How to Increase Lead Generation with Thought Leadership
It may seem obvious to say that people seek out businesses that demonstrate thought leadership in their industries, but you would be surprised at the number of business owners whose marketing includes few examples of it – or none at all.
When a potential customer is researching your products and solutions, thought leadership can be a powerful differentiator. There are few ways as effective at driving leads as guides, industry publication articles and whitepapers that demonstrate the depth of expertise and experience you provide.
So why don’t more marketing efforts feature this type of content?
In many cases it’s because of a mistaken idea that marketing should lead with the benefits of products and services. In other cases, it’s because thought leadership requires more time and expertise than other types of content and companies don’t have the resources to devote to creating it. Sometimes, companies have content that demonstrates thought leadership, but they don’t have effective strategies for ensuring that it comes up in search results.
The effect of doing it well, however, is worth the effort. It’s content your prospects are actively searching for and will help you increase lead generation and sales.
Understanding the Modern B2B Prospect
In B2B marketing, you can start with the assumption that your prospects are a savvy group. They’re business owners, just like you, and they do their homework. The digital age has given them easy access to a flood of information, but a lot of it is transparently promotional, shallow, and indistinguishable from a glut of cookie-cutter content.
A typical B2B prospect does a lot of research before reaching out to a prospective vendor, so the impact of a well-crafted piece of thought leadership in a landscape of shameless promotion and salesy appeals can be profound, especially when it conveys a thorough knowledge of the specific challenges and problems the prospect is attempting to solve.
Combining Storytelling with Strategy
Traditional marketing is often heavily focused on the visual appeal of your brand or your website. Maybe that’s why high-quality content gets short-changed. But a beautiful website is worthless if it doesn’t provide compelling and credible content.
Effective thought leadership content conveys more than your knowledge. It conveys a brand story built around the challenges of your prospect and the solutions you can provide in the role of a trusted provider.
That’s a powerful story and a powerful source of credibility, especially when your competitors lead with messaging that does little more than tout the superiority of their products and services. Your messaging, by contrast should lead with your prospects – their problems, their obstacles and their ability to overcome them with the right solutions. Yours.
Thought leadership, after all, is built on understanding the inherent challenges in your industry. Your marketing effort should include a diligent and ongoing effort to understand these challenges from the perspective of your customers so that they remain the focus of your story.
This should include regular meetings with sales representatives to glean what they’re hearing in the field. Customer interviews and case studies are also a great opportunity to mine the details of customer experience, in addition to showcasing your credibility and expertise.
The Most Expedient Way to Get Started
Creating content around your thought leadership can be a lot of work, especially if you don’t have an in-house marketing team or your in-house marketing team is small.
Finding an agency that can help you create and optimize thought leadership content can be a tremendous boost. You’ll see the best results from an agency with lots of expertise in creating content and ensuring that it’s seen by your target market. You’ll want an agency with in-house talent that includes:
- Professional writers and journalists skilled at the interviewing, fact gathering and writing that goes into a strong piece of thought leadership content.
- Savvy SEO strategists skilled in the optimization of digital content to ensure high-ranking search results
- Experienced B2B marketing strategists skilled at creating the right balance of inbound and outbound strategies to maximize reach within a specific target market
Innovaxis specializes in B2B marketing with a track record of increasing ROI by 300% on average within 18 months.
As part of a customized marketing strategy that relies heavily on thought leadership content and a brand storytelling approach, Innovaxis conducts expansive due diligence including:
- A marketing audit
- Market research or at least sales team interviews
- Brand story workshop
- SEO analysis and optimization
It’s an approach that doesn’t rely on cookie cutter promotions or content that simply bleats out the same tired messaging around how great you and your products and services are. Instead, the Innovaxis approach relies on marketing that demonstrates your value by showing your prospects how great they can be.
