Senior executives are soaking up B2B thought leadership content

B2B, Brand Building, Social Media, Thought Leadership 2 Responses »
Aug 042010

Thomas Rozaf of Social Media Science recently came out with a great post called B2B Marketing: Thought Leadership Rules All.  Please read below for one of the best points he makes:

  • “A recent study by Forbes and Google actually reveals that over 60% of senior executives are clicking “search” as much as 1/2 dozen times each day while looking for business related information.  Thanks to the web, marketers are now having those leads come to them.  This puts a lot of emphasis on being a thought leader and proving authority, credibility and knowledge”

Authority, credibility and knowledge.  Let’s look at these qualities one by one.

Authority – Many senior executives are authorities in domains that are adjacent to the domain your SME’s (subject matter experts) are blogging about. One good way to build authority with other experts is to create primary research and then have your SME’s write about it in a provocative way.  Senior executives respect strong opinions if backed up with real primary research.   Of course, please make sure that the authority you build can be leveraged by your marketing, business development and sales teams.

Credibility – Credibility springs forth from authority.  Credibility can be sustained by offering a stream of genuine thought leadership content. Credibility helps you get on the short list earlier in the sales cycle.

Knowledge – Knowledge to act.  Executives need information from ALL different sources to make the best decision.  Of course, much of the knowledge they utilize is developed in-house, but many executives look toward outside experts on the subject up for decisioning.

Posted by admin at 2:19 pm Tagged with:

"Sticky" compelling thought leadership content nurtures relationships with your prospects and customers

B2B, Lead Nurturing, Open Leadership, Social Media, Thought Leadership 2 Responses »
Jul 302010

In the dot com boom earlier in this millenium, much was made about the need to have “sticky” content to draw visitors to your site.  While the dynamics of the web have shifted (see my post on the siteless web), the need for great content that nurtures relationships with your customer and prospects has not. In fact, a recent post by Rob Levitt (whose blog is on my blogroll) offers a good description of the power of compelling sticky content:

  • “Customers want to chew over and debate your ideas……. To help make this happen, you need to leverage your best thought leadership content by publishing compelling bits and bytes in appropriate formats across the networks and channels where your customers congregate….

What make thought leadership content compelling?  What makes them want to “chew over and debate your ideas”?  For one, it needs to be based on primary research by your own firm’s subject matter experts (see Rob’s article for more).   The hard part is gaining the commitment of management to invest in this research.  Typically subject matter experts are very busy and the demand for their time and expertise is super high.  If senior management shows their commitment (through MBO goals based on the production of thought leadership content), your thought leadership quality and quantity will definitely improve.

Just as important, your TL content needs to be relevant.  Does it address key issues that prevent companies in  your industry from growing (for example, the impact of proposed regulations that have a good chance of being passed into law)? Does it address high priority issues with hard dollars tied to them (“nice to have’s” have gone away in this economy)?

Thought leadership is not easy…..but than again, nothing of lasting value can be produced without hard work and commitment.

Posted by admin at 11:30 am Tagged with:

Re-orient your B2B marketing staff by focusing on Thought Leadership

B2B, Content Marketing, Lead Nurturing, Social Media, Thought Leadership 4 Responses »
Jul 262010

Making thought leadership an integral part of  your B2B marketing mix can dramatically help your team produce attractive content; in turn, this “sticky” content will encourage customers and prospects to engage in a recurring online relationship.  But why is this the case?  Two words – customer focus.

With many B2B organization it’s all about  ”Our product can do this” or  ”Our product can do that”  (Take a look at this site for example of this type of marketing).  Its okay to provide such content for direct comparison, but let’s face it, customers and prospects won’t return to your site for “heavy handed” content.

Since thought leadership is at its core customer focused, your marketing staff can’t rely on how they have (product) marketed in the past.  By putting themselves in the customer’s shoes they ask the question “if I were a customer or prospect, why would I return to this site?”   By attempting to enunciate your customers’ needs (and the obstacles to meeting those needs) in the blogosphere, you put yourself out on the line.  You have to know your market quite well and it your content  has to be authentic.  Yet it’s worth the investment from an inbound marketing perspective.  And your outbound marketing efforts will benefit as well.

