A typical thought leadership campaign

One of the key strengths at Clear Thought Consulting is in conceiving and running thought leadership programmes. I’m often asked what these entail, so here’s a quick run-down of the basics.

Thought leadership is about being front of mind in regard of a certain subject or market. A thought leader will always make it onto a ‘long list’ when people are making buying decisions – and often become the benchmark against which others are measured.

Timescales:

• Thought leadership programmes are not a quick fix, you cannot expect immediate results.
• A thought leadership marketing programme is only effective in the medium term, and then only when it forms part of a funneled sales approach. That is, a planned process that uses specific tools and techniques to move people from one stage to the next through the buying decision. The thought leadership programme typically acts as a top and tail to this process.
• In the longer term, thought leadership programmes also serve to create a bank of ‘good will’ in more junior members of the target audience, which translates into awareness and leads when they move into more senior positions later in their careers.

Typical thought leadership tools:

First off you’ll need to think of subject matter that is interesting, engaging and useful. Then, create a campaign that has a mix of tools that can be used to influence people along hierarchical and vertical planes.

Typical thought leadership campaign checklist:

• Get your best brains in a room, or even better some customers, and think about subjects that are interesting, engaging and useful.
• See if you can find a respected industry partner, if not then use your own research and expertise to prepare a ‘future trends’ report that can be downloaded online in return for data capture.
• Prepare an accompanying 1/2 hour presentation and use the content to host a live web seminar.
• Prepare press and direct mail to generate report downloads and webinar registrations (these can be tailored to sectors, and as customer and non-customer versions).
• Track report downloads and invite anyone who has downloaded, but not registered for webinar an invitation.
• Practice your webinar with the technology, slides, hosts in the room you will be using for the live session.
• Host the webinar and record the session.
• You can often boost attendance with an offer to attendees of something like a free book or other useful offer for people who attend – we’ve previously managed to get signed copies of business books by talking to the publishers.
• Review the people who attended and downloaded and get your best sales people to follow-up the hottest leads, keep the others for future or your junior team.
• Anyone who registered, but didn’t attend can now be invited to watch the recording.
• The recorded version now goes up on your website, where it can be viewed in return for data capture – this can form the next level of the campaign (where perhaps Director level people were invited to the live event and more junior people are now invited to view online).
• Alternatively snippets form your web video can be placed on You-Tube, Twitter, or other document sharing sites to drive people to the original download.
• All data captured builds your database for future relevant, timely, engaging and useful thought leadership material.
• New techniques allow you to publicise your materials at little cost, with simple things like Tweets, LinkedIn updates & news items, contributions to discussions, blogs, etc. For example, we’ve seen great traffic by posting content on Business Exchange.

As said, this needs to form part of a sales funnel, where the aim of the game is to increase hit rate when your sales teams pick up the phone. If people have read something interesting or attended and engaging event, they are much more likely to be warm to the call.

For more on sales funneling, see our 20 minute webcast: http://www.slideshare.net/clearthoughtconsulting/making-marketing-pay-1202609

For an example, you may like to see a recent campaign for Fraudscreen looking at The Life-cycle of a Debtor: www.fraudscreen.co.uk/lifecycle-part-one

Clear Thought Consulting works with small businesses, equipping them with the marketing strategies, suppliers, skills and set-up that they need to become bigger businesses. We do this at the fraction of the cost of recruiting into a full-time position by delivering one-off strategic projects, hands-on training, marketing support, and out-sourced marketing departments. We firmly believe that when you can’t out-spend your competition, you have to out-think them.

By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

Published on 3 June 2009