Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership is NOT Content Marketing

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I recently opened my inbox and found an email from a reporter I worked with early in my career.

My former colleague had just read my blog post and she had one burning question for me:

“So WHAT IS thought leadership? It’s an inside baseball term. Can you define it?”

Good question
But it’s also one that we marketers also need to ask ourselves. Even among marketers there seems to be some confusion about what thought leadership is. I often hear people use thought leadership as a synonym for content marketing – another big buzzword du jour.

But they are not one and the same thing. Not at all.

Thought leadership, to summarize Forrester Research analyst Jeff Ernst, is the strategic process of coming up with and sharing big ideas, insights and new perspectives on the critical issues that buyers face.

On the other hand, content marketing is the tactical process of producing communications (i.e., content) for your prospects, customers and other key target audiences.

Blurring the lines
Much of that content marketing typically focuses on building awareness for your company and selling its solutions.

That’s the stuff many marketers spend the bulk of their days creating: product brochures, web content, sales presentations, email campaigns and the like.

Most business people would never confuse this type of content as thought leadership.

But there are plenty of executives and even some marketers who think of white papers, eBooks, articles and blog posts as thought leadership content.

But it isn’t necessarily so.

That white paper or eBook may do a nice job of summing up current industry trends, thinking and approaches, but it may be little more than a thinly disguised product pitch.

In my view, it’s not true thought leadership unless it does one or more of these 6 things:
• Challenges current assumptions about a business challenge or approach
• Presents new insights, perspectives or ideas
• Offers innovative solutions to an existing problem(s)
• Pinpoints areas of opportunity, process improvement or profitability for prospects and customers
• Provides real leadership that inspires people to believe, contribute, collaborate and take action to address a problem
• Anticipates future trends and challenges

The future of thought leadership

True thought leadership will never go out of style. The world will always be hungry for fresh thinking and leadership.

However, to be effective, thought leadership must build credibility and attract followers. Most importantly, it must offer a vision for change and must lead on the issues that matter most to buyers.

How do you define thought leadership? What would you add to the list of requirements for true thought leadership? What do you see as the critical differences between content marketing and thought leadership?

Sheryl can be reached at sherylaroehl@gmail.com.

 

How to Avoid the 9 Pitfalls of Thought Leadership Marketing

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When done well, thought leadership marketing elevates your brand, engages buyers at crucial stages in the sales cycle and helps your company achieve a competitive advantage.

But, if you’re an experienced marketer,  you’ve probably seen a few thought leadership projects go off the rails.  I know I have.

Early in my marketing career, a VP had our marketing team develop a series of white papers for every vertical industry the company served.

His brainchild was to use virtually identical content, swapping out only the name of the industry, a few minor details and a different colored cover for each white paper.

Of course, our cookie-cutter white papers flopped. That’s because they were created based on the faulty premise that prospects from any industry faced the same general set of business challenges. Not surprisingly, they gathered dust in the marketing closet.

9 Pitfalls of Thought Leadership Marketing

So why do thought leadership marketing initiatives like this one miss the mark? Let’s take a look at the 9 pitfalls and how to avoid them:

1. Reactive mode. How many times do we start a marketing initiative in response to another department’s request or an executive’s decision? More often than not, marketers plunge into the project without first establishing a strategy.

How to fix it: Make sure you lay out a clear strategy, messaging platform and process before you produce any communications. Then, build an integrated marketing campaign that includes multiple tactics and touch points for reaching your target buyers.

2. One size doesn’t fit all. Buyers, prospects and customers aren’t all alike. Just as in our white paper example, you cannot deliver the same content to different target audiences and expect it to resonate with everyone, let alone anyone.

How to fix it: Take the time to do some research about your target audience. Whenever possible, interview buyers and customers to learn about their business challenges and priority initiatives. Based on your findings, build buyer personas to use as a guide in developing relevant content tailored to each target audience.

3. Go ahead and admit it, you’re just regurgitating. Some companies think thought leadership means compiling a bunch of research and serving it up in a 50-slide PowerPoint deck or a 12-page white paper. But real thought leadership doesn’t just report or educate; it also conveys a distinctive point of view.

How to fix it: Be sure you have something new to add to the industry conversation before you develop any content. Take a strong stand or at least bring a fresh perspective on an old problem.

4. The snooze factor. Boring thought leadership often results from playing it too safe. It can also happen when you haven’t done enough research and don’t know the subject well enough to deliver insightful and lively content.

How to fix it: Make an effort to add a dash of personality to your content. Spice up presentations with striking images or video clips. Hit the delete key on empty jargon like “robust” or “flexible” wherever you find them. And develop an ear for utilizing authentic language that buyers would actually use if they were telling the story.

5. No practical value. Your thought leadership shouldn’t just describe business trends or problems; it should also offer the buyer useful advice and a roadmap for addressing these issues.

How to fix it: Make sure your thought leadership content always contains actionable tips and guidance that will be useful to prospects regardless of whether they end up purchasing your company’s solutions or not.

6. Salesy. Real thought leadership isn’t a thinly veiled sales pitch.

How to fix it: You’ll have plenty of time to trot out the sales presentation or the product collateral when the prospect is finally ready to evaluate solutions. The role of thought leadership is to engage buyers and to get them to buy into your approach. That means telling, not blatant selling.

7. Lacks credibility. If you or your company isn’t already an established subject matter expert in a given field, then you will have to do the hard work of earning the industry’s respect and credibility over time. There are no short cuts.

How to fix it: Securing speaking opportunities at meetings and conferences is a good way to build up your company’s “street cred” You can also partner with an established thought leader such as an industry analyst to deliver a co-branded white paper or webinar. Keep in mind, though, that it can take many months or even years to become a trusted and known industry authority.

8. Disorganized. Dull. Death by PowerPoint. There are a million and one reasons why content doesn’t measure up. Whatever the reason, don’t play the excuse game.

How to fix it: Work at improving your thought leadership content. Create a strong team of subject matter experts that you can leverage for speaking, blogging, press interviews and other opportunities. And tap into internal and/or external resources like freelance writers, PR professionals, speaking coaches and graphic designers to help you deliver higher-quality content marketing.

9. Fails the leadership test. If it doesn’t lead, then it’s not thought leadership.

How to fix it: Real thought leadership dares to take a bold stand. It gets out in front of an issue to provide buyers with novel solutions and a better understanding of where the industry may be headed. Most importantly, thought leadership must lead and attract followers to your company and its approach.

The bottom line is you need to develop a clear strategy and invest in the necessary resources to create provocative, insightful thought leadership that will engage your prospects and get them to buy into your approach. There are no shortcuts to becoming a thought leader, but the hard work pays off.

What other thought leadership marketing pitfalls have you experienced? How do you avoid them?