Plan a thought leadership programme

Understanding what you hope to achieve from thought leadership is critical, says David Mercer, senior account director at Man Bites Dog

The greatest value in any company lies in the knowledge, expertise and experience of its people. Marketers have the power to unleash this intellectual value, building reputation and delivering financial return with creative thought leadership content.

The main goal for a thought leadership programme is often awareness. But thought leadership also has the power to change perceptions, influence behaviour and even generate a need.

Below are the planning processes to ensure you build a quality thought leadership programme. 

1. Programme framework

Have a simple, clear vision of what you want to achieve before you begin your project. You can create a framework in three steps.

Define the remit: The best thought leadership programmes speak to a number of audiences – the bigger the business issues you handle, the more compelling and far reaching it will be, and the greater the ROI you’ll achieve.

You have the potential to cross borders, functions, sectors and markets by adopting universal themes. You can then hang more detailed insight onto that content to reach specific audiences.

It’s far easier to focus in from a broader theme, than to expand a narrow one later. Engage the most senior decision makers in your organisation to define whether this should be global, regional, national or just simply local from the outset.

Assign a team: As the programme gathers pace, it’s important to define a project team at the outset so you are not pulled in too many directions by latecomers to the party.

Set clear objectives: Set overarching project objectives from which you can build defined marketing objectives by channel, and an evaluation criteria.

2. Reputation to relationship

Thought leadership is about moving targets along a continuum from reputation (knowing who you are) to relationship (interacting directly with you) and onto revenue (monetising the relationship). Set clear objectives for each of the following three stages.

Reputation: Generate awareness of your brand and offering. You should also aim to shift perceptions of your company’s identity and what it stands for, and position it as the leading authority on a relevant topic.

Demonstrate knowledge in your existing field of expertise or in relation to a new product, service or market you wish to occupy. By demonstrating experience you will minimise the perceived risk of choosing your brand.

Relationship: Drive engagement, for example, with your online content and social media properties or events programme. You should also generate leads for sales personnel to explore.

Revenue: Create a call-to-action and influence buying behaviour, as well as policy, by engaging politicians, regulators and industry bodies.

3. Audience understanding

Any B2B purchase is very unlikely to involve one person. Webster and Wind’s book Decision Making Unit describes specifiers, influencers, end users, buyers and gatekeepers. Each of these groups will have their own external influencers, including peers, trade associations, advisors, media, competitors, analysts, policymakers, academics and regulators.

Consider how best to target all relevant groups during each stage of the buying process. Mapping out your own sales funnel and considering how thought leadership can be effectively aligned with it is a good place to start. 

4. Programme plan

Once objectives are set, consider your requirements at each of the five key stages of the programme.

Concept: Set an overarching strategy and identify concepts around which to create your headline messaging.

Research: The most powerful content is clearly evidenced by a robust data source. Define a methodology for evidencing your concept and design its execution.

Content: Determine how the content will be packaged up and taken to market. Build a fully integrated marcomms plan. Consider whether you will create PR materials, social media toolkits, a campaign microsite, mailers and advertisements. Speaker platforms, roundtables and launch events also need to be planned and booked.

Launch: Build a detailed launch schedule for all marcomms channels in line with your channel strategy.

Evaluation: Plan which metrics you will measure against your original success criteria. Turnover impact, qualified sales leads, media coverage, whitepaper downloads, website visits, DM click-throughs, event attendance, social media interaction/awareness and perceptions research are all worth investigating.

Related content

Thought leadership is widely recognised as a powerful (if complex!) tool to differentiate your B2B brand and engage audiences. But its deployment has typically been focused at top or mid-funnel, and opportunities to leverage its

Access full article

B2B strategies. B2B skills.
B2B growth.

Propolis helps B2B marketers confidently build the right strategies and skills to drive growth and prove their impact.