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Marketing Glossary / Glossary Term
What is thought leadership?
See how LinkedIn Ads can help you position individuals and businesses as industry experts
Thought leadership isn’t just a content strategy—it’s the outcome of being a trusted and respected voice with a strong point of view. In the world of B2B sales, thought leadership helps attract customers and influence decisions by demonstrating a brand’s expertise and offering unique insights on industry trends and challenges.
Learn more:
How thought leadership connects businesses with buyers
“More than 70 percent of B2B buyers fully define their needs before engaging with a sales representative, and almost half identify specific solutions before reaching out,” according to Miller Heiman Group.
Quality thought leadership can inspire decision-makers to engage with sales or buy from industry experts.
Thus, thought leadership boosts long-term revenue and brand favorability. Likewise, businesses that use an authoritative, fun, helpful, or provocative, human tone in their thought leadership content earn more trust and credibility with key decision-makers.
There are three common types of helpful thought leadership content:
How to build a thought leadership strategy
Follow the steps below to plan and execute an effective thought leadership strategy.
Step 1: Set objectives
Decide with internal stakeholders if the objective is to build brand awareness, attract new sales leaders, and/or influence purchase decisions at the point of consideration. Marketing teams should also consult company executives to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) they’ll need to consider their thought leadership strategy a success.
Some good KPIs can include:
We’ll cover KPI and thought leadership metrics tracking and measurement shortly.
Step 2: Profile the target audience
Creating buyer personas or ideal customer profiles (ICPs) for target audiences helps marketing teams tailor their thought leadership content strategy and define tactical steps. Customer surveys, in-person interviews, and third-party research data are all great resources for developing personas.
Try to narrow the audience as much as possible by industry vertical, geography, job function and title, or even a specific set of companies and their employee sizes. When doing so, list their demographics and psychographics before creating a thought leadership strategy.
Audience demographic examples: Age, education, geographic location.
Audience attributes and psychographic examples:
- Company industry or category, growth rate, revenue, size, and more
- Job function, seniority, or title
- LinkedIn member skills and years of experience
- LinkedIn member groups, special interests, and traits
Step 3: Identify content opportunities
Brainstorm to identify potential topics including industry trends, buyer persona pain points, and company growth priorities. Whatever the content idea is, it needs to align with the company’s critical objectives and KPIs.
Ask frontline sales and relationship managers to provide anecdotes or insights on crucial customer challenges or needs. Research competitor websites and channels, as well, to see what is working for them.
Audience demographic examples: Age, education, geographic location.
Real-time, first-party LinkedIn Sales Navigator data can also inform what topics appeal to target customers. B2B marketing teams can gain insights about specified target audiences or buyer personas to discover thought leadership content they already share or interact with on LinkedIn, plus it can give clear insight into what industry questions they’re asking their peers, their comments about products and services, or even their specific interests or hobbies.
Ensure the content isn't too sales-y and stuck on product features and benefits. Stories should teach prospects something new to help them effectively solve problems.
LinkedIn and Edelman’s thought leadership survey identified specific types of content that customers want to see, which include the following:
Next, B2B marketers can create a thought leadership content calendar using their project management tool of choice. This would allow all creators and stakeholders to collaborate and be aware of important publishing and promotion dates.
Step 4: Select “the face” of thought leadership
Marketing organizations should identify product specialists or executives who can authentically represent the brand in thought leadership initiatives. While the representative may vary by campaign, the tone and personality should always align with the brand's overall messaging.
These subject matter experts (SMEs) should also be able to convey content ideas in a more personal and authentic style.
If they cannot, a ghostwriter or internal content marketer can assist with crafting impactful content.
Some businesses also seek opportunities to align with trusted voices outside their company. These people can be social media influencers, academics, business analysts, and other third-party spokespeople. They can help validate the brand’s perspective and drive customer engagement — either on their channels or by co-creating thought leadership content on the company’s channels.
At this point, brands should be ready to create and promote content that helps businesses stand out and establish their brand as an industry thought leader. Let’s explore those tactics next.
How Mastercard APAC earned 130% follower growth with consistent, compelling thought leadership.
Mastercard's APAC Communications team sought to enhance brand perception and elevate the visibility of their business leaders across key markets such as Singapore, Australia, and India.
