practice

Thought leadership in practice

Thought leadership in practice

Almost every ITSMA member company (which includes top technology, professional services and telecom providers) is engaged in the critical marketing activity of thought leadership. Yet the people on their teams who are responsible for making it happen have not had the luxury of browsing through textbooks to learn how to do thought leadership well. Until now.

What they have had are the practical insights from ITSMA’s own research and publications. As a membership  association bringing together companies to advance the state of the art in marketing B2B services and solutions since 1994, ITSMA has been exploring thought leadership for the past 10 years, and recognising best practice through its marketing excellence awards for the past five.

We defined thought leadership as ‘ideas that educate customers and prospects about important business and technology issues, and help them to solve those issues – without selling’. In his book, Thought Leadership, Laurie Young defines it as the creation and dissemination of ideas that tend to result in advantage for businesses – a more generic but broadly similar definition.

‘Demand pull’ in action
Young wrote his book on thought leadership when he did because companies are using the technique more today. ITSMA’s latest buyer research (October 2013) recognises this: customers making decisions about significant solutions purchases (>$500k) are reaching out to subject matter experts and searching for content  all along their buying process, spending around five hours a week to keep themselves up to date. They have no choice.

Technology is changing so fast – social media, mobility, cloud computing, and the era of big and fast data through ‘the internet of everything’ – that buyers must educate themselves. They’re turning to management consultants, analysts such as Gartner, and suppliers for help. And the quality of suppliers’ thought leadership is one of the key criteria that determines which suppliers make it onto their shortlist. Those suppliers, in turn, are looking to ITSMA to guide them on how to build effective thought leadership programmes. It’s demand-pull marketing in action, as Young observed.

These companies tend to fall into two groups: those that have little trouble generating thought leadership (but aren’t systematically disseminating it across their organisation and beyond); and those with effective marketing communications engines (but struggling to generate the ideas and content  required for thought leadership).

The former are often consultancies and professional service firms, while the latter are often companies with a strong product heritage.

Creating thought leadership content
In one of the marketing tools available online for members2, and created in collaboration  with Accenture, ITSMA sets out four steps for developing thought leadership content, as follows:

Step 1: Develop a positioning statement
It’s not enough to simply identify a business issue that clients are facing and explain it – you need to take a strong point of view on why it is an issue, what’s going to happen, and how to deal with the ramifications. Professional services firm Ernst & Young has created what it calls its ‘Five insights
for executives series’ to provide short, impactful content  for buyers, resulting in 1,200 words structured into the following five paragraphs:

  • What’s the issue?
  • Why now?
  • How does it affect you?
  • What’s the fix?
  • What’s the bottom  line?

 
Technology is changing so fast – social media, mobility, cloud computing,  and the era of big and fast data through ‘the internet of everything’ – that buyers must educate themselves

This clear structure helps the firm develop its position on a range of issues, such as predictive analytics to improve decision-making (available at www.ey.com).

Step 2: gather proprietary evidence
Ideas alone are not enough to convince clients and prospects to trust you. They need proof. Young points out that thought leadership seldom goes through the rigorous peer review process that academic papers receive, so evidence is needed in some other form.
Companies typically gather evidence in three ways:

  • First, by culling research from external sources and analysing it for insights that shore up their point of view. This is generally a relatively easy and inexpensive approach, increasingly being conducted with the help of data scientists who can analyse vast quantities of data, such as that available via the Twitter Firehose facility.
  • Second, companies hire external research groups to carry out primary research, often on an ad hoc basis, so that their research data is exclusive and carries their brand name, such as the IDC digital universe study sponsored by EMC (available at www.emc.com).
  • Third, as thought leadership has become a core part of many marketing strategies, companies are building their own in-house research groups to put the proof behind their opinions. An example of the third approach is IBM’s Institute  for Business Value (IBV), one of the leading providers for proof in the B2B sector3. The IBV is a dedicated unit operating  within IBM Global Business Services, and carrying out independent research focused on customer issues, rather than company offerings. Other examples include the McKinsey Global Institute and Deloitte Research.

IBV’s best-known  thought leadership initiative is its C-Suite study series, which began with the first global CEO study in 2002. Of particular interest is the fact that the IBV does not hire pure researchers. Instead, consultants join the team, bringing extensive client-facing experience in a particular industry or functional area, and helping the team build a collaborative connection with the rest of the organisation.

Step 3: build powerful examples
Examples, ideally from named clients, should be significant stories that are easily understood, and that customers can generalise across industries or markets. They should be unexpected and fresh – we have heard too many times the example of Target using Big Data to predict a young woman’s pregnancy before her parents found out. IBM’s IBV researchers are all assigned either to a vertical (industry sector) or a cross-industry functional area (such as CRM) so that they can compare their findings with each other and discuss what it means across all verticals, collecting examples that will have significant impact with multiple clients.

To complement  its research on the impact of big data analytics at work, a series of client examples are available on IBM’s website, researched and reported  in conjunction with Oxford’s Saïd Business School. An example is the use by Danish company Vestas of Big Data to improve the positioning of its wind turbines for customers, reducing its response time for wind forecasting information by around 97 per cent, from weeks to hours.

