What Is Thought Leadership Marketing?
Thought leadership marketing is a relatively new term, and because of that, most of us don’t know what thought leadership marketing means.
We know it has something to do with marketing because the word marketing is in the term. But what's the definition of thought leadership? Is it just a new buzzword or trend?
The short answer? No.
Thought leadership is not a buzzword and or trend that’s going to die anytime soon. In fact, thought leadership isn’t something we should want to disappear. Why? The answer is simple. Thought leadership gives us the opportunity to become thought leaders.
Thought leaders are specific individuals who use their expertise and knowledge to garner credibility, trust, authority, and awareness among their target audience. Thought leaders attract speaking engagements, awards, press, social media followers, leads, sales, and more.
So, ultimately, if we’re not thought leaders, we decrease our chances of building successful brands.
How to become a thought leader
As we can see, becoming thought leaders is a huge asset to our professional success. However, to become thought leaders, we have to market ourselves correctly, which is where thought leadership marketing comes into play.
To master thought leadership marketing and become thought leaders who increase business results on all fronts, there are four key strategies we must implement.
1. Provide Education
Thought leadership marketing centers on educating our buyer personas using our insights and expertise. Our topics should focus on an issue, question, misconception, trend, or concern that our audience has. If we prefer to be more thought-provoking, our topics can even dive into unique predictions that our audience needs to consider.
Regardless of the topic we choose, the most important thing for us to remember is to provide education that our audience will find useful. Our thought leadership efforts should provide tips, strategies, opinions, resources, lessons learned, and more to help our audience gain clarity on a specific topic.
2. Offer non-promotional resources
While our thought leadership marketing efforts should align with our industry and knowledge, we should not directly promote our products or services in our resources. Let’s be very clear. Thought leadership is not a direct sales tactic. It’s not an opportunity to sell our business offerings.
Thought leadership marketing is non-promotional in nature. It doesn’t push a sale, promotion, or deal onto an audience. Instead, it pushes educational resources to the forefront. The goal of thought leadership marketing is to create trust and credibility first, not sales.
Does that mean we can't see sales from thought leadership marketing? Of course not. If we’re credible, trustworthy, authoritative, and educational thought leaders, then sales will happen naturally. That's how most marketing works.
3. Enter new channels
Thought leadership marketing shouldn’t just be tied to the content on our website. For us to become thought leaders, we need to expand the platforms in which our audience finds us. How do we do this? It’s easy.
First, we have to create educational content for our website and social media platforms on a consistent basis. We can’t assert our authority somewhere else if we haven’t done so on our platforms first. But, once we've built up a vault of educational content, then it’s time to expand.
Using the content on our site as examples of our expertise and insight, we should:
Apply for speaking engagements at events and conferences
Reach out to podcast hosts to become guest speakers
Contact journalists to suggest newsworthy topics they can use to interview us
Submit content to reputable industry publications
Secure a column in a prominent industry publication
Apply for awards that are given to leaders in our industries
The more places we can showcase our expertise, the better. To truly make an impact on our audience, we need to be everywhere. We just have to keep one lesson in mind: the work starts with the content on our site and social media channels. We must build our expertise on our own platforms first before we expand into our mediums.
Slow and Steady
While beneficial, thought leadership marketing does not lead to instant results. As with anything, becoming a thought leader takes time. We have to be patient. But with patience and effort, we will see results.
We will become the credible, trustworthy, authoritative resources that our audience looks to for education, guidance, and eventually, sales.