Thought Leadership: The Content Marketing Your Audience Actually Buys.
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There's a massive difference between content marketing and thought leadership. We explore the difference and show you how to produce thought leadership, the content that actually drives the buying process.
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Thought Leadership: The Content Marketing Your Audience Actually Buys.
- 1. THOUGHT LEADERSHIP #SMLONDON THE CONTENT MARKETING YOUR AUDIENCE ACTUALLY BUYS @JonLombardo Content Marketing Lead, EMEA LinkedIn
- 3. WE HAVE A CHOICE BETWEEN RED PILLS AND BLUE PILLS #SMLONDON
- 4. But, as an industry, we’re taking too many of the wrong pills
- 5. #SMLONDON WHICH IS ODD…
- 6. Because the blue pills are largely commoditized
- 7. And the red pills are what our audience actually ‘buys’
- 8. WHY DON’T MORE BRANDS #SMLONDON TAKE RED PILLS?
- 9. They play the short-game, because that’s how they’re rewarded
- 10. They talk about themselves, because that’s what they know best
- 11. They are not organized to produce original ideas, because they value hierarchy over originality
- 12. #SMLONDON THE REALITY: THOUGHT LEADERSHIP IS REALLY HARD
- 13. In fact, it’s so hard that I only found one or two definitions that I actually liked… A thought leader is someone who looks at the present and sets a better course for the future that compels others to follow. - Shel Israel
- 14. But, like most things, it’s easier to understand and practice when you break it down into chunks
- 15. #SMLONDON WHO’S DOING THOUGHT LEADERSHIP WELL?
- 16. Industry leadership: Andreesen Horowitz helps followers ‘eat the world’ of technology trends
- 17. Product leadership: Hubspot teaches marketers how to deliver a more delightful inbound client experience
- 18. Organizational leadership: Netflix re-invented culture to attract people to re-invent an industry
- 19. #SMLONDON HOW WE CAN TAKE MORE RED PILLS
- 20. Produce one content ‘red pill’ per quarter
- 21. Leverage content marketing best practices (read: slice, dice, make turkey curry out of the leftovers)
- 22. Map to the different stages of the buying cycle Top types of information sought in each stage of the IT decision-making process Engage Nurture Acquire Product / solution demo / software trial Best practices, how-tos, checklists IT industry news / strategy info Diagnostics or assessment tools
- 23. Distribute to the audience you are trying to impress
- 24. #SMLONDON TRACKING RED PILLS
- 25. Qualitative: Track relationships developed and reputation cultivated
- 26. Quantitative: Track leads generated, sales delivered, and lifetime value created
- 30. Think we should work together? Connect with me.
Notes de l'éditeur
- Or more aptly, how content marketing is like the matrix. I know that sounds outlandish, but stay with me.
- Like Neo, we, too, have a choice between the red pill and the blue pill.
- Here is what I mean by that. We are looking at Google Trends for in, blue, ‘Content Marketing’ and, in red, ‘Thought Leadership’, over the last eight years. You can see that at one point, they were virtually identical and they are now growing further apart and that trend is forecasted to continue. And what I am here to suggest is this: the graph shows that we are talking about the wrong thing. What drives actual business decisions in the B2B and, increasingly in the B2C space, is original content that offers IOU > Inspirational, Original, Useful. Curated, syndicated, or derivative content does not of those things. But increasingly that is what drives that blue line up and to the right. Genuine thought leadership makes a difference and we’re not spending enough time there. ++++++++++++++++++++ HERE IS WHAT WE’RE TALKIN CONTENT MARKETING DOES NOT INFLUENCE DECISIONS WHAT DOES INFLUENCE DECISIONS NOT ENOUGH CONVERSATION ABOUT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP, WHICH IS WHERE WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
- Dan Slagen from Hubspot realizes that just producing derivative, ‘me-too’ content simply does not cut it. It is commoditized. It is a race to the bottom. What does cut it and, as we’ll see later from Hubspot, is IOU > Insightful, Original, and Useful content that makes your better at what you do / want to do.
- The data bears this out as well: ¾ of the buyers choose the vendor that adds value and helps them create their buying vision. You can’t do that by curating other people’s content, by sharing other people’s vision. You need your own perspective, spparoach and vision. That’s what buyers want because that creates trust and that’s what they are buying. That’s why thought leadership matters. +++++++++++++++ And that that’s what buyers want: original ideas that add value as they scope a vision for a better future.
- If the data shows us that thought leadership, founded on delivering Insightful, Original, Useful perspective to buyers is what works, why don’t more brands take ‘red pills’?
- It takes a brave marketer to advocate and invest in the long-term. It is extremely difficult to do that when your company is structured to serve the public markets. This leads to a focus on short-term campaigns and not long-term health. The reality is that a real thought leadership program takes 1-2 years to build, not 1-2 posts. It takes a brave marketer.
