Thought leadership on a shoestring budget
- Big results on small budget
- Establish yourself as a thought leader without breaking the bank
- Looking back, 2004 was a big year for thought leadership programs—nearly every company now has a formal effort underway. The fundamental purpose is to demonstrate differentiation in a market where customers have more choices than ever, and what separates the "wheat from the chaff" often has nothing to do with the product or service being sold.
- As the trend toward visionary buying evolves—and it’s already well underway in enterprise environments—thought leadership programs become an integral part of the sales process. Prospects are looking for long-haul relationships and collective intellect is a key differentiator.
- If you’re one of the many companies with a squeaky-tight marketing budget, how can you start to build a thought leadership program that works? Here are some tips:
- 1. Understand the audiences and make sure every activity touches all of them. You have three key theaters: buyers, influencers, and sellers. It’s important that each time you create a thought leadership piece that you determine how it can be used in each of the three theaters. Buyers are your customer and prospect community. Influencers include analysts, media, investors, and consultants. Sellers are your direct and indirect sales channels. While thought leadership pieces serve as training tools for your salespeople, they also support selling efforts. Make sure you document how each tool is going to be used, how it will reach key audiences, and what you expect salespeople to do with them.
- 2. Show value and fresh thinking. Every one of your audiences is already inundated with information. Make sure what you say is meaningful and relevant. This absolutely requires understanding what your customers are struggling with in terms of making technology decisions. It’s impossible to build a thought leadership program in the marketing department alone—you must get others involved and spend some time up front in the planning and research stages. Most importantly, remember that it doesn’t have to be big or expensive, it just has to be right. Consider these kinds of individual efforts:
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a. In-depth review of trends affecting your market space (Example: Analysis and Recommendations for Information Availability in the Financial Services Industry)
b. Solution-oriented pieces that demonstrate understanding of business and technology issues (Example: How Automation Can Impact Data Integrity)
c. Unbiased reviews of business and technology issues (Example: Sarbanes-Oxley and What It Means to Technology Architecture) -
d. One-on-one articles with experts (Example: What You Really Need to Know About Data Redundancy)
3. Leverage existing information. It’s kind of like spending other people’s money! You might be surprised at the tools that have already been created; repurpose them into customized thought leadership pieces to meet your specific needs. Look beyond internal sources to your value chain and industry relationships. Even if the information becomes nothing more than research and reference data, you’ve already saved some significant time and money!
4. Be creative in delivery. Like all marketing deliverables, thought leadership deliverables can take on many forms—from downloadable PDFs to print to webcasts to live seminars, and more. And, you may wish to deliver one specific topic in multiple forms to maximize exposure.
5. Be consistent over time. Start 2005 with a thought leadership plan that identifies activities that will take place over the course of the entire year. While you can’t know the hot topic for September 2005, you certainly know there will be one. So, plan for it. Like any worthwhile regimen, you have to be committed to the goal. Thought leadership programs produce results over time.
Launch International has tremendous experience helping companies of all sizes build thought leadership programs of value. For more information, contact us at info@launchintl.com.