Some may say ”hey, that’s buyer personas”.  Whatever you call it, it’s hard to do.  I personally take issue with buyer personas because for many, the focus is too much on demographics….. and not enough on customer needs (at the role and company level).  Unless specific needs are addressed, personas usually have a short shelf life.

Posted by admin at 2:04 pm Tagged with:

Leading a horse to water via Thought Leadership

B2B, Brand Building, Demand Generation, Lead Nurturing, ROI Metrics, SEO, Social Media, Thought Leadership 1 Response »
Jul 142010

I read an excellent article by David Rosen on the intersection of SEO and Thought Leadership that I encourage you to read.  The best line follows:

  • Leading the horse to water: Thought leadership is often an exercise in convincing people they have a problem they’re not aware of.  They stumble around in the dark, thinking it’s sunshine, grappling with the problem’s symptoms not knowing its causes.

With Thought Leadership the subject, I first thought that perhaps Plato and the flickering shadows of the cave would be a more appropriate allegory.  However when I reflect on my 15 plus years of B2B sales and marketing experience, the leading the horse to water example fits much better.   Nuff said.

The main thrust of David’s article is that PR and SEO experts need to work with each other in order to create an effective thought leadership strategy.  I take a slightly more holistic look than David.   Based on my research and experience, I believe that the overall marketing strategy – as well as the business strategy – needs to embrace thought leadership.   To that end, successful companies will need to explicitly develop thought leadership strategies and tactics that are coordinated with marketing and business goals and plans.

When you add social media to the mix, the imperative to tie thought leadership directly to the management team is even stronger.  See my posts on Charlene Li’s new book Open Leadership for more detail behind that claim.

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Sales as Supermen - How Thought Leadership can help them.

B2B, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Social Media, Thought Leadership 5 Responses »
Feb 212010

I just tweeted about a blog post that listed the benefits of thought leadership.   One that really caught my eye was “Shortens the sales cycle because buyers have invested psychologically into your service/product before they buy”.  Coming from a sales background before moving to marketing, that benefit really resonated with me.  And of course if you want your VP of sales and the sales team onboard with your thought leadership investment, with this benefit  you need to look no further.

Speaking of sales teams and sales leaders, it’s critical that they buy into your thought leadership initiative.  If sales isn’t pushing your thought leadership content, you will only partially succeed.  With complex products and sophisticated buyers, sales people will always be the number one weapon.

Finally, some of have blogged about content marketing as fundamentally changing the sales process.  I for one believe that getting sales involved with the customer early in the sales cycle is still a major goal of a B2B marketing organization.  The concept of content marketing is a good one but many have followed its best practices before it had a name.

Posted by admin at 7:31 pm Tagged with: ,

Thought Leadership - Better for inbound/organic or outbound/proactive?

B2B, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Social Media, Thought Leadership 1 Response »
Feb 252010

I have read a lot of postings that thought leadership content is great for  inbound marketing, particularly if the article, white paper, blog post, etc. is focused on a “hot” topic or need.   In the same vein, the prevailing notion is that thought leadership content is better suited for awareness stage of the sales cycle.

My take is that thought leadership possesses just as much relevance for outbound marketing as inbound.  Similarly, TL content is just as important in the late stages of the buy cycle as it is for the earlier stages.

Let’s take the outbound vs. inbound question first.  In my mind, the two are inexorably linked.  In fact, thought leadership content (or any marketing content for that matter) should be focused on a well defined need in the market and the campaign to target customers with that need should be explicitly segmented in your outbound campaign (email, webinar, etc,).  If properly done, the profile of those that respond via inbound/ organic means should be close to that you explicitly targeted.  The best situation would be for them to be touched by both means.

Now the sales cycle.  Awareness, interest and evaluation are  chief phases of the sales cycle where marketing plays a role.  Qualification is strictly for sales although in the closing phase a timely reminder of thought leadership can help overcome the hesitation factor.  Most articles and postings that I have read lately focus on the impact of thought leadership on the awareness and interest phases.  Certainly TL fits well in those stages.

However, thought leadership also plays a role in the evaluation phase of the sales cycle.  For example, many companies  implicitly evaluate a vendor’s future strategic direction (i.e. thought leadership) by explicitly evaluated a roadmap or schedule of new features.

What do you think?

