This Thought Leadership Marketing Guide will provide insight into these challenges, and how effective thought leadership marketing not only overcomes challenges, but if implemented correctly, TLM can achieve significant and measurable results. A case study illustrates a real-life program, along with a marketing dashboard that captures and reports results. Finally, a Top 10 Keys for Thought Leadership Marketing Success summarizes the process. Enjoy!

1. ModernMarketingPartners.com
THOUGHT
LEADERSHIP
MARKETING
GUIDE:TIPS & TRADE SECRETS FOR SUCCESS

2. Thought Leadership Marketing Guide:
Tips & Trade Secrets for Success
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Thought Leadership Marketing Guide:
Tips & Trade Secrets for Success
Thought leadership as a marketing discipline has been around for several
decades. Some credit large consulting firms that published research (e.g. The
McKinsey Quarterly, Deloitte Review). Defined as positioning a company or
individual as an expert through current, relevant and valuable content, thought
leadership marketing (TLM) is intuitively appealing because customers seek
information, education, and expertise when evaluating options, or making
important decisions.
Another TLM definition references the need for expertise when a high degree
of financial or emotional risk is involved. That said, TLM is likely important for
a broad range of categories including information technology (IT), software,
consulting, big ticket purchases, new technologies, and complex products or services.
As you might expect, there are many challenges to effective thought leadership
marketing including a growing quantity and quality of competitors, and the
consequent oversaturation of marketing, communications and sales targeting the
same executives. No question time and resources are always a consideration
when implementing a new marketing program.
This Thought Leadership Marketing Guide will provide insight into these
challenges, and how effective thought leadership marketing not only overcomes
challenges, but if implemented correctly, TLM can achieve significant and
measurable results. A case study illustrates a real-life program, along with a
marketing dashboard that captures and reports results. Finally, a Top 10 Keys
for Thought Leadership Marketing Success summarizes the process. Enjoy!
Marketing and Sales Challenged
More Than Ever
Many of the categories identified above are witnessing tremendous growth in
the number and variety of competitors. The software category, as an example,
is witnessing rapid growth of Software as a Service (SaaS), coupled with
stratospheric valuations that attract new entrants. Channel partners and
consultants add to the shear number of competitors. And in most categories,
there are directories and portals that compete in search results.

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At the same time, marketing has evolved dramatically to a focus on digital
tactics (websites, search engine marketing, social media, content, lead
generation, email, etc.). Today, these digital marketing tools and techniques
are more widely available, leveling the playing field, and allowing smaller
brands to compete against the giants.
Intuitively, this combination of increased competitors and incremental marketing
and sales—all targeting the same prospects—leads to communications overload.
Prospects often tune-out or ignore marketing, and avoid sales personnel.
Of course, one option to compete has been to spend more than competitors
on marketing, which favors larger brands and is not practical for most.
However, if vendor marketing and fatigue exists, more marketing or sales
may just further annoy prospective customers.
Besides these effects on prospective customers, journalist targets also
experience a similar over saturation of vendor communications, and
increasingly avoid or ignore such efforts.
Faced with all these challenges, how can a company be effective in marketing
and sales? No question, traditional marketing and sales are declining in
effectiveness. Let’s get to those tips and trade secrets.
A Marketing Silver Bullet
Yes, the above statement suggests that there is one thing you can do to achieve
great success, which is usually never possible, especially in marketing. So again,
consider that while your prospects are truly oversaturated, fatigued, and even
avoid vendor marketing and sales, the same prospect seeks information and
education regarding new and changing technologies, significant investments,
and complex alternatives.
These same prospects will seek information and training from associations,
publications, conferences, professional communities, and peers. These same
prospects often understand that analysts, directories, and even review sites
are often paid by vendors, and therefore might not be credible.

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Enter branded thought leadership (BTL)–an educational entity that leads with
information, resources and training, but is sponsored by the vendor or company.
Won’t prospects be skeptical? Not if well-executed with excellent content that
addresses their information and education needs, and avoids aggressive sales
pitches. Not if content addresses key questions and information requirements.
What’s more, the branded thought leadership entity and company can be
cross-promoted for maximum exposure and engagement (more on this later). The
illustration below shows how branded thought leadership marketing does not
experience vendor fatigue, and communicates directly with prospective customers.
SO HOW DOES IT WORK? GREAT QUESTION.
Branding is critical. The branded thought leadership entity should use a
keyword-rich, even literal brand name with an available website domain
name, ideally with a .org top-level domain (TLD). Of course, do some
Google searches to make sure there is not an existing entity or domain.
The .com TLD should be available. Do purchase both (for defensive
purposes). Go ahead and create a professional logo for your new entity,
but don’t get carried away with this phase (the literal and keyword-rich
brand and domain name are more important).

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Next, research and identify resources and related entities that will be great
sources for content ideas, subject matter experts (SMEs), research reports,
and related. A great place to start is associations, publications, conferences,
and research analysts.
Now determine spokespersons in your company that should be a part of the
thought leadership entity. Importantly, a chairperson or executive director
should be appointed to lead the program. Perhaps a chief marketing officer
(CMO), or other marketing executive. However, sales, business development,
or other executives can be the top spokesperson for the branded thought
leadership entity. Next, identify subject matter experts (SMEs) within your
company that can participate or contribute, and research other SMEs
that might be partners or non-competitors. Ideally, you will have a top
spokesperson and multiple SMEs.
At a minimum, a branded thought leadership entity should be a blog, but
can also be a complete website coupled with a blog. For maximum results,
redirect the new domain name to a sub-directory of the vendor website domain.
For example, www.vendordomainname.com/thought-leadership-entity.
This domain structure attributes all traffic and search authority to the vendor
website, a key objective.
The website or blog should have multiple resources, along with registration
pages for free access to valuable, educational assets like whitepapers and
research reports. Training webcasts, and other events (live and virtual) are
great options for registration. Multiple calls-to-action (CTA) support lead
generation objectives. The branded thought leadership website or blog should
have an About Page, Resources, Contact, and once built out, News, Events,
and other subpages.
The key to branded thought leadership success is, not surprisingly, content.
Not just any content, but great content. Frequent content. Strategic content.
Content that is not promotional or vendor-biased. Importantly, blogging is the
foundation of content. Blog frequency should be as often as daily, and never
less than 6-8 blogs per month. Blogging is the foundation of content because
blogs can be consolidated into more strategic content including email newsletters,
whitepapers, e-books, and yes, even books. Other more strategic content includes
surveys and research reports, webcasts, infographics, videos, and more.

