In the first article in this series, I talked about the slippery concept of thought leadership. At one level, it’s an easy idea to grasp: demonstrate domain expertise and knowledge to position your organisation as a leader among its peers and competitors.
Peel that layer back though, and it’s easy to see that, without a very clear understanding of ‘why’ and then ‘how’ to bring a thought leadership program to life, you can very easily end up making a lot of noise about whatever pops into your company’s metaphorical head.
Some of it might help position your firm usefully; a lot of it probably won’t. Worse still, it might actually de-position your company in a way you never intended.
Ultimately, thought leadership is about creating alignment with buyers (keep in mind I’m talking about purchasers of more complex, high-value business-to-business B2B products and services).
The aim with any thought leadership program is to demonstrate aligned context and relevancy with those organisations that meet your ideal client profile.
In other words, we’re trying to build the case for ‘why’ and then demonstrate ‘why us’ as the best-fit provider.
I will often explain this in my public presentations and client sessions as:
“We want recognition and engagement with a group that matters to us, to the point that they believe we matter to them and will actively support our value proposition and sales process.”
So, if that’s the objective, how do we link that to a company’s value proposition?
One way to consider this is to frame your thought leadership objective using this phrasing:
To be the x, so that y.
Deep, I know.
It’s about starting with the outcome we’re seeking, rather than with a thought leadership topic idea.
Here’s an example of how we might bring this to life for a cybersecurity consulting firm that wants to demonstrate relevancy and context to its ideal client type, which is critical infrastructure providers. These are organisations that own or operate the infrastructure on which society depends day to day, such as power, gas, rail, water, airports, ports, distribution centres for large retailers, etc.
The cybersecurity consulting firm’s thought leadership intent statement might read:
“To be instantly recognised by our ideal prospects as Australia’s most trusted, capable, and effective cybersecurity consultancy in the critical infrastructure sector, so that our services are constantly sought out by our ideal prospects.”
So, how exactly do we achieve that?
Key to answering that question is understanding which thought leadership strategy to pursue. To do this, our firm uses a framework I’ve developed from 25 years of communication and marketing consulting to B2B companies around the world.
In this framework, there are seven possible thought leadership strategies, and only one of these will fit your organisation type.
Until you define which applies to your company, there’s a good chance your thought leadership content-generation program will be misdirected, struggle for a flow of ideas and content, or not resonate with your sales leaders and subject matter experts, which means limited internal support.
These are the seven thought leadership strategies. I will dedicate an article to each of these in the coming weeks, but here is a summary. The order is random:
- People – we are the leading experts.
- Process – our process delivers a superior outcome.
- Product – our product is the best.
- CEO – our leader defines or leads the industry with their vision and passion.
- Societal – we are the most powerful and important voice on this issue or cause.
- Political – we shape the kind of nation, state, or community we live in.
- Cultural – our culture is what defines us and why we matter.
Don’t think of these as values or strengths of an organisation. Clearly, every organisation needs people, processes, and products or they don’t exist.
In addition, point seven isn’t about company culture, it’s about the position of an organisation in contemporary culture.
The key is to be very clear about which of these (one only) is the primary reason for your customers doing business with you. What are they buying from you, exactly? Once you get this right, you can form your thought leadership program with a high degree of confidence (and generating content to support it gets a lot easier too).
For example, you require a people-led thought leadership strategy if the reason your customers come to you primarily is to access your human expertise. And, you’re going to need to double down on making those experts, individually and collectively, the face of your thought leadership program.
Typical people-led organisations that will run this strategy are management consultancies, creative agencies, lobbyists, architects, law firms, barristers, accounting practices, consulting engineers, and the like.
The clients of a people-led thought leadership strategy (in a B2B setting) are seeking expert firms and, often, individuals within those firms who have the reputation, experience, networks, and expertise they need to solve very specific problems.
A firm leveraging a people-led thought leadership strategy is going to bring those individuals, along with their credentials and experience, to light at every opportunity. Amplifying them, their insights, and their knowledge on important matters is the central plank.
In the coming articles, I’ll drill into each strategy in more detail and the rationale behind them. I’ll also cover the most common areas of confusion, including:
- Are we product-, process-, or people-led? It can be hard to work out sometimes when you’re in the trenches.
- Which strategy is right in a company consisting of different business units or brands?
- How do we align a strong personality in our business to the right strategy?
Adam Benson,
CEO
The Recognition Group
This article is completely generated by the author. No artificial intelligence tools were used to create or edit this copy.
Other articles in the thought leader series include:
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- Why it’s hard to make your B2B company a thought leader (and what to do about it)
- The two myths about thought leadership that challenger brands waste time worrying about.
- Recognition and authority – the two drivers of thought leadership
- What is people-led thought leadership strategy?
- Thought leadership marketing for companies that sell a process
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This article originally published on LinkedIn here: HERE