Posted by admin at 10:45 pm Tagged with: ,

B2B Thought Leadership - Helping solve an immediate, complex problem

B2B, Thought Leadership 2 Responses »
Mar 112010

Recently Tim Parker of the Bloom Group write an article entitled Thought Leadership: It’s Not About the Writing.  In it he delineates the Bloom Group’s definition of thought leadership:  ”Publishing information material on a complex issue to position a company as an expert in its field”.  While I agree with the definition, I still wrestle with a notion that it takes up more space.

I still don’t have a definition of it that satisfies me, but hopefully some day soon I will stake my claim.  So far, the best I can say is that I disagree with Gartner’s recent definition (see this post for my reasoning). Admittedly that is a cowards way out, but for now, it’s all I can do.

The Bloom Group’s post, however, is prov0cative in its use of the words “complex and immediate problems”.   While of course immediate problems are very important, sometime the issue is so complex that it cannot be readily be defined with enough specificity to invite a solution.   In others words, thought leadership is not just about solving the problem but also serves to discover out the nuances of the problem.

I will try to come up with a good example of this in my next post.  All the best.  Mark

Posted by admin at 6:04 pm Tagged with:

First things first - Thought Leadership before lead generation in your social marketing strategy

B2B, Demand Generation, ROI Metrics, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Twitter 1 Response »
Mar 252010

ROI is hard to prove for social media marketing, but most executives intuitively realize that social media is good for building thought leadership.  With credibility comes trust.  With trust comes referrals. So are firms putting the cart before the horse when linking social media investment into lead generation activity?

As @B2Bento commented in a recent #B2BChat: “Without crossing the thought leadership and engagement bridge – jumping to lead generation is suicidal”.  His comment implies that if thought leadership and engagement strategies are first worked out, the next step might or should be lead generation.  I concur.

I certainly believe that the overall marketing strategy and the thought leadership strategy need to be mapped out together.    And  of course from that strategy spring tactics around lead generation and brand building. We are all in this together.

Posted by admin at 8:10 pm Tagged with: ,

56% of companies consider Thought Leadership as their second biggest objective for B2B marketing

B2B, Thought Leadership 2 Responses »
Mar 282010

This is a great statistic from a great article from Natalie Wood that shows the growing importance of thought leadership for the entire B2B market, not just consulting companies:

“A key finding from the survey: Engaging Global Executives: Ten Megatrends in B2B Marketing, shows that 56% of companies consider Thought Leadership as their second biggest objective for B2B marketing.  That’s number two behind building new business as the top priority in the next 3-5 years.”

This article also has lots of other good content.  I really like that she repeats one of my favorite definitions of thought leadership:

“the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers and the broader marketplace in which it operates.” Elise Bauer.

Extending this even further, Natalie goes on to write: “By understanding the full impact of Thought Leadership companies can align the macro forces shaping their markets with the micro strategies of their company for smarter product and marketing decisions”

Now that’s value any senior executive can surely recognize.


Posted by admin at 12:50 am Tagged with:

Facebook a tool for B2B thought leadership?

B2B, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Twitter No Responses »
Mar 292010

I am very high on a chat session called #B2Bchat .  In this week’s session they focused on using Facebook for B2B marketing.  Although B2B thought leadership was not explicitly addressed, I believe that most of the observations apply.    

For example, several participants commented in response to the following question: What is the largest barrier for B2B companies to start a Facebook presence?

  • A significant barrier to expanding/improving a Facebook presence is simply having the time to devote to it.

I have heard like productivity comments many times and from many different sources, and not just with regard to Facebook.  B2B marketers definitely need new tools to quickly add and curate content.

Another comment caught my eye:

  • Facebook needs to have more effective integration with other lead generation activities

I predict that lead generation via any social media tool will be a hot topic.  Please see an earlier posting of mine that addresses the linkage between thought leadership and lead generation.

Posted by admin at 2:51 pm Tagged with:

Creating a thought leadership portal is not as hard as you might think

B2B, Brand Building, Demand Generation, Social Media, Thought Leadership 2 Responses »
Apr 052010

You say to yourself:

Yes, I need to create articles on the thought leadership topics that are most important to my industry.

Yes, I  need to get the “best of the best” blog articles syndicated to my site

Yes, I need to use thought leadership to generate leads early in the buy cycle

Yes, I need to shape my online brand through thought leadershership

……but how on earth can you do this without taking a significant chunk out of your marketing resources and budget?

