Advice from a friend

Add thought leadership to the list of things that the pandemic has disrupted.

For the fourth edition of their study of thought leadership and its impact on B2B decision-makers, Edelman and LinkedIn conducted research last summer with nearly 3,600 management professionals across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Singapore, Australia and India who consume thought leadership and found that a pandemic-induced glut of content has diluted their sense of thought leadership’s value.

The report doesn’t delve into the reasons COVID-19 has seemed to open the floodgates of digital content intending (or pretending) to be thought leadership. It could be panic (regular marketing channels aren’t working the same since the whole world has been upended!), it could be cost (our marketing budgets have been slashed … quick, what’s a cheap way to get our name out there?) or it could be laziness or ignorance (Company X does a nice job with its thought leadership … how hard can it be?). 

Regardless, 66% of those surveyed noticed the increase and 38% said there was too much content/more content out there than they could reasonably consume. And yet, over half (51%) said they spend more time consuming thought leadership than before the pandemic began. While 54% of decision-makers (and 48% of the C-suite) said they spend more than one hour per week reading thought leadership, 71% of decision-makers said that less than half of what they read is useful to them.

The report (https://bit.ly/3G3UowK, registration required) cites three other main findings.

Thought leadership remains critical to customer engagement but breaking through the noise is harder than ever. Thought leadership can certainly have an impact – when it’s done right. The 2020 version of the study found that 54% said that after engaging with an organization’s thought leadership they purchased a new product or service that they hadn’t considered buying. Fifty-three percent decided to increase the amount of business they did with the organization and 48% awarded business to the organization.

Among the top reasons for consuming thought leadership are: keep up with the latest thinking in the sector (71%); stimulate thinking and generate new ideas (71%); gain insight into trends set to impact the organization (68%); understand trends currently affecting the organization (65%); and discover new products or services that might help the organization (47%). (While that last number is not insignificant, it might surprise the shockingly high number of companies that wrongly use and view thought leadership as a blatant sales tool. Do they really think most readers want to spend their valuable time being sold-to instead of being informed?)

Quality-wise, most (55%) thought leadership seems to land in the middle somewhere, according to those surveyed. Fifteen percent rated the overall quality of the thought leadership they read as very good or excellent and 30% rated it as mediocre, poor or very poor.

Earning trust and credibility with decision-makers requires strong thought leadership – especially if you are not an established market leader. Companies, organizations and brands with demonstrated track records of delivering top-quality thought leadership obviously have a leg up on newcomers to an industry but the study found that thought leadership is an effective way for upstarts to make a name for themselves. Over half (53%) say it is important for small companies to produce thought leadership if they want to interest buyers in working with them. Sixty percent of buyers say it builds credibility for new entrants and 57% say it builds awareness. And 47% say thought leadership led them to first discover and later purchase from a company that was not generally seen as a category leader.

Sixty-four percent of buyers put more stock in the trustworthiness of a company’s thought leadership content than its marketing materials and product sheets and 63% say it’s important in providing proof that the organization understands and can help solve business challenges.

The study also notes the role/value of thought leadership as a vehicle for shedding light on and fostering discussion about business-related topics that might be getting overlooked by media outlets that are now more focused on reporting the impacts of the pandemic and attempting to do so with newsrooms gutted by COVID-19-inflicted budget and personnel cuts.

High-performing thought leadership strikes a balance between being authoritative and provocative yet human in tone and even fun. So what are the keys to doing thought leadership right? (Well, first, leave the selling to your sales team – that’s what you hired them for, after all.) 

• Don’t let your content get weighed down by gravity. Inject a little tastefully done fun into the proceedings: 87% of those surveyed said thought leadership content can be both intellectually rigorous and fun at the same time. When it comes to tone, respondents prefer a more human, less formal voice (64%) to an even-toned intellectual voice (36%) and a strong authorial point of view (67%) over a broader, more generalized POV (33%). “Thought leadership has evolved from a one-way broadcast to conversion and community. It requires authenticity, having a point of view and delivering something of value. Value can come in the form of insights, inspiration, imagination, help – even entertainment,” says Kevin Marasco, CMO of Zenefits, in the study report.
• Make it matter. Forty-seven percent of buyers surveyed said that most thought leadership doesn’t feel like it was created to meet their specific needs.
• Be provocative, authoritative and relevant. Respondents were shown a series of pairs of descriptors for thought leadership and asked to indicate which of the two they most preferred. At 81%, “offers provocative ideas that challenge my assumptions regarding a topic” bested “validates my current thinking” (19%) by a wide margin. When asked who they preferred to hear from, 77% selected deep subject-matter experts delving into specialized topics over senior executives speaking to high-level business issues (23%). In terms of sources to back up the insights being presented, 80% preferred “third-party data and insights from other trusted organizations or people” to “only proprietary insights from the company that published the piece” (20%). And the insights have to be real-world rather than pie-in-the-sky: 62% say they prefer a “focus on analyzing current trends that are likely to be affecting my business today” over a focus that is “more speculative and discusses where things might be going in my sector/industry in the future” (38%).
• And perhaps above all, resist the urge to sell. When asked to detail the most prominent shortcomings of low-quality thought leadership they had seen recently, 46% mentioned it being overly focused on selling or describing products rather than conveying valuable information; 40% cited unoriginal thinking or a lack of new ideas; 31% said it was authored by people who are not true subject-matter experts; 29% said it failed to support its arguments with high-quality data; and 23% said it was too staid or “corporate” in tone.

Hungry for new ideas

I personally found the report’s recommendations validating, echoing as they do what we here at Quirk’s have been stressing for over 35 years to the research companies that engage in thought leadership by writing articles for us and speaking at our annual slate of Quirk’s Events. The urge to sell and self-promote is a powerful one – and, though regrettable, often understandable if the vendor-side author or speaker’s company is focused on generating leads rather than enhancing credibility. But as we have long told our content contributors on the vendor side, readers or audience members don’t want a sales pitch. They’re hungry for new ideas and new perspectives. They want to learn, to get some value from the time they invest in experiencing what you have to say. 

You can’t build a reputation for delivering quality thought leadership overnight. It takes time – which again, in some bottom line-driven organizations is not available. It also takes real effort and real motivation. In business-to-business, as the Edelman/LinkedIn report shows, the best, most effective thought leadership communicates a sense of authority that transcends the typical social media-based influencer. If readers truly feel like they are drowning in poor-quality thought leadership, the best way to earn their trust (and eventually their business) is to throw them a lifeline by offering stimulating, substantive, well-sourced material that helps them feel smarter after consuming it.