Thought leadership. Marketing professionals might talk about it, either filing it vaguely under ‘strategise’, or rightly meriting it a place under ‘content planning’. But what’s the point of the wider conversation? It doesn’t have an immediate or measurable purpose in lead gen terms, so how does it contribute to the pipeline?
Well, it can take a while. The reader might not even have recognised their reality as a ‘pain’ yet to be fixed, so make sure your unveiling of the arguments are articulated, link the topic to its core purpose. What you’re doing here, is positioning your solution through the eyes of your target market. Prospects’ research cycles can be long and unintentional, the internet is a big place but the inklings of decisions can be seeded early and first impressions always count.

So, by all means, write a long white paper on a researched pain-led topic for starters, slide in a few SEO-led key words – but keep it personable, human and readable. And make sure it’s structured, because the purposing / repurposing comes next. It often starts with one structured brain dump – this might be your pillar/landing page – and spins out and links to all the following pieces, the sum of its parts. Then the different formats (media) follow – where can a sub-argument be built out into an opinion-led blog, a webinar, a video discussion with a customer?

Publish and pay-to-promote the wider piece according to your means and goals – not every piece merits outbound spend, and certainly not for everyone – if a piece has a certain vertical pain point in mind, you’ve done your ABM research, so target it to their universe, not the world in general (though others may yet collide with it when they’re of that frame of mind).

And what does ‘thought leadership’ mean for the demand gen cycle? Well, ‘early days’ is the answer to that – it’s out there in the ether. This is the point – or various points – where you start to get under the skin of your target customer. They ‘find’ an article which provokes a ‘hmm, that’s interesting’, then later another which is put in their way and eventually the voice and brand starts to be recognised as helpful, generating confidence and trust through that common understanding. When the time comes, the pipeline qualifiers kick in.

The long game, sowing the seeds – it all plays a part.