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Thought Leadership Marketing:
To be found, providers must churn out high-
quality original thinking that is based on hard
data rather than opinion and is leavened with proof
points from real-world experience with customers—
what’s commonly known as
Thought leaderships success requires a deep
commitment not just from marketing but from the
entire company. This led us to explore the
concept of the idea organization and we developed
a model—the
How to Build Relationships and Revenue
Through Ideas
Six Pillars
of the
Idea
Organization.
thought leadership.
Pillar 1. Create an idea culture
Marketing can’t create thought leadership on its own.
If it does, the output will be promotion, not thought
leadership. Marketing must get the buy-in, support,
and commitment of executives and subject matter
experts to become part of the idea-generating and
dissemination process.
A few ideas from some companies we talked to are:
• Have the CEO declare thought leadership a
strategic priority
• Make idea creation a part of career advancement
• Educate executives and SMEs about the
importance of thought leadership
• Use an internal collaboration platform to develop
ideas
• Make it competitive
that values ideas as much as revenue
Pillar 2. Use business themes
Marketers have a crucial role to play in making sure
that thought leadership relates to what customers
need and what the company does. Business themes
are clear, succinct expressions of issues that are
relevant to customers and prospects and link back
to a company’s strategy.
ITSMA research has found that business themes
give thought leadership programs a
deeper level of connection to target
audiences’ needs and goals and give employees
a clear, simple way to understand the strategy
and goals of the company.
to provide a flexible blueprint for thought leadership
Pillar 3. Validate your ideas
With research, ideas become fact based, and
therefore much more credible. Research has
particularly long mileage online, where people are
hungry for facts and stats that cut through the
haze of uninformed opinion.
There are three broad ways that B2B companies
are making research part of their thought leadership
programs:
• In-house research
• External partnering
• Secondary research
with research
Pillar 4. Create an
We must become as good at developing ideas as
we are at disseminating them.
With a stable of willing and able
contributors, marketers can create a
thought leadership supply chain that
balances idea development
with dissemination.
ITSMA research shows that marketers are putting
more effort and budget into the development side of
the supply chain. When we surveyed marketers in
2007, 70% of the thought leadership budget went to
dissemination; when we surveyed them again in
2010, the proportion was roughly split.
idea development and dissemination engine
Pillar 5. Set up a thought
Thought leadership and social media both require
internal experts who may not come from
marketing. Both groups also must coordinate—
they cannot exist as silos within the organization.
ITSMA research shows that B2B companies are
creating marketing centers of expertise for thought
leadership (social media, too). In our survey, 56%
said they have a central group or center of expertise
for packaging thought leadership. Though specialty
strategy consulting firms like McKinsey and Bain
have had these groups for decades, more
mainstream B2B companies are now stirring the
same kind of thought leadership marketing
transformation.
leadership center of expertise
Pillar 6. Use metrics to show
Thought leadership creates an arm’s-length
relationship with buyers through content. The trick is
to be able to track that relationship all the way
through to a sale.
Influencing the buyer is everything
in thought leadership. But influence is a murky term
when it comes to metrics. We need to break it down
into more concrete terms. At ITSMA, we categorize
thought leadership influence in three ways:
• Reputation
• Relationships
• Revenue
how thought leadership influenced the buyer
It’s time for a strategic
We see many B2B companies launching thought
leadership marketing for the same reason they
launched social media: because everyone else was
doing it. As many companies have already
discovered, that’s a prelude to failure.
Thought leadership is more than a marketing
tactic, it’s a strategy that requires the
buy-in and support of SMEs and top
executives in the company.
Thought leadership forces marketing to get out of its
silo and begin working—and leading—across the
organization.
Marketers must convince their companies to turn
out relevant, customer-focused ideas with the same
passion and commitment that they turn out products
and services.
approach to thought leadership, led by marketing
Learn More For the full story of the six pillars of
the idea organization and to learn
how B2B Services Marketers
can influence the buyer and
make an impact on revenue,
buy the ITSMA Special Report
our report Purchase
Member: $0 Non-member: $149
Thought Leadership Marketing:
How to Build Relationships and
Revenue Through Ideas.
www.itsma.com