A company that is known as a thought leader can gain considerable advantages in the market.
But what exactly is a thought leader?
A thought leader has unique, innovative, and important ideas about your industry and works to gain a reputation around those ideas. As a thought leader, your company will gain credibility in the market and become a trusted advisor and partner. Potential customers will gravitate toward your products and services because you are known as an expert. Journalists will seek you out for quotes. Analysts will call you for your expert opinion. Industry websites will link to you.
That’s a significant list of benefits for attaining thought leadership status.
However, thought leadership cannot be built through advertising and promotion. It isn’t about pitching products. And yet, thought leadership can bring attention to your company, products, and services in a way that will make your marketing and advertising programs more effective.
Follow these five guidelines to give your company an opportunity to earn a successful thought leadership position in your market.
1. Develop a point of view
A point of view is your unique interpretation of customer challenges or industry trends. What’s your recommendation for overcoming challenges? What is happening in the market today and why? What changes or advancements can we expect over the next 3–5 years? Answers to these questions represent possible thought leadership points of view.
While you must be able to back up your point of view with research and other educational content, your point of view need not be unassailable—but it does need to be your take on what’s happening. Another company will have a different point of view. It comes down to how you back up your ideas.
What’s your company’s point of view, and how is it important to the market?
2. Use content to reinforce your point of view
You embrace only one point of view, but may use a number of themes that reflect it. For example, if your point of view is that your market is moving toward closer collaboration between suppliers and scientists, you might develop content around the concepts of trust, transparency, and technology sharing.
Use white papers, articles, webinars, videos, application notes, and case studies to showcase your concepts and reinforce your point of view. An important guideline to follow when developing thought leadership content: make it first and foremost about your audience and what they care about, rather than being about your company’s agenda. That alone demonstrates real leadership.
3. Make the media your ally
Thought leaders have a mutually beneficial relationship with the media. Media outlets, such as industry websites and publications, are always seeking story ideas that will resonate with their audiences.
They don’t want to run a feature story on your latest product release, but they may want to feature one of your customers who has achieved significant benefits using your latest product. Audiences love stories about people like them, who have similar goals and face similar challenges.
Your objective should be to pitch your customers to editors, and then serve as a subject matter expert to answer questions and provide background information.
You should develop a list—and keep it updated—of editors and analysts that cover your industry. Contact them with story ideas you believe will be relevant to them.
As your relationships with editors grow stronger, they may very well begin reaching out to you for quotes and other content in your area of thought leadership.
4. Develop and maintain an extensive network of KOLs
Nothing lends more credibility than third-party validation. A secret many successful companies use is having an at-the-ready network of customers who are willing to be quoted in articles, serve as webinar speakers, or be featured in customer testimonial videos.
There are several ways to find such KOLs. One way is to conduct a literature or grant review to find out who has published highly cited papers or received grants in specific focus areas. Cross reference that list to your customer list. If the KOLs you have identified are your current customers, check to see if your sales team has a relationship with them and if they would be willing to speak to the press or your own internal teams about their work and how your products have helped solve a problem. If they agree, be sure to thank them for their time and let them review how their comments will be used.
The care and nurturing of KOLs can be one of the single most important relationships your company can have to help you establish thought leadership.
5. Track and use editorial mentions
It’s easy to track any editorial mentions that appear in the media. A simple Google Alert can suffice if you aren’t using a marketing automation or social media platform that offers such functionality.
Positive editorial mentions are gold. They are basically endorsements from the market, and therefore they are trusted by your audience much more than your own promotional content. You can use editorial mentions in your marketing efforts to strengthen your thought leadership position, support your message, and build rapport with your audience.
For example, a reprint from a publication featuring a story on a customer or your point of view on a key topic can be used over and over again in your marketing. A quote from an article can be featured on your website or other content.
Positioning your company as a thought leader requires a commitment. Unlike marketing campaigns that often have an established beginning and end, thought leadership is an ongoing process. Your reputation will grow over time.
However, the results of your thought leadership strategy are a steady stream of data that you can and should regularly measure.
You can track the number of stories you place, editorial mentions, white paper downloads, and visits to specific web pages that support your thought leadership strategy. Comments on articles or blog posts are also an important metric, as are social media mentions and shares.
By tracking the results of your efforts, you will discover what type of customer stories editors are interested in and what thought leadership content your audience finds most relevant and educational. What is downloaded the most? What gets clicked on most often? Which editors are most interested in your message? Use this data to help guide future content creation and media choices.
Thought leadership isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a viable marketing strategy with a significant potential upside. Consider launching a thought leadership initiative in 2020.