How to develop thought leadership content your customer actually wants
OK, cards on the table. I’ve spent decades working with B2B brands and their content and I have come to hate the term ‘thought leadership.’ I get it, and I use it, everyone’s doing it and everyone knows what we mean by it but to be honest, if everyone’s trying to be a thought leader doesn’t that devalue the idea? I mean, we can’t all be thought leaders. (And to be clear this blog makes no claims on that front!)
Some of the B2B brands that have made a serious investment into content platforms and formats are rightly recognised as thought leaders in their fields; trusted destinations with authority on certain topics or industries e.g. McKinsey or Adobe.
Unfortunately for every Adobe there are hundreds of brands just filling their pipes with content. But it’s not all bad.
Tech and Saas brands as you might expect are often really hot on using audience data to target, to enhance their performance marketing and to personalise content - especially across touchpoints and key stages in the buyer journey.
And many professional services firms have invested heavily in thought leadership to demonstrate the knowledge and expertise of their people through market analyses and insight reports, or the impact they have made for clients through case studies, or their ability to help clients navigate the future through research and trend reports.
So in these sectors at least, best practice is evident and relatively widespread. Which raises another challenge for would-be thought leaders: how do you stand out, become distinctive and memorable when everyone else is doing the fundamentals well?
Well our view, based on experience, trial and error and observation, is that to really give people what they want and need isn’t about the mechanics or engineering of limitless audience data insights, or automated content delivery, or ABM integration or other, similar examples of optimisation. These are table-stakes, but real competitive advantage from thought leadership comes from doing things differently; adopting a counter-intuitive mindset, a new, innovative corporate body language and behaviour.
In practice this means:
Being less of an all-knowing expert, and more of a curious explorer - there will always be a place for show and tell content that brings the firm’s previous experience to life - but looking beyond the core, current business to explore and share learnings on emerging topics that we and our clients need to know more about (especially those that nobody wants to admit to ignorance on) is extremely valuable. Defaqto’s recent conference for banking and insurance product providers took the lead on this, with a panel of Gen Z consumers talking about what they want from the industry, and AI experts explaining what the future looks like for the industry.
Rethinking the ‘leadership’ part of Thought Leadership - what it means to be a leader in the corporate world has evolved substantially over the past few years - humility, vulnerability, servant leadership replacing the cult of the ‘strong leader’ for example - and there’s a strong argument for applying the same principle to content and client experience - less paternalistic sharing of wisdom and more acting as a catalyst for inspiration and sharing new insights. NB - Exploring and acquiring knowledge together makes for a more interesting, relevant experience for clients, and shared discovery and learning is a strong basis to build relationships on - see Taylor Vinters / Mishcon de Reya’s Zebra Project as a good example.
Evolving from a ‘command and control’ approach to become open source - The best thought leadership is audience focused, informed by performance analytics, sales team feedback and client research. But what if we just properly, fully involved our intended audience in the process from the start? - This is one of the benefits of building a community for and with the customers and potential clients of your brand. This podcast from our friends at Source Global Research featuring John Romeo, Managing Partner and Head of the Oliver Wyman Forum is an excellent primer on this.
Dialling down the corporate voice and turning up the voice of individuals, relying less on outsourced talent and publisher content partnerships - and investing more in your own talent to build knowledge IP - The old school ‘brand as publisher’ mindset says - hire publishing talent / outsource to an agency, develop a platform, create in private, polish then publish, invest in (buying) an audience... but a more current / modern “creator” mindset says - invest time and money enabling your people to create in public so their audience finds them, adapt & polish your approach with the direct input of that audience - give them a platform too - and become a destination over time. A look at what’s happening in the VC sector is a good source of inspiration here.
Adopting a “tight-loose” approach - Certain aspects of governance and ops are non negotiable, e.g, for legal reasons, especially in regulated markets - but a 20th-century approach to brand compliance is not fit for purpose any more. A tight loose approach defines a small number of rules but beyond that values experimentation and conversation over polish and perfection.
So in the spirit of these 5 points we’re going to keep exploring this space and sharing what we find over the coming months to shine a light on how the strategy, creative and ops of content marketing and thought leadership are evolving.
(And if you’ve got experience to share, or you’d like to get involved in any of the research, reports and events we’re planning then get in touch).