How Thought Leadership Generates Business Demand
Late last year a study was released by Edelman/LinkedIn called “How Thought Leadership Impacts B2B Demand Generation.” In my view it is the most comprehensive study yet on the impact of thought leadership on a company’s top line. The study surveyed 1,300 business executives to understand the impact thought leadership and brand publishing has in the B2B buying process.
The study found (if you don’t mind me skipping all the way to the end) that thought leadership “goes beyond gaining attention and impacts every stage of the B2B buying process.” Perhaps more importantly, the study found that it needs to be good, genuine and properly executed in order to be effective.
Here are some of the highlights of the study:
- “(Though Leadership) attracts invitations to bid (RFP’s), earns buyer preference by building trust, directly contributes to wins, and can even impact pricing.”
NOTE: What other marketing option out there can accomplish so much on so many levels? If you are looking to be more effective and efficient with your marketing, you NEED to be investing less in promotion and more in guidance.
- “9 out of 10 business decision-makers find thought leadership important and 38% spend 1-4 hours per week engaging with it.”
NOTE: How much would you pay to spend 1 hour a week with top decision makers in your target audience?Getting their attention is the hardest and most important step. Publishing industry thought leadership through brand publishing channels is the way to capture mindshare at scale.
- “50% of C-Level executives and decision-makers know that their contact information is given in exchange for access to the information they seek.”
NOTE: This is critical. In order to maximize the impact on your top line, you have to be able to identify the key decision-makers engaging with your content.
- “63% of B2B decision-makers believe that reading thought leadership is one of the best ways to get a sense of the type and caliber of thinking an organization is likely to deliver.”
NOTE: Bragging about how wonderful your solution is or how knowledgeable your company is will not move the needle in the same impactful way it did 20 years ago.Sharing your knowledge-based (not vendor-based) stories is the most efficient way to transfer your credibility to a potential customer.
- “Over 30% of business decision-makers have removed companies from consideration after engaging with what they view as poor thought leadership.”
NOTE: So what constitutes poor thought leadership?Content focused on product features instead of customer-facing issues.Stop being wonderful and start being helpful.Issues and trends that your audience cares about will almost always be viewed in a positive light when written and delivered with care and focus.
- “Close to half of decision-makers feel thought leadership has directly led to them awarding business to a vendor and allows those companies to command a premium for their products and services.”
NOTE: In the water and wastewater industry where low-cost bids are the bane of our existence, isn’t any device defending profit margins worthy of our time and investment?
Image credit: "Design A Better Business masterclass @ Zoku Amsterdam, October 2017," Sebastiaan ter Burg © 2017, used under an Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/