Thought Leadership Marketing: How to Stand Out in a Crowded Market

Thought leadership marketing is one of the most effective ways to stand out in a crowded market. When you are able to establish yourself as an expert in your field, you will be able to attract more customers and increase your revenue. This blog post will discuss what thought leadership marketing is and how you can use it to grow your business.

Industry leaders use thought leadership marketing as the foundation piece for almost all their marketing efforts. That’s because thought leadership marketing provides a place where eliciting B2B marketing ideas can effectively spring forward. Many people think that content marketing is the same thing as thought leadership marketing, but that’s not the case.

Leadership is so much more than creating relevant content or creating more brand awareness through social media marketing. There are some crossovers, but creating a thought leadership marketing campaign is like painting a picture freestyle. You have a vision in your head of what you want and need for your business to grow and develop.

If you want to have a chance that it can reach industry giant status, you have to start from scratch to make it happen successfully. Read on to discover how you can obtain incredible business opportunities by using leadership marketing tools and strategies.

The comprehensive guide below provides ways to elevate your brand awareness so you can achieve industry giant status.

Key Takeaways

• Thought leadership marketing distinguishes businesses in crowded markets by establishing their expertise. It attracts more customers and boosts revenue through credibility and recognition as industry experts.
• The strategy involves more than just content creation. It’s about crafting a unique vision for business growth and utilizing leadership marketing tools. A good practice is engaging in activities like speaking engagements to solidify one’s reputation as a subject matter expert.
• Effective thought leadership marketing requires aligning leadership strategies with overall marketing goals. You must create valuable advisory content and measure the impact of these efforts to ensure they contribute to establishing a strong personal brand and industry authority.

Thought Leadership Marketing

Almost every comprehensive business guide starts with a definition of the terms and strategies you’ll be learning. Thought leadership marketing isn’t an exception to that rule of thumb. Thought leadership is a strategy or tactic that content marketers use to build credibility for their brand or company.

Succinctly put, thought leadership builds your credibility until you’re recognized as an expert within your industry field.

Once you’re recognized as the expert or go-to resource within your industry, it opens up new educational entries to become active in your industry. Usually, it’s through community social media sites.

Three Thought Leadership Strategies

Thought leadership for businesses usually consists of three different types that you should be creating and implementing.

You want to understand why a thought leadership strategy is so needed for your B2B digital marketing objectives.

You also want to determine how to measure target audience return once your active marketing platform implements a thought leadership strategy.

Finally, you want to create your industry-specific actionable steps.

Thought Leadership Actionable Steps in Marketing

Actionable steps are needed to help you solidify and implement leadership content in your industry. These steps include participating in thought leadership speaking engagements and sharing your point of view. Your blog post will help build your company’s reputation as a subject matter expert.

Building the types of content you’ll be creating your social media presence can increase tenfold especially through brand recognition. It’s a known fact that influential social media leaders often create online company platforms. So, the company that includes this platform has a start-up engagement factor within the consumer ecosystem.

Thought Leadership Marketing Strategy

There are three necessary steps for creating a presence in thought leadership content. Each one has some crossover with content and social media marketing strategies.

#1 Defining How Your Leadership Strategy Aligns With Your Marketing and Growth Strategy

You need your strategy to integrate with a potential customer’s product or service needs. Your company’s presales and sales process needs to include publishing content through effective communication and branding. It is this strategy more than almost any other that helps you to reach your product sales targets.

Some of your most absolute priorities help create a clear line of sight from the strategy implementation to the industry leader’s work product and skills. It is the skills that enable the growth of the company’s critical content marketing strategy that help them achieve the organizational goals for sales, growth marketing, and development.

#2 Advisory Content, Tools, and Resources

One of the most important steps is building leadership assets that are well thought out when you’re creating content. The well-thought-out leadership assets should apply to your content, any marketing tools you need as well as the resources you’ll use. It’s a proven concept that part of a buyer’s selective attention is earned by how strong your leadership reputation is.

Authority recognition bridges social capital resources. It allows the consumers to perceive your company as helpful, responsive, and an industry leader with the competencies they need.

A content marketing strategy that targets thought leadership content will increase the chances that buyers perceive you as an industry leader.

Leaders in content marketing know that earning authority recognition is essential to their success and helps them achieve their goals. The types of thought leadership content they produce are designed to help people recognize their expertise and build trust with potential customers.

#3 Measurables for Active Thought Leadership Marketing Strategy 

How you measure the return you receive on an active marketing strategy campaign needs to include disciplined multi-channel programs. By creating your industry-specific actionable steps, you set yourself above your competition. The industry-specific action steps help you coordinate customer touches that give you a leadership profile.

All three steps above help you publish and provide marketing outreach about the go-to-market process used by industry leaders such as yourself. Engaging customers through a marketing mix of media and sales channels helps you build your brand awareness and expertise. That means with every engagement you make with a customer using this unique marketing strategy mix; you unlock terrific new opportunities that help build your industry giant objective.

#4 Develop Your Personal Brand as a Thought Leader

Thought leadership is so important because people want to do business with those they know, like, and trust. When you position yourself as a thought leader in your industry, you are doing just that. You position yourself as an expert that others should turn to for advice.

Creating thought leadership content on a regular basis will help you establish yourself as a thought leader. It will also make it easier for people to find you when they search online. This is important because that’s how most of your customers are going to find you in the first place.

The best way to do this is by creating relevant thought leadership content and email opt-ins that are free. This gives viewers a chance to see what you’re all about without paying for it.

Developing valuable content as part of an overall content marketing strategy is a smart step for you to take. It will help you establish your personal brand as an expert in the field and it gives people more reasons to buy from you than just price alone.

