What is Thought Leadership Content and why is it becoming the comms ‘weapon of choice’ for B2B Tech Firms looking to scale up fast?
I have been writing thought leadership content for a myriad of B2B tech clients for over 30 years. We used to call thought leadership content, ‘issues-based by-lined articles’ or simply ‘opinion pieces’. As that moniker implies, we wrote them for specific publications which were often read by thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of our clients’ target audiences. They were designed to help position our clients as experts in their technology niche (perhaps CRM, BI, ERP or Project Management).
They were often also designed to reach and engage senior decision-makers in specific vertical sectors. It was often about talking the same language as senior people in these sectors and illustrating you understand their ‘pain points’ and, implicitly, had solutions as well as advice designed to alleviate those business ‘pains’.
Why were they so difficult to get right?
Well to get opinion pieces right you had to get inside the head of a senior person (normally on the board of your B2B tech client). You needed to get ideally a verbal brief…and understand it enough to turn it into a strong 650 to 1,500 word piece, interspersed with relevant references and insights.
You also had to pre-sell your carefully crafted outline of each piece to a hard bitten editor before you wrote the full piece – no easy feat as opinion pieces, demanded a dedicated page and editors need to be reassured that you were not going to be creating a ‘puff piece’ i.e. something not worthy of editorial (non-paid for) inclusion in their magazine’s illustrious pages. It took time and demanded the attention of senior people on the agency side, as well as on the client side.
Flash forward 20 years into the digital-led era, I would venture that any PR consultant worth his salt is writing just as many opinion pieces for their clients, if not more today. And they are now calling them Thought Leadership articles…AI or no AI.
So, what does Thought Leadership really mean today and has it changed much from the issues-based article of old? Well, the answer, rather boringly, is ‘no’: it is still about 4 key things in B2B tech world at least:
1. Demonstrating deep tech domain expertise: so, if you are a mobile payments authentication specialist many of your thought leadership pieces will be passing judgement on the latest regulation, standards and tech developments in this niche. 2. Demonstrating deep sector expertise (if relevant): so, if you are only selling your paytech offerings to one part of your market – say neobanks or ISOs – then you need to be illustrating that you understand the developments as well as those pain points that these types of businesses are feeling. Again, if you can show mastery of both the technology and the business constraints that decision-makers are labouring with, you are automatically building trust, credibility and authority – even before you’ve met them.
3. Delivering original observations/thinking: This is arguably the hardest piece to get right. It requires your PR consultant(s) to have close enough proximity to CEOs and/or other senior leadership people authoring the thought leadership piece that is being created, to get them to open up about what they are thinking about the industry, competitors, customer problems. Some of what they tell you may not be ‘printable’ but in my experience it’s rare that what the tell you in an impassioned rant cannot be turned into a Thought Leadership piece which is both opinionated, even challenging to bodies which might be standing in the way of progress.
A rant is the basis of any great Thought Leadership piece. It just becomes your job to turn a rant into a strong, perhaps even acerbic, but nevertheless worthy view on where the market should be heading. When these sorts of pieces are done well they are the ones that are most shared, reacted to, commented on – the holy grail for the socials as well as for digital magazines.
4. Delivering original insights: There are two options as regards injecting insights into these pieces: you either go to original sources of stats, facts, and reference those – relying on your interpretation of these stats to provide some original insight. Or, much more effective from a PR point of view is to have your own source of insights – either based on market research which you’ve commissioned or your own in-house ‘big data’ analyses – perhaps providing insights based on your customers’ own use of your software.
Thought Leadership is still about giving credibility to your company. It is also about building trust even before you get into the room with a new prospect. If it’s really working, it’s also about influencing their thinking – so they are more tuned into your message and your ‘take’ on the solution. It can short circuit a lot of the pre-sales process, the pitching and tendering processes.
Thought Leadership as a catalyst for Consultative Selling However, I’d argue that Thought Leadership Content and Campaigns can go much further than these admirable marketing achievements to help tech firms move up the value chain from transactional selling to consultative selling.
After all, if you are sharing your expert views in open forum with your trade media, prospects and clients via socials like LinkedIn, and via your website and eNewsletters, you are setting out your stall to advise your clients on the impact of the latest market changes. That naturally leads you into advising them on how best to react to pending changes to remain compliant and/or get ahead of the competition.
It’s why for some of our clients, we advocate conducting market research not just amongst your prospects, but even amongst your customers’ customers. Can you begin to understand so much about your prospects’ market that they see you as a great source of original insight and advice on it, as well as on the tech tools, integrations and solutions to address identified market needs?
Or as our former fintech client Chris Read, ex-CEO & founder of Dunstan Thomas (which was acquired by Curtis Banks for £27.3m back in August 2020), said to me when I chatted to him just after the acquisition of his company:
“For years, as a tech provider to these companies (major name pension providers), we were pretty much on our own in terms of sharing our views and expertise in applying system changes to remain compliant with new regulation which came thick and fast.
“We also offered our customers early warning of changes that would have to be made to their systems because of those imminent regulatory changes. Naturally, the IFA and pensions trade media were also interested in our views and summaries of market changes.
“However, there is no doubt that committing resources to doing this (Thought Leadership) work is not for everyone. You must be committed to offering advice to customers – you must advise them as well as sell to them.”
So, when a PR consultant comes to you offering to put a fire under your Thought Leadership content machine and really get it ‘cooking on gas’, think about whether you can use this new marketing initiative to drive how you sell.
Potentially, it could become your route to go much further up the value chain for customers – selling much more valuable projects to them, increasing lifetime customer value exponentially, and keeping those vital ‘whale’ clients working with you for much longer. It all starts with sharing your thoughts, ideas and opinions in your next Thought Leadership piece.
Agility PR designs Market Research-led Thought Leadership Campaigns and writes Thought Leadership content for the leaders of numerous B2B tech firms. Do get in touch if you like to explore building your brand through Thought Leadership Campaigns in 2025.
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