Thought Leadership Marketing is a communications strategy that helps founders break through the noise by establishing their position as subject matter experts who understand what the future looks like and can lead their customers into that future.
It leverages unique perspectives, knowledge, and experience, and packages them in a way that builds trust and credibility with target customers.
At the core, Thought Leadership Marketing is strategic content that is actionable, educational, and interesting to target customers. Here are 4 of the many types of thought leadership content you can create.
Thought Leadership Asset Type 1: Educational Evergreen Content
Client Example: OpsCompass’s market category is called Cloud Security Posture Management or CSPM. Through a series of content, we’ve shared their founders’ insights on best practices, challenges, and other actionable tips. This educational, non-promotional content was then pitched and placed at targeted outlets read by their target customers.
Thought Leadership Asset Type 2: Actionable Guides
Overview: Create a long-form guide that shares with your target audience best practices, challenges, and actionable insights they can use to better understand the topic.
Client Example: Raydiant is creating the category of In-Location Experience Management. To support these efforts, we created and published long form guides for each of their core verticals. These guides covered everything readers would want to know about the new category.
Thought Leadership Asset Type 3: Resource Centers
Overview: Create a 101 resource center that covers everything your audience needs to know about the topic.
Client Example: When the HIVE Blockchain went public in 2018, investors had a hard time understanding what they did. So, after speaking with several of their investors, we took note of the top questions we heard them ask about their industry and built a resource center that answered 30+ questions that investors had about their market.
Thought Leadership Asset Type 4: Benchmark Reports
Overview: Conduct surveys to identify unique and interesting findings that are relevant to your customers.
Client Example: After WordProof won 1 million euros from the EU for their solution to combat misinformation, we were brought on to help establish the founders’ thought leadership. To support these efforts, we conducted a major study on the state of misinformation online. In total, we surveyed more than 5,000 consumers, then produced reports that analyzed the findings. These are reports that can be repeated year after year to measure the progress.
Thought Leadership is Your Secret Weapon
For the right founder, thought leadership is one of the most impactful strategic initiatives to deploy because it impacts nearly every aspect of a business, including sales, marketing, hiring, culture, and fundraising.
The key is to make sure you are ready to go.
