Businesses that become thought leaders grow 13 times faster than their competitors, according to Hinge*. But if you aren't brave enough to voice unique opinions, you'll never be a thought leader.
Today, everyone wants to create thought leadership. As a quick recap, here's some of the main reasons why, before we get into the real meat of this blog:
- To fuel demand generation: increasing familiarity and trust with your target audience over time maximises the chances of them engaging again and again. Consistently producing thought leadership is therefore key to fuel demand generation activities, such as nurturing and ABM
- To sell your expertise: demonstrating how you understand client problems and know how to solve them is more directly linked to what you sell and deliver to clients. Thought leadership is the best way to achieve this at scale to a wide audience
- To build your brand authority: showing that you know what you’re talking about gives your business gravitas, and stands you out as the go-to expert in your field. This can help you benefit from more referrals, increased inbound enquiries, better sales opportunities, faster sales processes and a larger pool of retained clients
The big problem with 'thought leadership'
The problem with thought leadership is that it's a term that gets bandied around too freely. Companies that really only do content marketing say they do 'thought leadership' because it sounds more heavyweight.
Strong thought leadership is very different to content marketing. It relies on a lot of things, but without doubt the most important today is a gutsy opinion. Yet, in many organisations those responsible for developing thought leadership either have no real opinions of their own, are too scared to voice them or won't invest time to develop their arguments. So what they often come up with is mediocre, regurgitated crap.
If you are committed to the process of becoming a thought leader, you have to accept today's reality - you're going to have step right outside your comfort zone. Cut through is now virtually impossible, unless you’re prepared to take a risk, shake the tree and upset the status quo. Yet, the biggest problem in thought leadership - in fact in B2B marketing in general - is a fundamental aversion to risk.
To create great thought leadership, you must challenge conventional wisdom. The risk is that not everyone will agree with your new perspective, but you have to get comfortable with that. If you believe strongly enough in your argument, you should then develop research to back-up your claims and make your unique opinions more credible.
It's a simple equation:
Unique opinion + credible research = Thought leadership
The importance of a unique opinion
Opinions bring new ideas. Opinions test assumptions. Opinions drive consensus and better outcomes. And ultimately, opinions win you business.
If you solve complex problems for clients, your business gets chosen for its expertise in solving those problems. You demonstrate this through informed opinion. But a unique opinion - one that challenges the norm - is stronger. It's often the best form of differentiation and much more compelling to clients.
Fresh, original perspectives conveyed convincingly are what's needed today, not platitudes that offer no new insight. Today, the more gutsy and controversial you can be in this, the more likely you will stand out in the sea of sameness.
Here's a very quick and dirty example of how this works, from our world. In B2B marketing, buyer personas are a famously cited method for guiding the development of a content strategy. We think they are a load of bollocks. Saying this is a risk and will certainly alienate those who feel they provide value.
In our less conventional view, a content strategy is far more effective when guided by the information needs at each stage of your buyer journey. And we think it should be lazer-focused on the main problems your business gets paid to solve.
Here's another equation:
Unique, credible opinion + high propensity for risk = Achieve quicker cut through
Avoid putting content production first
The best way to show that your organisation has superior expertise over your competition is to reframe a common problem with an alternative, unique perspective on how to solve it. The more the argument can be backed up by data, research and/or case studies, the more credible and compelling it will become. However, this is something that many businesses just aren't very good at.
The problem in all most every situation is they put content production first - essentially, putting the cart before the horse.
So much supposed 'thought leadership' content consists of under-developed, foggy thoughts converted into audio, video or written prose. With the rush to get content out of the door, opinions aren't formed nearly enough. As a result, the content creation process normally involves multiple revisions until the content is deemed just about acceptable to rear its ugly head.
Yet this still leads to content that rarely stands apart from the competition, and does little or nothing to convince a potential buyer of the expert's ability to solve their problem.
How to develop a unique point of view
The key is to develop your argument or hypothesis first and then shape the thinking around it. Effort needs to go into debating and testing the theory to then come up with a strong opinion - one that is going to stop the audience in its tracks. The ultimate goal is to start to change the audiences own opinions on the issue under the spotlight.
We recommend a 5-step process for Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to work through:
- Step 1 - Establish the core problem: what is the main problem being felt by your target audience? Who are the people living with that problem, and/or being tasked to solve it? Is there any evidence to support the argument that this is a common and significant problem?
- Step 2 - Identify the wider impact: what are the consequences for the audience’s organisation if this problem isn’t solved? In other words, what is the ripple effect if nothing changes?
- Step 3: Dismantle the typical approach: what is the conventional approach to solving this problem and where does it fall short? Why is the most common solution not working?
- Step 4: Explain the superior solution: what is a better way of tackling the problem? Are there specific client examples of how this new approach has worked? What research can provide context to support the alternative approach?
- Step 5: Highlight the path to change: what signs/situations would help a problem owner determine when they are ready to change and adopt this new solution? What simple steps can they take on the path to implementing the new solution?
Rest assured, your audience is tired of platitudes and it doesn't want you to sit on the fence. Instead, it wants you to stand up and be counted.
Rather than rushing to create stuff that will just get lost amongst the gazillions of unoriginal content that already exists, the priority should be to first develop a ballsy opinion. Then your content will have much more impact and you'll be well on your way to becoming a thought leader.
* Source: Hinge University
Related insights