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Branded thought leadership coupled with great content achieve excellent
engagement with social media. Create social profiles for the BTL entity
including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others. LinkedIn offers
multiple opportunities for BTL including company pages, groups, and
spokesperson profiles. Ideally, BTL and vendor social profiles can cross-promote
each others’ content (called social amplification). To encourage social sharing,
use a social share toolbar with each blog and key resources subpages.
Finally, use a scheduling tool like HootSuite to distribute hundreds of postings
each month across multiple social networks.
Depending on scale and maturity of your BTL entity, content planning can be
simple to formal and structured. Start with industry research, and develop
multiple topics. Then group topics, and define main and sub-topics. Next,
rank topics by importance so that a proportion of topics relevant to the
sponsor is implemented.
Content is a big topic, but some final points. Content can and should be
repurposed for multiple channels, and distributed through all available channels
(see illustration below). Of course, with the Google algorithm update penalizing
duplicate content, do strive to provide original content, or carefully curate
already published content (again a topic in and of itself). Finally, do tag
individual blogs by content category, and display content categories on the
blog so that users interested in specific topics can easily find it. Likewise,
interlink blogs to other related topic blogs and website pages to increase
page-views, and lower bounce rates for improved search authority.

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Of course all this content takes a mountain of effort, so you will need to
consider internal vs. external resources, or a combination of both.
Besides content, all other aspects of digital marketing excellence must be deployed
to ensure success. Search engine optimization or SEO is certainly a critical
requirement. Fortunately, branded thought leadership is primarily web-based,
so there are multiple opportunities to build organic search authority. Whether
a web page or a blog, each can be meta-coded with descriptions, page titles,
image titles (ALT tags), header tags and more. Both can be submitted to
directories to build authoritative back-links. BTL entities with publicity placements
can even obtain a Wikipedia page, which of course attributes high search
authority. More on SEO is available in the whitepaper, SEO Best Practices Guide.
Besides organic search, paid search can be very effective when integrated with
branded thought leadership (BTL). Educational content from a non-vendor
can achieve excellent click-through rates and lead generation.
Likewise, publicity and media relations can be improved when leading with
a branded thought leadership entity (vs. a vendor). Of course, this requires
effort with news releases, editor list development, and media contacts from
and by the BTL entity. Ideally, a press file and news archive is established
for the BTL entity. No question, journalists are more likely to quote and publish
information from a professional BTL entity than a vendor. See the illustration
below that compares vendor and BTL publicity.

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Certainly the ultimate objective of branded thought leadership, and all this
effort is lead generation. Always gate or use a registration form in front of all
strategic content. Webcasts and surveys are excellent tactics for capturing
prospect emails and more information. If implemented effectively, BTL
will substantially increase website traffic, and likewise, lead generation.
Capture registrations in a CRM system that supports frequent and ongoing
email campaigns.
Finally, for best results, manage this broad initiative via a marketing calendar,
integrating with company and industry events. Report results using Google
Analytics and other metrics. We recommend using a marketing dashboard that
integrates Google Analytics, email, and other applications (see below).

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Case Study: WEX Healthcare
WEX Health is a health benefits software that implemented a successful
branded thought leadership program, the Healthcare Trends Institute.
Now in its third year, the program has helped WEX Health attain top market
share, doubling revenue, and increasing all marketing metrics including lead
registrations, website traffic, and media placements.
Let’s summarize how to develop a Branded Thought Leadership entity that will
achieve dramatic and measurable results for brands, large or small.

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TOP 10 KEYS FOR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP SUCCESS
WIN THE BATTLE WITH A SILVER BULLET & MUCH EFFORT
No question, branded thought leadership takes a lot of time and effort.
By leading with an educational brand sponsored by the vendor brand,
prospective customers (and journalists) will engage instead of avoid your
efforts. Prospects will register for email newsletters, whitepapers, webcasts,
and even take a survey.
When implemented effectively, BTL can help brands overcome marketing
challenges, and substantially increase website traffic, improve search authority,
and drive lead generation. Ultimately, BTL will position your brand for category,
market and sales leadership.
ABOUT MODERN MARKETING PARTNERS
Founded in 1996, Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) has helped numerous
software, technology, consulting, professional services and startup brands
succeed via digital marketing excellence, content, publicity, and of course,
branded thought leadership. For a complimentary consultation, contact
Neil Brown at 630-868-5061, or email neil@modernmarketingpartners.com.
1. Research and develop a branded thought leadership (BTL) name and website domain
2. Appoint a spokesperson(s) and subject matter experts (SMEs)
3. Build a blog, or website/blog combination
4. Develop and rank a list of content topics and sub-topics
5. Create social profiles for the BTL entity, actively distribute content
6. Employ all possible search engine optimization (SEO)
7. Consider paid search using BTL content
8. Implement publicity and/or media relations for the BTL entity
9. Focus on lead generation with registration forms, ongoing email, CRM integration
10. Manage efforts via a marketing calendar, dashboards, and report analytics