3 Things Your Thought Leadership Desperately Needs
B2B buyers are losing patience when it comes to thought leadership. Here’s how you can win their attention and trust.
If you’re struggling to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert buyers into customers, your thought leadership might be to blame. New research suggests that B2B buyers are growing tired of thought leadership that strictly focuses on high-level issues, lacks credible research, or doesn’t attention-grab within the first minute of consumption. If these qualities describe your content, you risk losing your next deal.
Fortunately, you can enhance your thought leadership by focusing on these three essential characteristics of effective content.
1. Controversy
That’s how long buyers are willing to spend consuming your thought leadership before deciding whether to continue. If it interests them, they will. If it doesn’t, they won’t. And if they won’t, you’re unlikely to get their attention again.
The best way to stir interest is to build controversy—to challenge entrenched beliefs and assumptions, and force your buyers to consider a new perspective. This should fit naturally with your business, which exists to upend the status quo. Still, many struggle to bring this to life in their copy.
Not Hal Rosenbluth though. In the early 1990s, he set out to challenge a mindset dominating the corporate sphere. He published the book, The Customer Comes Second, which contrasted the prevailing belief that “the customer is always right.” Rosenbluth argued that employees matter most to organizational success. The book became an instant bestseller and launched his small family business into an international success story that he eventually sold to American Express in 2003.
To make your content controversial, engage in the following activities.
Call out the risks of the status quo
Why does risk motivate us more than reward? Because we despise the thought of losing something we’re never sure we can regain. This speaks to the value proposition of the status quo: Security and familiarity.
Yet the status quo is risky.
We see it all the time. Businesses that fail to innovate and never adapt—they stagnate, shrink, or die. Just read Jim Collins’s How the Mighty Fall.
That’s why your thought leadership should detail the risks associated with the status quo. It should count the imminent losses your buyer will experience in quantifiable and qualitative terms. It should clearly put their sense of security in jeopardy, and position their familiarity as a weakness.
Find an original angle
What makes a point of view controversial? Originality.
That’s why we remember the person with the controversial claim but never notice the individual supporting a popular opinion.
So, choose a unique angle to cover a topic or present a point of view. This is easiest in markets with low solution sophistication, meaning buyers haven’t frequently encountered marketing messages and promises similar to yours. Whatever the case, avoid producing content that your buyers can find elsewhere.
2. Diversification
You know that authoritative white paper that dives deep into the science of a particular technology? Turns out that buyers appreciate that kind of content over the common byline article about broad industry issues from a senior executive. Why? Because the former is unique and valuable in a market where most organizations are focused on producing the latter.
This is not to say that you should ignore producing high-level thought leadership. It also doesn’t mean that you should avoid publishing content authored by your top decision-makers. Rather, you should focus on creating a balanced mix of content—including topics and authors—that addresses macro and micro areas of interest to your audience.
Dr. Andrew Ng is a great example of a senior executive focused on producing broad and narrowly focused thought leadership. As the founder and CEO of DeepLearning.AI, founder and CEO of Landing AI, and chairman and co-founder of Coursera, he’s the preeminent thought leader on artificial intelligence (AI) and deep machine learning.
And his topics? They travel a wide spectrum—from the benefits of machine learning to how organizations should handle change management on AI projects. His audiences not only gain awareness of a subject, they get actionable recommendations.
So, how can you diversify your thought leadership offering? Focus on the following actions.
Leverage multiple domain experts
To diversify your content offering, look to enlist a variety of domain experts across your organization. That means leveraging the help of unique subject matter experts to drive new and interesting thought leadership topics.
Your search should look across departments and transcend hierarchical levels. Still, you should focus on people whose expertise is essential to your solution and fixing your buyer’s problem. If you’re selling a technology-enabled solution, that might include software engineers or individuals who possess a combination of technology and specific industry expertise, such as in insurance, healthcare, etc.
Track thought leadership topics
Diversification is difficult without an understanding of your full content offering. And that’s where your content calendar steps in. Use it to plan, track, and audit your thought leadership offerings. This will help you audit and schedule your content effectively to balance broad and highly-specialized topics.
3. Research
A quick glance on social media proves that anyone can have an opinion about anything. What distinguishes opinion from true thought leadership is credible, sound, and verifiable research. The latter elevates what you have to say above the noise of opinion and convinces people to take action.
Matteo Carbone and his global think tank IoT Insurance Observatory is a great example. Carbone, who strives to prove that the internet of things (IoT) produces significant bottom-line benefits to insurance companies, publishes highly sought-after thought leadership on insurance innovation.
Rather than relying on opinion, he grounds his claims in fact and vetted support. In an annual research report on the benefit of IoT, he interviewed more than 100 insurance executives.
The result? His report was cited in numerous top industry trade publications, became the focus of an industry conference, and helped him add to his impressive LinkedIn following of more than 178,000 people (at the time of this writing).
Surely, the report required significant time, talent, and capital to produce. But from an outsider’s perspective, I would argue that it was worth the ROI.
To make your thought leadership research-based, engage in the following activities.
Include primary research
Primary research—conducting your own studies—is one of the most effective forms of establishing credibility and gaining publicity from third-parties. Why? Because as the earlier example shows, creating original content bolsters your credibility and gives others the incentive to cite you.
To conduct primary research, interview or survey your existing customers. You can choose to either conduct the research in-house, or rely on a third-party market research firm.
Leverage credible third-parties
Most B2B buyers demand that thought leadership is backed by credible research.
To support your thought leadership claims, lean on research and insights from industry analysts, associations, and recognized experts. Most importantly, give preference to information sources that maintain the greatest reach, recognition, and perceived credibility among your target audience(s).
Use empirical evidence
Research suggests B2B buyers prefer objective third-party data over your observations and experiences as an organization. Still, don’t overlook the value of empirical evidence. You should incorporate client case studies, customer metrics, or other data points into your thought leadership.
Don’t just create thought leadership, be a thought leader
By developing thought leadership that embodies these three characteristics, you produce content your audience will find valuable and worth spending their time consuming.
Unlike most of your competitors, you won’t see your audiences abandon your content after investing a minute of their time. You also won’t struggle to drive traffic, demonstrate authority, or get conversions.
Your next ebook will perform and exceed your expectations. Your confidence in your content engine will grow. And most importantly, you’ll move closer to closing more deals than you lose.
Your next thought leadership project deserves better results. So focus on what’s proven to generate them.
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