Actually there are a number of ways to do this, but I encourage you to check out this solution as one way to build a Social Media Marketing Portal for the key words linked to your thought leadership initiative.

Posted by admin at 12:23 am Tagged with: ,

Content Marketing confusing Thought Leadership initiatives?

B2B, Social Media, Thought Leadership 3 Responses »
Apr 132010

With the social media explosion, a group of PR and marcom professionals have adopted Content Marketing as their mantra.  Some go so far as to include key B2B marketing principles (like segmentation) taught by Northwestern professor Philip Kotler and practiced by many for a long time.    That’s well and good, but telling someone to segment is not the same as advising them on how to comply with CAN SPAM laws.  With the content marketing articles I have seen, there is a dearth of real meaty advice on how to segment and position solutions to customer needs, and a surplus of tactical advice on how to post and tweet.  In the end, I don’t think “content marketing” is comprehensive enough of a methodology for B2B marketing professionals who work with sophisticated products with long sales (ahem, buy)  cycles.

While I agree that some of the core ideas of Content Marketing are very, very good….. for example, advocating that the sales cycle should be flipped to the “buy cycle” and to engage customers in a dialogue….I do not believe that proactive targeted marketing campaigns just won’t work any more, as some seem to imply.

So what has this do do with Thought Leadership initiatives?   Well for one, I believe that Thought Leadership is one of the key pillars of a B2B firm’s marketing strategy.  And as such, an over reliance on Content Marketing could jeopardize those efforts.  Second, the uneducated could easily jump to the conclusion that Content = Thought Leadership….and nothing could be further from the truth.

Take for example the following comment from Craig Badings who responded to a comment of mine on his interview with David Meerhman Scott from his excellent Thought Leadership blog:

Craig: “Merely supplying content doesn’t make you a thought leader. Rather, thought leadership content should shape or frame the discussion in your market. It should make people question, see things differently, deliver interesting and unique insights to elements of the buyers life that other product/service suppliers aren’t doing. And all of this should be done to engage with your clients and to invest in building trust.”

Craig’s comments are dead on.  Originally  I had written:

“In my mind, new terms like “content marketing”, “knowledge marketing” or “thought leadership” marketing appear to confuse the basic issues involved in B2B marketing….. Many marketers over focus on the solutions (they call them products).  Many others (in particular PR and marcom) just focus on communicating content, but don’t want to get to dirty with the needs or the solutions.  My sole point is that while social media might has changed some of the ways we can communicate with customers, it hasn’t altered basic B2B marketing principles they way many now so claim (under the cover of terms like content marketing).

Craig summed it up nicely:

“…..the basic B2B marketing principles stay the same – content marketing, thought leadership, etc should all be informed by those principles.”

Posted by admin at 11:11 pm Tagged with:

Siteless Web means you have to bring Thought Leadership to the customer

B2B, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Twitter 3 Responses »
Apr 212010

A good friend of mine, David Wieneke, just posted an excellent article on his blog about the coming of the siteless web.  I believe this trend will have profound impact on how a B2B company will implement a thought leadership strategy over the coming years.  The days of “post on your web site, and they will come” are gone.

Read the article to learn more about how traditional web sites and pages will give way to mashups and blogs.  The result, according to Dave, is a ” web experience that at first is highly distributed and less centered on home pages. This, I believe, will easily transition to applications experiences that don’t rely on the conventions of pages, sites, or even being online.”

Source: Hubspot

The initial proof in Dave’s pudding is the trend toward blogging (both for thought leadership as well as other initiative).  Studies have shown that already blogging is just as important that corporate web sites.  In some cases even more important.  For example a recent Hubspot study indicates that companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages that those that don’t blog.

In most cases the blog comes to the user via a referral (digital or otherwise).  In the case of thought leadership, the referral might come from someone you follow on Twitter who tweets about a meaningful article (post, video, chat session, virtual conference, etc.) about a key issue in your industry.  Or it could be some who reads the posts and sends a link to it via email.  The key is that with the birth of social media and its networks of followers and recommenders, there are a whole lot more ways to build credibility and trust in the eyes of your customers and prospects with your thought leadership content.