#5 Demonstrate Thought Leadership with Speaking Engagements

Speaking engagements are a great way to show your expertise and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. When you speak at events, you have the opportunity to share your knowledge with the audience members. You help them learn something new.

Make sure to choose events that are relevant to your audience and that will help you reach your target market. You must know B2B webinar strategies to boost your confidence and help you provide value to your audience. Speaking can be a great way to reach your target audience and build your personal brand.

What Is Thought Leadership Marketing?

You have arrived at the pinnacle of thought leadership marketing when others in your industry seek your advice. You also realize you’re at the pinnacle of thought leadership marketing when others in your industry want you to lead them on critical or important issues that represent you and them within the industry. It doesn’t matter if this pinnacle is reached formally or informally; it only matters that you reach it.

If you want to know what exactly is thought leadership marketing ask yourself if you’ve been asked to speak, write, or represent others in your industry with any social media platform or trade conference. Everything that is part of a social media or outreach platform that advocates for your industry, you need to be sharing your opinion and then recruiting to give your opinion to others.

How Do You Know You’ve Reached the Top of Thought Leadership?

If others don’t see your opinion or you don’t feel you’re helping shape the industry conversations and dialogues that are ongoing, then you haven’t reached the top-tiers of becoming an industry leader in thought leadership. Also, often thought leadership marketing doesn’t only enhance content performance; it creates it by being on the cutting edge of the next best thing coming up in your industry. When you’re creating the leading edge moves, or you’re helping to create them for others to follow, you’ve reached the top levels of implementing a leadership marketing strategy for your company.

Thought Leadership Marketing Plan Lines Up with People’s Buying Traits

Every person has buying habits, whether they realize it or not. It is those buying habits you want to target when you’re creating your company’s leadership marketing plan. Interestingly it’s thought how people search for products and services is a significant conduit to where and how they purchase anything.

For instance, most consumers use long keywords on Google when they’re searching for a product or service. That means 54% of consumers that are looking for a good swimming pool company will Google something like, “Who is the best swimming pool company,’ vs. ‘swimming pool companies.’ Breaking that down means letting you know that people are less interested in the keywords typically used for your company or industry and are more interested in natural language that gives them real matches to their needs.

What is a Thought Leadership Campaign?

Now that you know what thought leadership marketing is and how it is achieved, it’s essential to know what is in the campaign, and how does it impact content performance? Since marketing isn’t just one thing and it’s a mix of many things from SEO to emails, it’s essential that when creating a thought leadership campaign, you don’t mix it up with an online influencer or personality. A significant difference between a thought leadership campaign that uses an industry thought leader vs. a social media influencer is determining if competitors see you as a leader?

Thought leaders will do things that are good for the industry sometimes that aren’t a perfect match for their company. Other times they have to think more prominent than the current marketing strategy process and see what’s needed vs. what’s wanted. Sometimes it’s not about the popular strategy tools that win the leadership marketing top-tier levels.

New Ideas or Rehabilitated Ideas for Thought Leadership Strategies

Many times it’s more about the new ideas or rehabilitated ideas that are going to make a positive difference in the industry and how you can speak to that benefit for your industry. When people come to you when they have a better or new way of doing something in your industry, that’s when you know you might be in the top-tier in thought leadership marketing.

Thought Leaders

Who are some stellar thought leaders who have made a difference in their industry, and how did they achieve leadership status? There are many rising through the ranks within their industry, but a couple that comes to mind is the following, although they aren’t listed in any particular order.

#1 Chris Guillebeau

Chris Guillebeau has turned five different categories through his prolific blogs into a fantastic industry leader in Profiles, Travel, Work, Life, and a different category entitled Et Cetera. Chris often shares that he wasn’t super strategic, but he does state he worked with heart and with passion. He knew he had a passion for each category listed and decided that he could provide his readers with quick navigation options to core areas through savvy design talents.

These quick navigation options, in addition to superior content provided within his website, he was able to grow and develop into a thought industry leader.

#2 Marie Forleo

Marie Forleo knew from the beginning it wasn’t just about making money in her business. Instead, it was about starting a business that made a difference because she knew by making a difference success is obtained through growth that touches others. Her web design company has led to her becoming a TV star with millions of customers and fans.

Her first episode of Marie TRV was back in 2010 well before other people were thinking about reaching leadership marketing solutions through web TV or stellar content performance. The lesson learned she offers most is doing what you can with what you have but doing it with your whole heart and focus. Your disciplined practice throughout two, three, or seven-plus years will eventually help you gain the thought leadership status you seek if you don’t give up.

#3 Sally Hogshead

Sally Hogshead turned the industry of thought leadership on its head when she found it’s not necessarily all about how you see yourself that makes you the best industry thought leader. Instead, it’s about how the world sees you. Sally Hogshead created The Fascination Advantage® method. Sally is one of only 172 members of the Speaker Hall of Fame, which is the highest pinnacle you can reach as thought leadership and content marketing professional.

She’s also written several New York Times bestsellers in building your brand and how it’s based on the world’s perception of you.

#4 Paul Jarvis

Paul Jarvis has become known for his straight-talk and candor. Yet Paul Jarvis also has a marketing portfolio that he has grown ever since he started up as an entrepreneur in the 1990’s. His course has helped Ashton Kutcher and Ariana Huffington.

They are two people that have already become industry leaders but are now seeking to learn more about thought leadership marketing strategies.

Conclusion

In order to become a thought leader in your industry, you don’t have to be the one with all of the new ideas.

You just need to be better than everyone else at implementing them.

So how do you go about becoming a thought leader? And once you achieve that status, what can you do to stay on top?

FAQs