The five components of a successful thought leadership program

August 21, 2009 by Chris Koch

Recently, I was asked by a former ITSMA client to help put together a plan for a thought leadership program for a B2B technology company that sells both products and services. It forced me to think about all the components necessary to build and sustain a thought leadership strategy. Here are my thoughts on the big pieces. Please tell me what I’ve gotten wrong or left out.

1. Research the need. Most people start with strategy. But starting with strategy assumes a need that may not be there. Doing research first allows you to set goals using reliable, objective data. Then when people start to question your strategy (and they will), you can show them the numbers. Survey internal sales and marketing staff, customers, target markets, and influencers to determine what they are looking for. Here are some questions to ask:

  • Do customers view of you as a thought leader; if not, can they envision you moving into that role?
  • What are customers’ areas of interest?
  • What types of thought leadership vehicles (councils, conferences, white papers, social media, etc.) are target customers most interested in?
  • How can thought leadership influence their buying behavior?

Answers to these questions will help drive the structure of the program and provide a foundation for achieving ROI goals.

2. Determine the readiness of the organization. Professional services firms expect their consultants to be thought leaders and that expectation flows through everything those firms do, from recruiting, to training, to marketing. Thought leadership requires a cultural commitment to the development of ideas and strong executive support. If those pieces are missing, thought leadership will be left to marketing, where it will either mutate into thinly veiled sales content or die out altogether. Marketing can manage a thought leadership program and disseminate content, but it cannot be expected to supply the ideas that form the basis of the content.

3. Build a thought leadership network. I go into more details on a thought leadership network in this post, but the basic idea is that there are two parts to thought leadership: idea development and content dissemination. Marketing is great at the latter, but needs help with the former. A thought leadership network provides a reliable source of content for marketers to package and disseminate. The thought leadership network focuses on identifying internal thought leaders and building alliances with external academics and customers who can help develop and test ideas. Primary and secondary research provide the inspiration for some ideas and the objective justification for others. Internal knowledge share sessions and reward and recognition programs provide the motivation for thought leaders to emerge inside the organization and help imbue a thought leadership mindset into the culture.

4. Create a content development process. Using ideas from the thought leadership network, marketing needs to develop vehicles for disseminating that content to customers and salespeople. The key components of the program are:

  • Create a publishing process and calendar. Marketers must become publishers, with a process for refining and presenting thought leadership content through various vehicles, (such as conference presentations, white papers, social media, etc.). A calendar helps marketing plan out the frequency and focus of its output.
  • Align thought leadership vehicles to the buying process. Marketing needs to develop materials that are appropriate to each stage of the buying process, so that customers and salespeople can get the right information at the right time. Marketing and sales need to agree on the alignment of content to the different buying stages so that sales will get the right signals about when and how to approach customers for a sale.

5. Install systems and metrics for supporting thought leadership. The goal of thought leadership is not just to raise awareness of the company; it is to help make a sale. For that reason, thought leadership programs need to be tightly integrated into the company’s IT systems—and particularly its CRM systems—so that the impact of thought leadership can be tracked all the way through to the sale. These are the key components:

  • Install a lead tracking and nurturing system. Marketers can use the consumption of thought leadership to track the readiness of prospects to buy if they have a system for tracking a prospect’s activities. For example, if a prospect downloads a piece of content targeted to the interest phase of the buying process and reads it thoroughly, a lead tracking and nurturing system can track that activity and send a signal to salespeople that the prospect is most likely ready for a call. As the lead is passed over to sales for follow through, the thought leadership content is tagged as part of the sale. If a sale doesn’t result, the lead can be put back into the nurturing process while keeping track of the content he or she has already consumed. This lead tracking system should be integrated with the company’s CRM system (most traditional CRM systems are not set up to handle lead nurturing) so that leads can be handed back and forth between marketing and sales without losing anyone along the way.
  • Get agreement with sales on a sales-ready lead. The benefits of a thought leadership program will be lost if sales and marketing can’t agree on the point at which the consumption of the content provides a reliable signal of intent to buy. There needs to be a smooth hand off of prospects between marketing and sales for thought leadership to have the fullest possible impact on a sale.

What do you think?

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  • I will check it out. Thanks, Mike!
  • Hi John,

    Thanks for the comment. You raise some great issues. The need for internal expertise shakes out two ways. 1. Do you need to have the internal expertise in marketing to create and distribute thought leadership? It certainly helps, but really all internal marketers need to be able to do is to recognize real thought leadership when they see it and to drive their external providers to do it well. 2. Do you need internal subject matter experts to create the ideas behind the thought leadership? Again, it helps, but here too, marketers can get help from the outside. Examples would include working with analysts, journalists, academics, and other influencers that cover the industry or the processes affected by your product or service. You could hire a research firm to do custom research about the industry or processes. The key is to focus on areas that would have direct benefit for customers.
    That brings me to your second issue, which is whether any company can do thought leadership. I think they can. If you think about the explosion of trade magazines in industries that most of us would consider devoid of creativity--coin-operated laundromats, for example--in the 1960s through the 1980s, you realize that within most industries, there is a constant demand for information about how to improve processes, save money, and grow. So in your stationery buying example, I could see a paper company coming up with ways that office managers could reduce the costs of storing and distributing stationery, ways to recycle it with less effort, etc.
  • Mike O'Toole
    Chris,
    Smart, thoughtful post (as usual). Really like the guidance around content development, particularly the point about aligning TL with the buy process. If you haven't, you should check out IDG Connect's MarketFusion global research on content through technology purchase processes. Overall point is there is a serious lack of educational/thought leadership content.
  • Chris - excellent post and thank you for addressing what is a very important subject for me.

    We (I work for a marcomms agency) have a number of clients who want to achieve thought leadership through social media. This is a task we can handle very competently, because we have not only social media technical knowledge in the agency, but we also have writers who are well-versed in the client's business areas. This means we are well-placed to address the time-paucity issue Will raises above. If we manage the process carefully, the agency writer and the in-house client experts should be able to work together. The end result is a lot of excellent, expert content produced without taking up too much time.

    A more tricky issue is whether thought leadership is possible when that internal expertise is not available - or indeed when the client brand sells a simple product, with no real issues to talk about bar the product itself. For example, how much thought leadership can a paper supplier provide to office managers buying stationery?

    Would you see this as a lost cause - as far as thought leadership is concerned - or do you believe there is always a way?
  • Will,
    As you know, maintaining a blog is a big challenge--especially when it's not your day job. There's also inevitable disappointment in the fact that it takes time to build audience and feedback. They may be questioning why they are doing this for so little in return. One way you can help is by raising their profile both internally and with influencers. Promote what they are doing through your internal newsletter and through social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Consider elevating their status within the organization through reward and recognition programs. Above all, be supportive and encouraging. Blogging is hard work!
  • Will
    Good post Chris. With my company's thought leadership program, our biggest challenge has definitely been around the 2nd point you make - the readiness of the organisation.

    For example, one of the vehicles we use is a blog and we have five internal contributors (all experts in their field) that offered to write 1-2 posts a month.

    For the first few months, no problem. However, a year down the line and it's like getting blood from a stone. At the end of the day, it eats away at time they could be spending doing other tasks and so gets shoved to the bottom of their 'to do' list.

    Any suggestions on how to keep thought leaders engaged and enthused?
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