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Pro's and Con's of asking for profile info in order to read your thought leadership content

B2B, Brand Building, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Automation, ROI Metrics, Social Media, Thought Leadership 4 Responses »
May 042010

Many experts on content marketing believe that asking a user to divulge something of their motivations in exchange for helpful content (thought leadership or otherwise) is a bad thing. While I admit that such requests reduce the viral nature of  great content, there are benefits as well.  Let’s look at the pro’s and con’s.

Pro’s of not requesting anything in return for your content:

  • Content will be more viral and reach more eyeballs
  • Easier path to creating credibility and online brand
  • Less admin and set up time because  you are not gathering metrics

Con’s of not requesting anything in return for your content:

  • If you have marketing automation, you can’t set a cookie on your prospect or customer
  • You can’t measure the effectiveness of your content
  • You don’t know if your content is reaching the right roles or segments

Of course, there are other pro’s and con’s but these are some of the most important.  From a thought leadership prospective, many believe that it is more effective in the early part of the buy cycle.  I for one believe that it is effective across all stages of the buy cycle.

If you are in the first camp, then perhaps thought leadership content should not be limited via a request for customer profile information.  If you believe that thought leadership content is effective across all stages of the buy cycle, then at the very least an email address should be requested.

Posted by admin at 5:33 am Tagged with: , , , ,

Social Media for small biz leads to interaction w/industry pros

B2B, Brand Building, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Twitter 3 Responses »
Apr 262010

My favorite chat session B2BChat has produced again.  Below is a question posed that spurred the following comment about how small biz can gain a thought leadership advantage using social media:

What are social media’s practical benefits, even for companies who do not monetize their web sites?

The responses varied from lead conversion metrics (from those lucky enough to have a closed-loop lead tracking system), to better understanding he industry landscape and listening to conversations, market intelligence and building personas.

  • SM for a small biz helps to level the playing field; leads to interaction with industry pros – as long as you provide quality content

The last observation was especially interesting to me; you don’t need to have a huge PR or ad budget to know what is happening in the industry, and you can engage with the influencers directly. In addition, having the first-mover advantage, you can establish a position in social media and stand apart from the crowd.

I agree with the moderator’s comment about the low cost of thought leadership campaigns using thought leadership.  If you have the knowledge and content to back up your interactions with the industry pro’s, they won’t care how large a company you represent.

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Is Charlene Li's "Open Leadership" the New Thought Leadership?

B2B, Brand Building, Open Leadership, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Twitter 3 Responses »
May 072010

I think it may well be.  I read a not so nice review of her new book Open Leadership by Josh Bernoff of the Forrester Group and the coauthor of their great book Groundswell.  Josh indicated that some of what Charlene Li advocated was too nebulous and not actionable.  Having not read the book, I put that in my storage bank.

But this morning I looked up the Altimeter group’s website and notice that the slides from her first webinar had been posted.   I read and was immediately smitten.  Not because of the word leadership, but more about her definition of openness.  It really resonated with me, since true thought leadership in my opinion requires openness as the first test of legitimacy.  I will be attending her webinar this afternoon and will surely read her book.  I think her work will be very influential.

Posted by admin at 6:20 am Tagged with:

Gartner's "give a little" thought leadership vs. Charlene Li's "open leadership"

B2B, Open Leadership, Social Media, Thought Leadership 4 Responses »
May 102010

A recent article provides insight into Garter’s definition of thought leadership marketing:

“The principle of TLM is simple enough: You give away a little valuable intellectual property (emphasis added) to establish your potential usefulness to the client, in the expectation that the client will use your expertise and services,” says Rolf Jester, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner in a statement.

Contrast that to the themes of openness in Charlene Li’s new book Open Leadership, and you get two very different view points on how two very similar topics.  I listened to her webinar on Friday and now I understand her former co-author’s review of her book (see my post on his review).  Her book is definitely aimed at CEO’s and senior management; as Josh Bernoff correctly notes, it’s less actionable for other roles .  That’s not a bad thing, though, considering her target market and her goal of create an open culture for social media drive innovation, open learning and my kind of thought leadership.  In fact, senior management is the one stakeholder set that you need on board for thought and open leadership to become embedded into a company’s culture.

Speaking of “open learning”, my next post will related to Ms. Li’s prescription for nurturing a continuous learning environment….

