A Guide to Creating a Thought Leadership Campaign

Desert LeaderSituation: Your B2B company is not seen as a thought leader in your industry. You have been asked to develop a campaign to establish your company as a thought leader and become one of the leading voices within your industry.

Normally I am opposed to the idea of thought leadership and campaign being used together.

However, establishing thought leadership is a common objective and many B2B marketing organizations continue to work within a campaign framework. Ideal or not, many B2B marketers need solutions that deliver real recognition as thought leaders within a campaign structure. [Read more…]

The Path to Value from Content Curation

Increasingly, marketers are adding content curation to their marketing activity, often with objectives of sharing a certain amount of content each day. Ardath Albee (@ardath421) has a sample to-do list for a content marketer in Show Quantity the Door.

Three weeks ago I published Three Reasons Content Curation is Overrated, my reaction to research published on eMarketer and advice we frequently see about curating content in order to establish thought leadership.

That doesn’t mean curation is not valuable. It may be one of the primary ways you stay in touch with your audience. But the path to value from your curation is a winding one. [Read more…]

9 Marketing Words That Have Lost Their Meaning

Thought Leadership Marketing ComicThe following 9 terms are so overused or misused in B2B marketing that they have lost nearly all meaning. If you are using these terms today, it is time to stop and explain what you really mean.

Otherwise, we may hear you, but we will think you mean something completely different. [Read more…]

Three Reasons Content Curation is Overrated

B2B marketers are looking for a shortcut to thought leadership, but the shortcut many are taking lead somewhere else completely.

According to a recent report on eMarketer, 85% of marketers curate content in order to establish thought leadership!

Does sharing someone else’s content make you a thought leader? No.

Marketers, in their race to the shortcut, are confusing respect and attention with thought leadership. [Read more…]

A Nontraditional Application of Triberr: B2B Marketing

Triberr LogoTriberr. Just say the name on Twitter and you are likely to get responses that range from disdain that is only constrained by 140 characters to adoring love and affection. It is a lightening rod application.

  1. I believe as marketers and as individuals, we must serve our connections or audience if we have any desire to maintain and grow them.
  2. I use Triberr.

No, despite the reputation Triberr has with some people, these points are not contradictory.

As a marketer, if your social media program includes establishing individuals as participants in industry conversations, Triberr should be on your radar. [Read more…]

4 Problems Killing Thought Leadership Marketing

Chris Koch shared Four Reasons to Hate Thought Leadership earlier this week. He made some great points in his call to end the use of the phrase thought leadership, but ultimately I disagree with his conclusion. We don’t need to stop using the phrase, we need to start using it right.

The problem is thought leadership has become a catchall for any marketing that includes content. Unfortunately, looking back, it isn’t surprising that this happened.

Here are four of the underlying problems that created the situation. [Read more…]

Connecting Thought Leadership to Lead Generation in B2B Marketing

IMG_1202Many B2B marketers look to content marketing as a key part of establishing thought leadership. However, companies frequently expect the same content marketing program to capture contacts or leads as well.

The problem is, registration and thought leadership are at odds with each other. Thought leadership requires your point of view to be broadly distributed and recognized across a peer group, where it can drive discussion and shape opinions. [Read more…]

Thought Leadership in B2B Marketing [#B2Bchat Recap]

Why should companies invest in thought leadership? And just what does thought leadership mean anyways?

These and other questions were debated during a Twitter #B2Bchat on Thought Leadership in B2B Marketing on October 13, and I had the privilege of moderating the discussion.

Here are the key takeaways I took from the discussion. [Read more…]

Thought Leadership Marketing is an Oxymoron

Thought leadership is a common marketing topic, but unfortunately thought leadership is not a common outcome of marketing. Part of the problem is that thought leadership marketing has lost all notions of actual thought leadership.

Gartner defines thought leadership marketing as “the giving โ€” for free or at a nominal charge โ€” of information or advice that a client will value so as to create awareness of the outcome that a company’s product or service can deliver, in order to position and differentiate that offering and stimulate demand for it.”

The problem is, knowledge of what a product or service can deliver or its differentiation does not establish real thought leadership. [Read more…]

Connecting Thought Leadership to Sales

perfectly aligned

Perfect alignment

Chris Koch’s most recent headline really caught my attention: Three Ways to Link Marketing to Revenue without Metrics. Beyond a great headline, he has great advice for marketers to ensure content and thought leadership is tightly connected to sales.

Here are Chris’s three key points:

  • Connect ideas to offerings: tell a story that extends from vision to implementation
  • Use ideas to attract and nurture leads
  • Train salespeople to use and talk about ideas

[Read more…]