How to Build B2B Company Thought Leadership
Thought Leadership is one of those buzzwords making the rounds of B2B organizations today. People talk about “being” a thought leader, and wanting to do “thought leadership marketing”, but what does that really mean?
We recently talked to Paul Dunay, a Financial Services Marketing Leader for PwC, about this very thing in an upcoming B2B Podcast. Here is a sample of what he had to say.
What is B2B Thought Leadership?
At its core, Thought Leadership (TL) is a marketing practice that helps you start a conversation with your prospects. Your organization stops talking at them and starts talking with them through a single person, usually an executive, but not always.
What Can It Do For Me?
You do this by producing engaging content on topics related to your market and products, but that aren’t actually about your products. You’re simply talking, not selling. When done right, thought leadership can help you:
- Connect with your prospects and build your pipeline.
- Increase your odds of winning prospects and increase your bookings.
- A thought leader can typically gets higher prices per engagement, and thereby increasing margins
- Create upsell opportunities with existing customers, and increase your overall revenues.
How to Be Successful as a Thought Leader
- Talk to your audience, don’t sell to them. You’re simply trying to demonstrate your knowledge of the topic, showing them you understand the nuances of it.
- By talking about their obstacles and really connecting with them on a personal/human level, you’re implying that you have the solution to the problem, even if you don’t actually state that you do. It’s implicit in your expertise.
- Understand how your TL activities impact your organization, and how it drives revenue for it. You don’t want to be creating content for creation’s sake. Create it for a purpose.
Next Steps:
- Subscribe to our blog for more on Thought Leadership from Paul and our other B2B marketing pros.
- Contact us to learn more about how we can help your company with content marketing, website design & development, search engine marketing, and corporate branding.
From the Backbone archive, first published June 16, 2014. How we help with content →
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Questions people ask about content
What is B2B content marketing?
It's creating useful articles, guides, videos and posts that answer your buyers' questions, so they find you, trust you and get in touch. Good B2B content teaches before it sells, and it's built around the problems your product or service solves.
How often should a B2B company publish blog posts?
Consistency matters more than volume. One or two well-researched articles a month, promoted properly, usually beat a weekly post nobody reads. Publish on a rhythm you can keep, and update your best pages as things change.
Can AI write our marketing content?
AI can draft and edit quickly, but on its own it tends to sound generic and can get facts wrong. The best results come from people with real expertise directing AI, then editing and approving every word. That's how we work.
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