Thought Leadership Marketing: Developing Effective Campaigns

6 July 2005—Thought leadership remains a hot topic among services marketers, and for good reason. Buyers who tune out traditional sales and marketing pitches are quite interested in innovative thinking about using technology for business advantage. Thought leadership campaigns can be an effective approach to generating interest and credibility among prospective buyers. Not surprisingly, many ITSMA member companies are increasing such investments.

During a recent ITSMA roundtable discussion in London, however, it became clear that many companies are struggling to reach a consensus around what the term "thought leadership" actually means.

To avoid endless debate, the roundtable participants agreed to look at their own campaigns in the context of ITSMA's definition:

"Vision, research, and new thinking or ideas around current and future business or technology issues."

But when we asked participants to scrutinize their recent thought leadership campaigns, each and every person in the room admitted that less than half of their campaigns would really stack up against ITSMA's definition. Most companies have difficulty generating truly new or breakthrough ideas, although some of the bigger organizations have trouble sorting through the large number of ideas generated and determining which ones will give them the most leverage in the marketplace.

Identifying priority issues is a task that can be tackled by senior-level steering committees. These senior-level players can pinpoint which campaigns will best support the overall business strategy and agenda—an important consideration to keep in mind.

Determining which issues will resonate with your target audience is also essential. If you've got a great message but you're only getting traction with buyers who can't afford or aren't interested in your services or solutions, what good will it do? Many companies have formed customer councils to help them uncover relevant current and future trends.

Marrying the priority issues to the company's differentiators to come up with a new or unique angle is the next step. Steria, one of the top 10 European IT services companies, has a good track record in this area. As outsourcing became more popular in the early 2000s, marketing leaders at Steria realized that the company’s project management expertise and strong focus on human value gave it an opportunity to become an authority on best practices in promoting higher employee satisfaction in the face of outsourcing.

Steria made sure it had all its ducks in a row before launching its thought leadership campaign. First, the company conducted primary research on the effects of outsourcing on employees. Based on the findings, Steria then authored an Outsourcer's Code of Practice (and, a year later, an Employee Outsourcing Charter) and began to speak out on ways to promote employee satisfaction in an outsourced situation. As a result, it garnered a great deal of coverage in both the U.K. national press and IT trade publications and saw an increase in the generation of sales leads.

Although Steria received good results from raising its public profile, ITSMA research indicates that more targeted thought leadership initiatives undertaken on the account level can be even more effective in motivating the purchase of IT services and solutions. This means spicing up your marketing communications mix to include onsite customer briefings on important issues, creating audit tools and checklists that demonstrate the potential impact of a particular issue on the customer's business, and creating forums aligned to the issue.

Applying thought leadership to individual accounts doesn’t mean ignoring traditional influencers altogether. They remain important as well. Do some research to figure out which analysts your customers are talking to and which journals they're reading so that you can ensure that you're focusing your resources on the influencers who matter most to your target audience.

And no matter how finely tuned your outreach strategy is, remember that, when it comes to thought leadership, it's all about the message. If you don't have anything new, visionary, or thought provoking to say, don't say it at all.

—Bev Burgess, info@itsma.com

More EuroNotes

About ITSMA
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. As a membership organization, we provide research, consulting, and training to the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.