Posted by admin at 9:01 am Tagged with:

The Triad of Thought Leadership, Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing

B2B, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Automation, ROI Metrics, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Twitter 7 Responses »
May 122010

A strategic marketing plan usually focuses just on inbound and outbound marketing.  What about injecting Thought Leadership into that plan?

Many executives shy away from explicitly bringing thought leadership into the strategy discussion because the ROI is too soft. (See a good discussion of the objection on slide  37 of this presentation by Dan VanDen Huevel).  One example of this hesitance to link thoughtleadership to ROI or leads can be found in this post by Shatterbox in response to that same presentation.  The author brings up some valid points, but in a comment to his blog post I wrote the following:

  • “I think the author is indicating that thought leadership content (just like any other content) can help company’s nurture leads, not necessarily produce leads. A marketing automation system can cookie a customer or prospect and lead score them according to the content they consume.   I for one believe that thought leadership is particularly helpful in the beginning stages of the buy cycle. If distributed via social media or other electronic means, it’s a great way to engage the prospect at the beginning of the cycle. As you slowly build the relationship, your marketing automation system can provide content to them that fits their needs (those needs are slowly learned and earned by every interaction -whether tracked (online) or not (conferences, events, etc.).”

Posted by admin at 10:13 am Tagged with:

Gating Thought Leadership Content

B2B, Content Marketing, ROI Metrics, Social Media, Thought Leadership 5 Responses »
May 172010

Which camp are you in? Should thought leadership content be gated or left open for maximum viral impact? I go back and forth on this issue, but I think the ideal tactic is too ask for a non personal email address in return for access to your very best content. Of course, this pre-supposes that you have some sort of marketing automation system to nurture the contact with continuing content. See some pro’s or con’s of this gating issue from a previous post.

Below is a slideshare presentation by Manticore and Left Brain Marketing. Take a look at slides 13, 14 and 17 in particular. The Sun case study at the end is also informative. Notice that the Sun.com content was gated.

A Tactical Approach for Targeted Lead Nurturing

Posted by admin at 10:03 am Tagged with:

SEO and Thought Leadership

B2B, Brand Building, Demand Generation, SEO, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Twitter 4 Responses »
May 202010

If your craft your thought leadership strategy with SEO in mind, you can knock off two birds with one stone.  I am not advising that SEO considerations should strongly influence your thought leadership and branding strategy, but they should factor in.

If you develop a strategic marketing plan each year, your thought leadership goals should already be aligned with your inbound marketing plans.  While demand generation goals should most influence your key word/SEO tactics, thought leadership content should already be part of  your strategy, particularly because thought leadership content has been shown to be effective in the early part of the buy/sales cycle (in particular the awareness and interest stages).

In fact, some believe that thought leadership quickens the buy/sales cycle because it builds credibility when it is needed most.  Earlier this week I attended the B2B University in Boston (check out tweets with this this hash tag –  #b2buniversity) where one of the speakers indicated that more and more, the chosen few vendors are being selected earlier and earlier in the sales/buy cycle.  Credibility due to thought leadership is one of the biggest drivers of that vendor narrowing process.

In summary SEO and thought leadership is one good example of linking tactics to your strategic objectives.

Posted by admin at 8:03 am Tagged with:

Thought Leadership Via Association??

B2B 3 Responses »
May 212010

In an earlier post about one way to develop a thought leadership portal, I touched on the concept of thought leadership by association.  While not the perfect approach to achieving thought leadership (see Craig Badings comments at the end), surely this is one way to gain knowledge of the pressing issues of your industry.  And my gathering together this important content, you are providing a service to your industry.  Surely that will help your B2B brand.

I recently read a blog posting by Stowe Boyd in which the concept of a semi-independent blog was introduced.  Please read a snippet below:

  • “Rather than creating the standard company blog — with product release updates, hirings and travel plans — a company might be much better off developing an semi-independent blog, perhaps edited by an industry thought leader, and having one or more of the company’s management team acting as contributors. The company might also be clearly identified as an advertiser, and of course full disclosure of this relationship would ne necessary. For example, consider a company developing a small business accounting solution: instead of writing a company blog, the company could be a sponsor and participant in a blog dedicated to small business management. As a result, the company would be associated with the thought leadership that would grow with that website.”

