Views on thought leadership

Views on thought leadership

Marte Semb Aasmundsen, is a postgraduate student due to graduate this month with her MSc Strategic Public Relations and
Communications Management at The University of Stirling in the UK.  She approached me some time ago about interviewing me on the topic of thought leadership as part of her thesis.

I will run excerpts from that interview over three posts.  This is the first:

How would you define thought leadership?

“As evolving content that is geared towards the issues and challenges of your target audiences or your business prospects.
It should enable you to have conversations with them and a relationship beyond selling your products or services. It’s got to be client centric and it’s got to address the issues and challenges that clients and your prospects care about, because if it doesn’t you’ll struggle to gain traction.

“Ideally good thought leadership should be a bit of a game changer – it challenges conventions, it can be pretty out there, it’s new and not everybody agrees with it. In fact, if you can engage in dialogue with people who disagree, fantastic, because that just raises the profile of your thought leadership even further. Effectively, you want to be challenging the industry with your point of view as well as your stakeholders to think differently about that sector or that industry.”

Marte: What’s the underlying purpose of thought leadership?

“Quite simply to position yourself as the expert in that field, to position yourself as someone that has a different point of view and who can add value to your clients or your prospective clients.  To position yourself as the go to person in your area.”

Why do organisations choose to implement a thought leadership
strategy?

“More than ever companies are struggling to differentiate themselves.  There is so much content out there and the competition is in the increase.  It’s very difficult to stay at the top of the pile and companies have realised that the consumer, whether they are in B2C or B2B, are looking for something a little bit different, they want to be engaged with that business.

“And it shouldn’t be an engagement that says to them ‘these guys are just trying to sell me their products, or they’re just trying to sell me their services.’  Ultimately it should be the type of engagement that says to them ‘these guys really understand my sector, they really understand me, and they’ve given me stuff that has added value.  I feel very comfortable talking to these guys because they really do understand my issues and challenges.’

“It becomes a lot easier to sell when you talking to somebody about their problems as opposed to your product.”

Is there a difference between B2B vs B2C thought leadership?

“Yes.  B2B can be a lot more targeted.  It also requires more depth in terms of the research in the sector within which you operate. I think B2C in some ways can by more difficult because the audience is a lot bigger and more diverse – depending of course on what you’re selling. As a result it is more difficult to define your thought leadership position and delivery of that is more challenging.

“When it comes to a business, for example if you are a lawyer or a management consultant, you have a very defined audience, you probably have a closer relationship with them and as a result I believe it’s easier to target your thought leadership in terms of their needs. “

In part two Marte asks me about whether a brand can be a thought leader, the sustainability of thought leadership, whether it’s measurable and how you measure it.  

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