Step 4: elicit trustworthy testimonials
Validation from outside the organisation is also necessary to build credibility. Gather trustworthy testimonials from leading business executives, academics, scholars, government officials, industry analysts, or customers with experience to support your position. Creating a thought leadership network4 is one way to do this, as shown in Figure 1. The key building blocks of such a network start with establishing regular knowledge share meetings. ITSMA itself does this as part of its membership programme, and also via ‘councils’ of members, who meet to discuss topics such as solutions marketing and account-based marketing,  advancing the state of the art in both. 

While measurement remains one of the challenges that thought leadership marketers are grappling with, another pressing issue lies in the need to differentiate their company and its content in a crowded market, rather than following the herd

Internal ‘stars’ from among CEOs, senior VPs and technology leaders, product managers, salespeople, business unit heads and practice managers can all play a part in these knowledge sharing sessions with your external network. Sometimes these network alliances are loose structures, with firms paying specialists to present new ideas internally and with their clients, sponsoring ongoing academic research programmes or funding boutique consultancies that have carved out a unique niche. In other cases, the relationships are much tighter, with firms creating permanent alliances or even bringing in staff to continue  their research from within the firm.

A continual feedback loop is usually formed to ensure that ideas are grounded and practical, rather than simply blue sky thinking.

From creation to distribution
Once content  is designed and created through these four steps, attentions turn to disseminating it effectively through a variety of assets and media. ITSMA recommends moving from a ‘publishing’ mindset to one that ‘enables’ conversations with clients and prospects, as part of a process leading to a decision to buy. The association’s recent research on thought leadership practices5 (September 2013) revealed that only a fifth of companies use thought leadership to support salespeople in conversations.

These ‘sales enablers’, as ITSMA calls them, educate and train their salespeople on how and when to use thought leadership in their conversations, creating talking points, scripts and checklists for them to leverage. They also create benchmarking tools, self-assessments and quizzes that can be used with clients and prospects, in meetings or small events and workshops, to bring the content to life. A forward-thinking minority involves salespeople in interviewing and debriefing clients on research studies, building their confidence and comfort in having conversations around the content generated.

The ‘sales enablers’ also spend more time customising the thought leadership assets for key clients or prospects, making it more relevant and personal. This drives up the impact of the content because clients can relate to it much more easily.
 
For example, Accenture has done a great job in making its research on high-performing organisations relevant to specific industry sectors and subsectors – and using those breakouts to support sales conversations. Accenture’s financial services thought leadership is broken out for different segments within the category (eg retail banking, capital markets and insurance) and also provides account-specific information,  such as showing where organisations are falling behind the KPIs that a high-performing company in their sector would achieve.

All of this goes on in addition to the activities that ‘publishers’ excel at. IBM’s IBV works with the marketing team to deliver content  through many channels. 'There is no single channel that all buyers prefer,' says Karen Feldman, leader for global media and entertainment for the IBV. 'We’re always looking at many different channels and how they can work together to help ensure we maximise both awareness and engagement.'

Some IBV studies have interactive web portals, where visitors can watch video content about the survey findings and access additional charts and graphics not included in the traditional PDF white paper. Studies are promoted within various social media. For some, IBM conducts what it calls innovation jams – live online chats where IBM subject matter experts (SMEs) and buyers can discuss findings and brainstorm solutions relating to thought leadership findings.

IBM has also created what it calls virtual briefing centres, built around individual verticals. The centres contain the latest industry-specific thought leadership case studies, videos and webcasts, and feature IBM SMEs discussing key topics (see the retail example at www.ibm.com). These virtual briefing centres are easily customisable, so they can be tailored to particular clients or sub-verticals relatively quickly and cheaply.

With all of this activity involved in creating and disseminating thought leadership, the real question many businesses are asking is: ‘Is it worth it?’
 
Ongoing challenges
While approaches to measuring success vary from company to company, most use tactical measures, such as tracking how assets are accessed and used, both internally and externally. Some test perceptions, familiarity and favourability towards their brand in primary research, drawing out the impact that their thought leadership is having on all three. Others track the inbound  requests or ‘opportunities to meet’ generated by their programmes. ITSMA recommends using a mix of reputation, relationships and revenue factors to evaluate your programme.

While measurement remains one of the challenges that thought leadership marketers are grappling with, another pressing issue lies in the need to differentiate their company and its content in a crowded market, rather than following the herd. Deloitte takes the pragmatic step of skimming competition materials before creating its own, while other companies subscribe to services that monitor  the thought leadership generated  by their peers on an ongoing basis.

Either way, the quest is on to make your thought leadership more relevant and valuable than that of your peers. With buyers now looking for value at each touch point with suppliers, thought leadership may be evolving once again, from part of the demand-pull communications strategy it has recently become to a
core part of the service proposition that companies provide to their most important clients and prospects.


Bev Burgess is senior vice-president of ITSMA  in Europe [email protected]

1. Thought Leadership: Prompting Business to Think and Learn, Laurie Young, Kogan Page, 2013
2. How To Develop and Deliver Thought Leadership, ITSMA Marketing Tool, 2007
3. IBM’s Institute for Business Value: How to Convert Thought Leadership Research Into Revenue, ITSMA Case Study, 2012
4. How To Create A Thought Leadership Network, ITSMA, 2009
5. Thought Leadership Selling: How to Help Sales Influence Customers With Ideas, ITSMA, October 2013
6. The Thought Leadership Focus Report, ITSMA, 2012


Taken from the January 2014 issue of Market Leader. Browse the archive here.

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