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Does Thought Leadership Drive
Revenue?
Thought Leadership is a company's sampling program. Just as packaged goods companies encourage customers to "try before they buy" by giving away samples, so too do thought leaders write articles and blog posts, give speeches, host webinars and participate in online forums.
By so doing, they give customers a chance to sample their expertise. They offer a taste of the individual and/or institutional knowledge that they build into every product and service.
Among the top five benefits:
- Credibility: Thought leadership demonstrates your thinking and expertise. By offering up information, insights and ideas, you position yourself (and your company) as a trusted resource.
- Efficiency: Typically, thought leadership cuts across products to address issues that impact multiple customer groups - issues
- Engagement & Differentiation. Marketers are turning to thought leadership as a way to differentiate their products and services. They start a dialogue in which they "engage with" prospects vs. "selling at" them.
- Searchability. Good content increases find-ability. Search engine optimization (SEO) and link acquisition help you build a fan pipeline.
- Spreadability. Content and ideas are the raw material of social marketing. Good ideas - i.e., blog posts, articles, videos, analyses - spread broadly and quickly.
Bonus:
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250 N. Trade Street Suite 206 Matthews, NC 28105
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Greetings!
It may seem like I'm giving conflicting points of view in this newsletter. On the one hand I'm encouraging you to look at what sets your company apart from the crowd. Then I reference a research report that says clients don't buy services from companies they perceive to be unique.
This is a both/and rather than an either/or situation. If you do what you do, with passion, you will certainly differentiate yourself from your competition. While reliability, service, teaching and listening skills may not be unique concepts in your industry, your sincere ability to bring them to your clients will set you apart.
I'd love to hear your feedback ...
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Shine Like The Star You Are
 Take a moment to ask yourself: How does your company set itself apart from the crowd? Does your team truly understand what makes your products or services stand out from those of your competitors?
If you hesitated before answering, you're not alone.
To help you find your star power, here are a few tips for determining what differentiates your company from the B2B pack. Gather your team and take a look at factors such as these:
- Your approach to solving your customers' problems. Examine how you do what you do, step-by-step. What stands out?
- What your customers say is the value they get from you. Why do your customers keep coming back?
- Your employees' passion in working for you. Why do they show up every day?
- Your intellectual property. What do you know that few others can rival? The answer to this one shows "why you do what you do."
Read the article written by Ardath Albee, www.MarketingInteractions.typepad.com |
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The Myth of Differentiation
 Few would question this simple truth: Businesses must differentiate. Growth, profititability, survival hinge on their ability to set themselves apart from competition. However, according to research How Clients Buy (2009 Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Selling from the Client Perspective) most buyers want to tell service providers that rather than being unique they value the following:
- Reliability. Do what you say you are going to do, and be on time about it. (This is listed first, because it's so important.)
- Accessibility. Be there when I need you.
- Impact. Help me buy the most helpful and impactful services from you, and help me translate your services into success for my business in my industry.
- Fit. Be a good fit for the specific needs that I have. If you're not the best fit, help me find a provider that is. Don't shoehorn your service into something that, in the end, won't meet my needs as well as something else would.
- Importance. Make me feel like we are, as a client, important to you and your team.
- Service. Deliver great service as well as great services.
- Prudence. Be careful and do your homework before you suggest a course of action for me.
- Research. Stay on top of the developments and trends in your industry and in mine.
- Listening. Understand my business, my team, and my clients so you can come up with ideas relevant to me.
- Teaching. Help me understand what you're doing. I might not be an expert in your area, but I'm pretty bright and I make the decisions here. Help me understand what's new in your area of expertise so I can apply that knowledge in my business.
- Business management. Run an efficient operation and constantly improve so I don't pay for your inefficiency.
- Relationship management. Be pleasant and fair, and work with me through communication or other breakdowns on your end or mine. In essence, treat me like a person.
Regardless of the mix of what's most important to your buyers, you probably won't see many of them inserting this into the list of client wants: "Different and Unique: Be one of a kind, offering something that no one else in the market offers."
So be different ... Focus instead on actually delivering the value to the market that you say you deliver (which, in and of itself, can be uncommon if not unique), and find ways to create a conversation with buyers around that message.
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