I believe this could be a good approach for small companies who are struggling to create brand awareness.  Many times smaller firms are potentially screened out in the early stages of the beauty contest because larger firms are dominating the thought leadership spectrum.  Gain credibility though some sort of thought leadership portal could be just the ticket.

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"Open" thought leadership requires internal investments first

B2B, Open Leadership, Thought Leadership, Twitter 3 Responses »
Jun 062010

Does Charlene Li’s “open leadership” framework set the stage for successful thought leadership initiatives?  I believe so.  The key takeaway is that the chief obstacle to the adoption of  social media is senior management itself.  It’s actually the premise of the book, and while not breath taking in nature, Ms. Li provides plenty of practical advice to align corporate strategy with social media strategy.   On the tactical side, she provides examples of “sand box” covenants that chart the engagement rules for the use of social media.  While a good amount of her advice is externally oriented, she also spends a great deal of time on how to educate, motivate and align internal departments to adapt to the “openness” created by the social media explosion.

Earlier this week Rob Leavett executed a brilliant webinar on thought leadership trends.  He also focused on the need for investing internally as part of a “support and align” strategy (see slide 3 from above link).  Rob advices fits neatly into Charlene’s “open leadership” framework, so I recommend you view the recording as well.

Posted by admin at 8:03 am Tagged with:

"Start and stop" thought leadership is dangerous

B2B, Demand Generation, Open Leadership, ROI Metrics, Social Media, Thought Leadership 2 Responses »
Jun 072010

Last week Rob Levitt gave an excellent webinar on thought leadership trends.  Yesterday I wrote about Rob’s advice on investing internally as a prerequisite for a successful thought leadership initiative.  Today, I would like to highlight his advice on avoiding “start and stop” thought leadership activities.

I agree that intermittent thought leadership activities should be avoided at all costs.  Yet as Rob readily admits, creating compelling thought leadership content is very difficult and time consuming.  And of course, time is running short these days at firms working furiously just to keep pace in a tough market.  That’s why senior management  commitment is so important; once an editorial calendar is published it has to be kept to.   By tying thought leadership to the pipeline, senior management can be reminded that you can’t rob Peter to pay Paul.

Posted by admin at 9:43 am Tagged with: , , ,

The Hard ROI of B2B Thought Leadership

B2B, Brand Building, Demand Generation, Marketing Automation, ROI Metrics, Thought Leadership 7 Responses »
Jul 062010

Amazing!  Astonished!  Really?  Yes, thought leadership can be tied back to some serious ROI numbers.  The key is in the thought leadership plan and a little technology.

The first step is to categorize the types of content that you will need for the various campaigns that are in the strategic marketing plan.  It’s likely you have content that is mapped to the various stages of the buy cycle.  And of course much of that content is designed to drive the prospect to contact an account manager.  But what about in the earlier stages of the buy cycle ….where they do much of their winnowing?

Think of Thought Leadership as content that they have already absorbed before they make that action.   You need content that establishes your brand as leader in the industry.  You need this content to elicit a thought such as “Yes, I like this firm.  Their  content has always been either provocative or helpful”.  In other words, the customer respects that you know your market and the needs of prospects like them.  Trust and credibility have been established.

So how does that tie Thought Leadership to ROI.  Well, if you have a marketing automation system you can develop a lead nurturing process whereby you “earn the right to learn” about your prospect’s needs.  Initially, you engage the client by asking for an email address (notice that this is not the brute force approach of  asking “Are your buying this week” or “What is your blood type” the first time you meet).  Bing! You have a cookie on them.

And a little later you earn the right  to ask for a telephone number or their title.   It’s a slow process, but whoever said that B2B marketing was easy and fast.   Eventually leads are passed to sales based on your lead scoring rules.  Many of these leads will be rejected by sales, but that’s a good thing – you can learn from your mistakes. Eventually some of your leads move into the pipeline.  And some finally close.

But since you invested in a little bit of technology, you can tie your thought leadership content of 12 months earlier into revenue that can partially be attributed to your hard work.  A sales rep can’t close a deal just with the personal trust he or she developed with the prospect.  The trust and credibility needs to come from all parts of the organization.  Thought leadership is the framework for developing that trust and its marketing’s job to develop that trust.

To use a golf analogy, thought leadership content is the “big stick” you need to drive the ball down the fairway.  Your more tactical content can get them onto the green where sales can than close the sale.

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