Chapter 4
Involving Your Market in the Development of Thought Leadership
Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
To deliver true thought leadership, most organisations will reach outside of their own teams for insights. Bringing together customers and third-party experts gives thought leadership content greater reach, credibility and independence. Of course, it also provides an opportunity to build and strengthen relationships with potential customers and partners.
This approach works well for Sursock, with the company regularly reaching out for augmented insights to build into thought leadership. The company also features customers in video content, which is shared via their website. “If you can lock in a quote, ideally with a number, those are so powerful,” he says. Bringing together customers and thought leaders into a community allows the organisation to talk about common horizontal challenges. This is something Course5 has already adopted in the US and is now planning for Europe and Asia. “It provides a platform for leadership sharing and for better relationship building, which is so important in today’s markets.”
At Lane4 Management Group, the company creates thought leadership that combines academic rigour with customer insights. With this in mind, the company recently conducted quantitative research on 12-15 industry leaders, followed by a wider survey of senior professionals. “This gave us market insights that are based on reality and what is actually going on in our target organisation’s environment,” says Kaye. “Buyers want to consume thought leadership in a way that they can learn from and apply in their own business.”
“It’s about partnering with an organisation that has the credibility, so you are almost borrowing from that. It increases your chances of the thought leadership being read as independent and not just written from an IBM lens. Co-creating with clients is really valuable for that reason, and we do a lot of it.”
Caroline Taylor OBE
Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer, IBM Global Markets
IBM works closely with analyst houses such as Gartner and IDC, as well as publishers such as the Economist. The company views these partnerships as hugely important. “A credible third party will be recognised by the target audience for their credentials,” says Taylor. “It’s about partnering with an organisation that has the credibility, so you are almost borrowing from that,” she says. “It increases your chances of the thought leadership being read as independent and not just written from an IBM lens. Co-creating with clients is really valuable for that reason, and we do a lot of it.”
When co-creating content, consider your customer, says Moyse. “Customers have great insights into what they’ve actually done in the real world. So, if you want to talk about your product, ask your customers to talk about it, in the context of how they have solved their biggest challenges,” he says. “It’s about being educational and informative. It is not about you.”
Moyse uses the example of a series of video interviews he was involved with as a social influencer where he interviewed customers of a third party. “We did an interview where we’re both getting value, but it’s not about me, and I didn’t talk about our company once. My logo and my ethics are there, and that’s promoting my brand. Rather than thinking about “how can I get my company into that?”
Much thought leadership fails because it’s written from the perspective of the brand, rather than the audience, says Taylor. “Unfortunately, what is interesting to you is highly likely not that interesting to the audience. It’s bizarre because marketing is all about a customer-centric approach, yet so many organisations are just trying to showcase the wonderful things they have.”
Co-creation is powerful simply by being included, adds Moyse. “It’s about being included alongside peers I may not know. Similarly, if someone reads that insight, that gives me benefit because my name and brand are there, even if I didn’t create the whole thing.”
Creation should be a collaborative process. It’s not enough to simply create thought leadership content and then ask an expert to endorse it. Rather, it’s about asking the influencer person for their insight, to be in the content, part of that education process. Or have someone independent interview a customer about a journey that the brand may be part of, but it’s not corporate written, it’s not a sales case study, it’s going to come across as much more engaging.
Partnering with customers is a key strategy for Turrell. “We agree upon a topic and organically, we start a conversation with someone who may have shared an incredible story. Some companies try and use all their clients, but this approach often ends up with an imbalanced narrative. You need to be able to say, hand on heart, there are people who would be able to tell a better story. It has to be about the best insights, balancing existing and prospective clients with others you have not met yet.”
David Turner was recently involved in a project selling business software to chief financial officers. To help build this business, the company partnered with a journalist who had built a community of CFOs on LinkedIn. “They run an annual survey into CFOs each year on the future of finance, and technology. This aligns really well with what we talk about, so we partner on the survey. It’s not exclusive. We are involved in it, and use a lot of it, because it’s really good. The author has a strong background and it gives the content a lot of thought leadership credibility.”
““It’s about being included alongside peers I may not know. Similarly, if someone reads that insight, that gives me benefit because my name and brand are there, even if I didn’t create the whole thing.”
Ian Moyse
EMEA Sales Director, Natterbox
“Often, quite poor research or research that is biased to come with a specific answer just doesn’t have credibility. It’s a product pitch dressed up as thought leadership and it’s not good for anyone involved.”
Richard Turrell
Head of Marketing, Handle
Sadly, thought leadership content is not always this successful. “People don’t want to be sold to,” says Turrell. “The product pitch should be left behind until you’ve engaged with someone who realises that you understand the problem. Often, quite poor research or research that is biased to come with a specific answer just doesn’t have credibility. It’s a product pitch, dressed up as thought leadership and it’s not good for anyone involved.”
Top Insights:
We include external stakeholders such as our customers in our Thought Leadership material. It allows us to position our organisation as one that really understands customer challenges and speaks to that. Paul Malyon - Head of Thought Leadership & Data Literacy at Experian
The best stories come from your clients. Mark Terry - Head of Marketing at Vuzion
Make your prospects feel good about taking part in Thought Leadership because you want them to be involved and you value their opinion.
Holly Harding - Marketing Manager at Causeway Technologies
A third party perspective offers more context and flavour. When creating your own content, it’s easy to get trapped into focusing too much on the sell and not enough on the problems you’re trying to solve.
Edward Harries - Brand Partnerships Director at Visualsoft Ltd
It is very important to see who your market’s influencers are. If there is an influencer you trust or a journalist that you rate, then their opinion is going to count for a lot more.
Sam Barnes - Senior Director, International PR and Marketing Communications, AXON Communications
Utilise research that is backed up by data to add credibility to your content.
Benjamin Cawthray - Global Thought Leadership Director - Kantar Worldpanel Division
If a picture tells a thousand words, then video is worth a million words!
Harsha Swamy - Chief Commercial Officer at The Smart Cube
Creating a collaborative environment such as focus groups or roundtables allows you to bring back human touch and add real value to conversations.
Dhara Kothari - Marketing Manager at Check Point Software Technologies