types of content marketing for late-stage research are: Case Studies (39%), User Reviews (38%), Analyst Reports (36%), ROI Calculators (28%).

If your thought piece relies on data, using data visualisation platforms or interactive maps can offer a more engaging presentation format.

Another popular option is the podcast. These are easy to consume at different points of the day, while engaged in other activities, and offer a level of intimacy with your audience that you can’t get through a PDF.

Create Micro-content

You show thought leadership through an ongoing conversation with your audience, not just a single white paper or presentation. Add a layer of snackable, easily digested micro-content to your content marketing strategy to support your longer-form pieces.

Design this layer of the campaign to capture attention across multiple channels. The point is to provide a foot in the door with time-poor executives and drive traffic to your long-form content.

These could be in the format of:

• A beautifully designed executive summary that is easy and enjoyable to read. No one has time for dry analysis when your competitors are producing snappy, entertaining takes.

• A series of blog posts discussing the major points from your key piece of content.

• Short-form videos and audio snippets suitable for sharing on social media platforms (e.g. sizzle reels).

Pay attention to making this content highly shareable. You could use it to showcase your most contentious ideas and start a conversation on social. Collaborate with industry influencers to benefit from their authority and established audience. Share practical advice with an actionable component to engage a wide variety of people.

More than anything, remember that short should never mean shallow. Always make sure that even your snackable content is worth consuming. Never take your audience’s time for granted – not even for one minute.

Stop Broadcasting and Engage

We all know the recipe because everyone is using it – do the research, create the content, put it out there for your audience to consume. We need to create stronger engagement with our audiences.

Remember, social media is more than a content publishing platform. It gives us the opportunity to connect with our audience, listen in on their conversations, and do our research in real-time. For instance, conducting polls and surveys, secondary data searches, and sentiment analysis.

B2B buyers are also pushing for thought leadership content to be more interactive. Focus your strategy on generating a buzz and building a peer group of high calibre industry influencers and thought leaders. This doesn’t have to look like the traditional multi-day conference format. It could be something as simple as a collaborative video panel that goes live on YouTube or social.

Consider the Role of Personal Branding Within the Organisation

Shifting your thought leadership away from a purely objective, research-led approach means you need to consider presentation. Having a clear opinion allows a company to connect with people on a more intimate level, but to do that it needs a face. People want to get to know the author.

Thought leaders are people recognised by prospects, clients, peers and even competitors as being an authority in their areas of specialisation.

You're not restricted to executives or academics. Anyone has the potential to become a thought leader, from the CEO to a customer service representative, so it’s worth spending time to identify and cultivate ‘star thinkers’ across your company.

What makes someone a thought leader is that they deeply understand their field, the needs of their customers, and the broader market in which they operate. They can also communicate their ideas engagingly.

These are more than spokespeople. They don’t just read off a script. True thought leaders intrigue, challenge, and inspire their audience. They’re the person who customers and peers turn to for new perspectives or advice.

This trust is why they can help people to connect with your brand on a more intimate level. Audiences extend their trust of the thought leader to the organisation blending personal and corporate reputation.

This mixing of company brand with the personal brands of your employees is not without risk. You need to make sure that your brand’s voice and that of your “star thinkers” are compatible. Take, for example, the recent sacking of Tom Goodwin whose very public parting with his bosses at Publicis Groupe came after a spate of Tweets on the Coronavirus.

However, you can't mitigate the risk but just using your employees as spokespeople and putting words into their mouth. If the person fronting the idea isn’t doing the thinking – they’re merely playing a role. If either of you gets caught out, it might break your audience’s trust.

Speak to the Whole Organisation

Thought leadership content goes hand-in-hand with account based marketing. It helps create agreement from multiple levels of a target organisation by demonstrating you understand their needs, concerns and aspirations from a variety of perspectives. Thought leadership marketing can also help you build a core audience within an organisation who will act as advocates and address concerns internally on your behalf.

To do this effectively, you need to consider the different people involved in the purchasing decision and provide thought leadership content that appeals to their individual concerns. This entails mapping your content to their customer journey. Doing so ensures that you meet the intent and needs of the account at every stage of their relationship with your organisation.

How 1827 Marketing Can Help

Properly executed, thought leadership marketing can cement your reputation as a trusted advisor and authority in your field. By underlining your expertise, it can build recognition and trust with your target audience – ultimately resulting in more leads and closed sales.

1827 Marketing can help with thought leadership campaign planning. We’ll bring our best people together with yours to create innovative and effective thought leadership content that drives results.

Contact us today to learn more!