- In addition to short-term thinking, most brands are still not comfortable producing thought leadership because that comes from a place of empathy and brands come from a place of apathy. They don’t know their customers and, often, they don’t care. They need to move units for quarterly earnings and that looks a lot like the above. Brands should start by writing stories, how-tos, and webinars that answer client challenges: What are their audiences problems? What are their aspirations? What is their vision for the future and how can you help them to get there? Most brands simply do not know the answers to these questions.
- The final piece is that organizations are organized to produce harmony and Hippo. They are not generally organized around understanding the customer and producing compelling products that solve customer needs. As a result, ideas that require, patience, bravery, and empathy get wittled down in the process.
- Thought leadership is really hard. I think we get that by now, but let’s shift gears and talk about how we can start producing thought leadership: the content that really matters.
- Let’s start by defining what ‘Thought Leadership’ is, which is actually surprisingly difficult. There are many articles on how to become a thought leader, most of them crap, but few that distill the idea down into a digestable definition. I like the simplicity and action in this one from Shel Israel.
- We think about thought leadership in three ways: Industry Thought Leadership (owning a point of view on the news, industry, and future) Product Thought Leadership (producing how-tos, best practices, strategy guides) Organizational Thought leadership (sharing company values and building your talent brand) If you can do any 1 of these 3, you are a superstar, if you can do all 3 of these you are, to use an overrated term, ‘world-class’ Let’s take a little poll and see how many of you think your brands are doing this. Put both hands in the air and 0 fingers means you’re not doing it at all. 10 fingers means you’re doing all three. Interesting mix of responses – would love to talk to some of you after this session about what you’re seeing work and not work.
- Let’s dig deeper and look at some of the best practitioners in the space.
- One example that I like is a16z. In my opinion, nobody produces more thought leadership about the future of technology and how that is changing our world than a16z. Marc Andreesen, in particular, paints a compelling vision of the future and explains how we can there together (through the companies that they fund, of course). He is famous for his statement ‘software is eating the world’, which is captured in the below quotation and probably best seen by us in the example of Uber. What started out as a way to hail a taxi, is now a technology platform that is changing logistics globally. He’s tremendously compelling and a magnet for the best entrepreneurs.
- On the product leadership front, Hubspot is a tremendous example. They are changing marketing from outbound – think Piccadilly Circus – to inbound marketing, which says that the best way to attract customers and turn them into evangelists is to produce compelling and personalized content that makes them better marketers. Contrast this approach with marketers that only want to talk about themselves. This is empathy-led marketing.
- The final type of thought leadership, is perhaps the newest. It deals with what we call talent brand: a way to share with the world your company culture through vision, mission, values as you try to persuade talent to come build your business. Perhaps the best known example is Netflix and it’s document on culture and the type of people they want to hire to disrupt an industry and unbundle media. It’s a tremendous document that Sheryl Sandberg calls one of the most important documents to come out of Silicon Valley. Talent is the #1 issue for most brands, so this becomes a way to attract, retain, and reward your talent. Also, what did they just move into? Original content.
- Now that we’ve defined thought leadership, discussed its chunks, and looked at who is doing it well, let’s get tactical. There is a whole separate conversation about strategy, but we’re not going to talk about that in detail right now: - Securing senior support Defining your company position on thought leadership Aligning to business goals I hate when I leave conversations without something tangible and immediate, so instead, we are going to talk tactics and how to produce thought leadership. This is what we see marketers asking for in our meetings.
- I am going to show you how we do it at LinkedIn. Given thought leadership needs to be insightful, original, and useful, we pick maximum one ‘red pill’ per quarter and focus on that. It is always a topic where we feel we can add value and we offer our opinion and also partner with other experts to arrive at a holistic view. This quarter we picked the Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to Thought Leadership, which whether you knew it or not, is what we’ve been discussing. It is our own original content.
- We then think about how to use that single, meaty, piece of content to fuel a considerable part of the content marketing that we do that quarter. We, of course, also curate content, but our marketing mix includes significant parts original thought leadership. We then, slice that content, dice that content, and make turkey curry out of that content, in order to make it work on all strategic channels for us. We make sure the context is right for each channel and we make sure we have enough fresh content for each channel.
- This makes sure that you are thinking through your personas and understanding what people want at each stage of the decision making process. Empathy-led marketing. Reach Nurture Acquire
- Distribute and track using marketing automation software, so we know if you’ve already read awareness material, we can graduate you on to the nurture materials and so on. This makes sure that we are offering a personalized marketing experience for everybody that we engage. That personalization ensures relevance, which drives impact.
- We need
- Qualitative: - Keep track of relationships developed with other industry leaders, potential customers. They will translate, in the long-run, into revenue. - Do surveys on corporate reputation and ensure that you are developing a reputation as a trusted advisor. This moves to upstream in the conversation and makes you more strategic and valuable.
- Quantitative: You will see revenue signs, in time. At the start, you will see, and think Hubspot here: Better inbound enquiries Faster sales cycles Higher lifetime customer value