Thought leadership is growing in popularity as a tool to help support brand-building and visibility – and business founders and leaders often use it to help augment their personal brand.

When thought leadership is done well, it has a huge impact on the effectiveness of your marketing and your success as a business. But not every business has cracked the formula. There’s a lot of content out there that simply doesn’t cut the mustard, numerous speakers who don’t really enthuse, and a lot of ‘heard it before’ messaging being broadcast under the label of thought leadership.

If you’ve thought about thought leadership, consumed thought leadership pieces, and been inspired, or want to take your business marketing up a level, then you need to know why it works for B2B businesses.

When you understand thought leadership, set out with the right ambitions, and create an effective plan, you and your brand can do it better. Let’s take a look at the first bit.

What is thought leadership?

Thought leadership marketing is the term for the concepts, opinions, messages, and content that are put out by a company to engage audiences’ minds and give them fresh perspective.

The purpose of thought leadership marketing is to build authority, credibility, and respect for your brand – never simply to promote your products, solutions and services.

Thought leadership can present challenges to the norm, bust myths, and explain causes and solutions. It tries to confront commonly held opinion, alter received wisdom and influence attitudes, and it is frequently, but not always, future-focused.

Marketers use thought leadership to make their ideas and messages for change accessible and visible to target audiences, through a combination of different communication channels and marketing platforms – which could span anything from blogs on your own site, to articles in the media, to content that you create for social media, speeches you present at industry conferences, or events you build for yourself.

It is powerful, enormously flexible – but needs a clear and focused approach to be effective.

Why is thought leadership so popular?

Business decision makers want to know they’re working with people who are smart, have value to add, or are at the forefront of their market. They want partners with fresh ideas and new ways of thinking. They want to collaborate with brands who will add to their proposition.

One of the easiest ways for prospects and potential strategic partners to discover a company’s value is by seeing reading, watching or listening to what they have to say. The evidence is stacking up: 88% of business leaders say they spend a significant amount of time researching companies before inviting them to present or pitch.

83% of a typical purchase decision now happens before a buyer engages directly with a vendor, according to Gartner – the number of interactions that buyers have before they interact is getting bigger and bigger every year as people use their own power to research to find the companies and brands that resonate.

It is getting more and more important to have inspiring, forward-thinking, thought-provoking material out in the public domain for your prospects and possible partners to encounter. Long before you’ve even met them. Because if they can’t research you, you’ll be passed over in favour of a competitor who’s got their act together.

The role of thought leadership is only growing.

Research shows that over half of C-suite executives say they spend more time in consuming thought leadership content than before the pandemic began. And 92% of business leaders say thought leadership influenced them to award a deal.

If your target audience isn’t reading your thought leadership content, they’re probably reading your competitors’ content and absorbing their ideas instead.

But why does thought leadership work so well?

A company thought leadership strategy isn’t just about a leader – that’s a common misconception. While it’s important for a company’s founder or leader to be a strong contributor to communicating the thought leadership themes and messages, the WHOLE company must engage for it to be truly effective. The smaller the business, the more important the leader’s role in getting those ideas over, of course – and it is often intrinsically bound up with a founder’s personal brand.

To work well, thought leadership content has to be fresh, of high quality, meaningful and useful to its audience, or your audience will click away faster than you can say “self-indulgent drivel.”

But thought leadership is successful because people – even top decision makers and high-flying CEOs – are looking for the answers. It’s a powerful tool in B2B marketing.

Engaging senior targets with (good) thought leadership content

There are pitfalls to avoid when you’re creating thought leadership content – remember, the purpose of thought leadership is to engage your audience with your insight and smart thinking. Not sell to them. The CEO of a target company doesn’t want to hear product pitches from you.

A lot of content out there just doesn’t make the grade. In fact, 71% of decision-makers say that less than half the thought leadership they consume brings valuable insights. And you don’t want to be in that category.

But since 87% of buyers say thought leadership can be both intellectually rigorous and fun, the more exposure your thought leadership content gets, the more likely you are to gain traction and authority.

Influencing sales and building trust with thought leadership

Good thought leadership can significantly influence sales because it can gain the attention at a higher level in a prospect’s organisation, opening doors which may otherwise be out of reach and that could not be opened via any product pitch. In fact, 91% of CEOs use thought leadership to build their watchlist of companies they may want to talk to about partnerships and more.

For growing companies that really matters – thought leadership can help you demonstrate that you are worthy of attention and one to include on the consideration or RFP list, even if you are smaller and younger than the ‘usual suspects’ for a particular solution.

Thought leadership has value throughout the sales funnel.

At the top, it can be used to engage attention, build visibility, and attract new prospects – because it is powerful content to feed marketing campaigns, social selling and PR activities.
Mid funnel, as you nurture potential customers and clients know, like and trust sequence, thought leadership content in various forms can help them get to know you, trust your judgement – and shake up their assumptions.
At the bottom of the funnel. It can help to differentiate you from a final stage competitor or support the case for selecting you as a supplier in addition to the mundane factors of features and benefits.

Agitating a topic – drilling into the detail, questioning received wisdoms and industry habits in ways that you tune to the interest and needs of your audience – can show your relevance, as well as intelligence.

Writing content that brings fresh insight into the knotty problems of your prospects will engage your audience and give you an endless source of discussion points.

Reformat, reuse, maximise content to give something for everyone

Thought leadership content can take many forms. Companies who succeed at thought leadership marketing tend to use a broad mix of formats, media, and platforms to extend the reach of their ideas and themes.

It might sound like a lot of work, but with the right strategy in place, thought leadership can quickly generate a wealth of content.

Thought leadership pieces can be weighty pieces like white papers, reports or eBooks. They may take the shape of blog posts, guest posts, opinion editorials, press articles, or advertorial features. Themes can be communicated through speeches, or via participation on industry conference panels. They can be the subject of social campaigns or distributed through email marketing or customer newsletters. Or, they might be shaped for, and delivered through, webinars, podcasts or videos.

Every single form can be shared, maximised, promoted and links proliferated across social platforms – and even with a little paid social promotion added in. When you couple thought leadership and smart social strategy, followers and audiences can spread the word even further.

One item, well crafted, can be the source of many others. If you author a weighty report or paper as the central item or ‘hero’ content item, you can repurpose the content into numerous usable items to use in your marketing. As you build evidence of your insight, you can seek out podcasts and speaking engagement – or may be approached by organisers, unsolicited.

Or perhaps an e-book’s the ideal format for your audience? A good lead magnet eBook, with real value to offer and promoted strategically with social content and email marketing, could mean hitting your three month download targets in just a couple of weeks, as we did for one construction technology client.

Giving your prospects a wide variety of congruent thought leadership content across multiple touch points means they are more likely to encounter you – when they do, you will unquestionably be more memorable, more interesting, and more respected.

Insight, intelligence and ideas

Although it is not focused on driving sales and promoting products, thought leadership can play an important part of the sales funnel. Getting your name and brand out there with powerful and thoughtful pieces of content is a very effective marketing tactic.

In showing your audience that you’re the brand, business, or person they want to work with based on your insights, intelligence, and ideas, you’re putting yourself ahead of the game.

When you first start planning a thought leadership marketing approach, it can be difficult to know where to start. You need to think about your audience and industry as you decide, clarify and outline your themes, decide on how you will communicate, and create an effective thought leadership marketing plan.

Are you aiming to get engaged in thought leadership? Take our free quiz to discover your Thought Leadership Quotient now, so you can plan your next steps with confidence.

*Data drawn from research by Edelman, Gartner and FT Longitude.

Why and how does thought leadership work for B2B marketing?