Thought leadership is the most misunderstood element of marketing. Most organizations do it, but because its returns are not easily measured, it is given short shrift by those focused on more near term marketing deliverables.

Here are a few reasons you should consider thought leadership an integral part of a marketing program:

• Establishes a clear voice that should not waver at the whim of the market. Advertising and product/service messages are tightly tied to competitive pressures, and therefore may lack consistency against larger organizational goals. Thought leadership can act as the deep meme of established context. When a customer asks what an organization is all about, you want them to connect to the thought leadership, not to the current advertising. Customers see through current actions as ways to drive transactions. Regardless of how effective they may be, they don’t establish a long term relationship. Some marketers believe that thought leadership can reduce spending on conventional advertising because the relationship keeps the customer close, and it take less effort for them to upgrade, or buy the next thing if they are already predisposed to do so because of the trust in the relationship.
• Thought leadership attaches the company to a larger idea, and thus, to a context for WHY it is doing what it is doing. Thought leadership helps customers understand the motivation of the company. And because thought leadership is reflective of deeply held beliefs, it reinforces, or establishes, market positions. Several years ago at the Giga Information Group we were all given white buttons with SO WHAT? written in black. The words were surrounded by a circle of red with the mark through it. Giga didn’t want customers to ask “So What?” Everything an analyst firm does is thought leadership, but the principle applies to product and service companies as well. If customers are asking, “So What?” you aren’t connecting with them at the right level. You can’t reason a way to an emotional connection. Thought leadership needs to appeal to the head and to the heart, the later is another often missed point in industry collateral. Thought leadership isn’t entirely about the firm sounding smart, it is about building a connection to the customer as to why working with your firm makes sense for them, intellectually and emotionally. One of the best ways to get an emotional connection is to give something away that the customer can own, an insight into the world that makes him or her feel smarter. That credit will accrue to the firm that offers the gift, and the dividends will pay later.
• Organizations and opaque. Those who work in them everyday think customers have the same view of a firm that they do. Absolutely not. Customers don’t have first hand experience, and they DO receive a lot of inputs from other sources. Even with the best market research no firm ever knows what customers really think of them. Thought leadership can help reveal how a firm thinks, how it solves problems, how it deals with people. How firms work internally informs customer opinion about how they will be dealt with…how well they will be listened to, how forthright negotiations. Thought leadership can help create a more trusted relationship through its transparency. If a firm is opaque, customers will feel distanced and disconnected. If a firm reveals its thinking, and how customer fit into that thinking, it is much more likely to create a more intimate customer experience.
• Inspire customers to take a journey with you. Thought leadership can also help spark the imagination of customers by revealing a firm’s aspirations. Long term relationships aren’t build on products or services, they are build on relationships, of which a product or service is a point in time. Take the customer to the next place, unveil the future, if only through hints and glimpses. Customers want to know that what they see isn’t all there is, and just saying there is more isn’t the same as showing them that their is more. Thought leadership should also be a dialog, a learning experience. Don’t just show, but sit back and listen once the aspiration has been revealed. The future hasn’t happened yet, so the glimpse ahead is also a way of garnering feedback, a way of taking input on the next version of the thought leadership conversation. A video or a prototype to a customer is a real thing to provide feedback against. Don’t be too overly connected to the product or service, but do make sure the meme shines through. Unless you are starting an entirely new business in the bright Blue Ocean, then the thought leadership vision you show should reflect that clear voice, just projected out into the future.

True thought leadership is secured by patience. Sure, people want to sell things today in order to drive revenue. Customers know that and expect it. What they don’t expect is the firm that shows patience with the relationship. The firm that holds a seminar without making a pitch at the end. The 30 minute conversation that helps a customer through a problem, perhaps unrelated to the product or service. Thought leadership isn’t about whitepapers or videos, blogs or tweets. Those are just channels. Thought leadership is about thoughtful leadership, it is about using those channels to convey value without a transaction hanging on every word – it about action that reinforce the thought leadership message, Don’t create a thought leadership message just to create something provoking to the market. That isn’t thought leadership. True thought leadership exposes the inner working and beliefs of an organization, and that places a burden of responsibility on the firm that undertakes thought leadership to act in accordance with its messages. To do thought leadership well, an organization needs to be mature enough to act in a way that reflects its market presence and market position – and to understand that the intent behind thought leadership messages are promises to the market that need to be kept.