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How is your thought leadership program going?
Is it more reflection than guidance?
Or are the thoughts more similar to what everyone else is saying?
New research from Edelman and LinkedIn says that most thought leaders don't seem to be much thought-provoking or inspiring. Furthermore, resources are largely inadequate and misused. But if done well, it can greatly influence sales and pricing.
What gives? Are B2B marketers failing to provide thought leadership at the right moment in the customer journey? Are you gating too much of it? Are you not talking to the right influencers and subject matter experts in your company?
Or are you failing to challenge your audience with real food for thought?
We submitted these questions to CMI's chief strategic advisor, Robert Rose, for comment. Watch this video or continue reading:
In B2B marketing, thought leadership has always been at the heart of content strategies. When B2B marketing was still called “industrial marketing,” sales teams built personal relationships with customers. When buyers needed a new widget or service, they typically called their trusted salesperson, who recommended additional or different solutions from their company.
At that time, the sales teams acted in an advisory capacity. They knew their industry inside and out. They invited other industry experts to accompany them on customer meetings.
When digitalization came along in the early 2000s, everything changed and buyers started researching online. In response, companies launched research programs and had scientists write white papers and articles for business journals. Instead of viewing thought leadership as an important product offering for customers, marketers saw it as a shortcut to attract more attention to other marketing content. They focused on optimizing their websites for search to answer customers' most frequently asked questions organically and with as many keywords as possible.
In many ways, the last twenty years have seen a repetition of this strategy. An inherent tension developed. You want to make sure your B2B brand appears at the top of the list for the most common questions prospects have about an approach, toolset, industry outlook, etc. But you also want to stand out from all your B2B competitors who are trying to do the exact same thing.
The net result?
Thought leadership becomes an ocean of different ways to express the best and most common practices. They create content that feels familiar and aligns with current thinking, rather than answering the critical questions no one knows how to ask – also known as thought leadership.
I call it “mutually assured irrelevance.” Everyone in the industry says the right thing, but no one helps the customer do otherwise.
The Reaching Beyond The Ready report from Edelman and LinkedIn (registration required) includes a survey of 3,500 management-level B2B professionals in December 2023. They wanted to gain insights into the state of thought leadership and how it can do more than just increase brand awareness.
Not surprisingly, the study found that people exhibit a lot of thought leadership. More than half of decision makers and C-suite executives spend more than an hour on this every week. 73 percent say an organization's thought leadership creates a more trustworthy basis for assessing its skills and competencies than its marketing materials and product sheets. Both things are good.
However, only 15% of those surveyed consider thought leadership to be very good or excellent.
That's not so good.
The researchers point out that the leadership component of thought leadership appears to be missing:
“When done right, it gets buyers to look at their business and the challenges it faces from new perspectives, protecting you from competitors who are taking on their own thought leadership.”
I'll say it differently. Thought leadership is not about answering frequently asked questions. Thought leadership delivers the rarely given answers (RGAs).
The research report shows that companies do not understand how to measure thought leadership and see too few resources as the main obstacle to developing more effective thought leadership. Approximately 50% of thought leadership producers say their programs are under-resourced.
But I think that the lack of sufficient resources is just a symptom. After all, no marketer has ever said, “I have too many resources and too much money.”
The real challenge is that most B2B companies still view their thought leadership program as a short-term marketing campaign to generate demand or drive leads to the top of their funnel. Or they see it as a brand-building measure to attract more attention.
They don't see thought leadership as a product or service that is as important (or more important) than the products or services they sell in the market.
A great thought leadership program deserves the same attention as your best product or service offering. It deserves a PR strategy. It deserves a paid media strategy. It deserves internal communications support.
This doesn’t necessarily mean more money or more resources. (Well, maybe that's ultimately the case, but that's not the key.) It means taking the time to make your thought leadership a business strategy and not another market tactic to get more attention at the beginning of the buyer's journey to excite.
As research shows, an effective thought leadership approach has three key characteristics:
- Shares strong research and data
- Help buyers understand their business challenges
- Provides concrete guidance.
This type of thought leadership is based on accurately understanding what your customers need, not what they are asking for. It delivers immediate value and differentiates based on how your brand sees the world.
In other words, thought leadership is one of your core products. Treat it like that.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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