By integrating LinkedIn's Thought Leadership Ads into their marketing strategy, they promoted authentic content from six selected business leaders, targeting audiences based on specific skills, interests, job functions, industries, and geographies.
This approach significantly improved results year-over-year, increasing company page followers by 130%, click-through rates by 175%, and engagement rates by 169%.
The results
Mastercard APAC’s always-on campaign, which now includes Thought Leadership Ads, has delivered a year-on uplift across all key metrics:
Case study: How Lenovo delivered 14,000+ new visitors to a brand new microsite
Lenovo, a leading global technology company, aimed to enhance its brand perception among entrepreneurs and business professionals by positioning itself as a thought leader.
Lenovo, a leading global technology company, aimed to enhance its brand perception among entrepreneurs and business professionals by positioning itself as a thought leader.
Collaborating with LinkedIn, Lenovo launched the 'Professionals Redefined' campaign, which featured the 'ThinkHub' Showcase Page and the 'Think Conversations' microsite.
These platforms highlighted stories of individuals who successfully redefined their careers, organically integrating Lenovo's Think brand into the narrative.
The campaign achieved significant results, including over 7,000 new followers on the 'ThinkHub' Showcase Page, more than 14,000 unique visitors to the 'Think Conversations' microsite, and over 1 million impressions within two months.
Case study: How Salesforce reduced costs by 30% by driving qualified viewers to their live event
Salesforce, a global leader in CRM, sought to enhance engagement and grow its marketing pipeline through its flagship event, Dreamforce.
Leveraging LinkedIn’s advanced targeting and Live Event Ad features, Salesforce adopted a three-phase approach that spanned pre-event promotion, live-event engagement, and post-event retargeting.
By integrating LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager with its own Data Cloud, Salesforce was able to precisely target Business Decision Makers and AI-interested audiences. The strategy resulted in a 30% cost reduction in driving qualified viewership and a notable impact on sales metrics, including a 24% increase in connection requests and a 52% rise in InMail acceptance rates.
How to become a thought leader
Several key steps are required to become a valued and trusted industry thought leader.
Step 1: Use the multiple content formats and channels
One idea or story can be presented in different ways, and marketing teams must use the format(s) that will best capture their target audience’s attention.
For example, if a B2B brand wants to present results from a proprietary research report, they might consider:
If proprietary research uncovers a fresh perspective on a customer challenge, use that insight as the focal point of your narrative. A great hook not only captures attention but also sets the tone for your unique contribution to the discussion.
Step 2: Distribute content across relevant channels
Next, maximize the visibility of your thought leadership content. B2B marketers should devise a content distribution or promotional approach to broaden the visibility of their insight across key networks.
These include:
Step 3: Promote and amplify messages via paid channels
When B2B marketers think the topic will be highly relevant to valuable target customers, they can invest in paid advertising to boost the content’s visibility.
Many B2B brands promote and boost the viewership of their social media posts and events on platforms like LinkedIn.
Watch the video below to learn how to boost thought leadership content through social media advertising.
Step 4: Measure and optimize the impact of thought leadership
B2B marketers should regularly track, monitor, and optimize thought leadership content and paid promotional campaigns to maximize reach and impact.
Before launching, set SMART goals to gauge content performance against marketing objectives and KPIs.
Businesses should use web analytics tools like Campaign Manager to measure ROI and optimize results.
Advertisers may use multiple call-to-action buttons in a LinkedIn InMail message, giving prospects access to their preferred thought leadership content and offers, like whitepapers or event pages, all in one ad.
Building an individual or brand’s profile as a thought leader takes time. B2B marketers should set realistic expectations with senior executives within their organization, reminding them that it is an iterative process that could take months and even years to master.
The future of thought leadership marketing
Over 70% of decision-makers consume thought leadership content to stay educated on emerging industry trends and gain new insights and ideas for their business. Still, it’s getting harder for brands to stand out with the massive volume of content created daily.
B2B marketers must strategically develop thought leadership content using original research and with a unique perspective to give prospects something new to learn or consider.
LinkedIn offers a variety of paid advertising formats, including Sponsored Content Ads to boost the reach and page views of popular social media posts. LinkedIn Dynamic and Text Ads, and Conversational InMail opportunities also help marketers get their content in front of the right audience of over a billion professionals worldwide.
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