Intentional thought leadership
Product marketers are the best stewards of original ideas
Snap quiz: Which of the following is “thought leadership?”
If you answered “D) None of the above,” you’re correct!
But if you have anything to do with enterprise technology marketing initiatives—presentations, field enablement, strategic campaigns—you’ve likely employed thought leadership.
At Sappington, we’re often asked to infuse thought leadership into our clients’ work, particularly in collaboration with executives and product marketers. The challenge is that this term has been bandied about so much that its meaning has become fuzzy at best.
It’s time to clearly define thought leadership as deserving of a central place in the overall strategy of enterprise technology companies—as a concept that should be understood and fundamental to the work of anyone responsible for shepherding a brand and product.
What thought leadership isn’t
Thought leadership isn’t content marketing by a more impressive name.
Talking about your product—even if your CEO is doing the talking—generally isn’t thought leadership. In fact, most true thought leadership doesn’t focus on products at all, but on ideas and innovations.
Thought leadership isn’t driven by sales and profit goals. It’s a long-term strategy that not only builds the brand, but also pushes it to the forefront. Business success is a natural result, not a cause or the “why.”
Thought leadership isn’t a mere tactic or a box to be checked off a marketing plan. (“Let’s have an ad buy, an email blast, and, oh, yeah: some thought leadership.”)
Why is it important today?
Over the history of business, companies operated in an environment where information was comparatively scarce and often closely guarded. Original thought was perhaps less ubiquitous and certainly harder to discover.
With technological advancements, we now have the opposite problem. We’re awash in a sea of data and intriguing ideas. We desperately need a way to filter, prioritize, and take appropriate action.
The increasing use of AI tools is making it even harder. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 72% of B2B marketers report using generative AI tools for content-related tasks. Looking at just one platform—Medium—approximately 40-47% of recent posts are likely AI-generated, a recent Wired investigation found.
In the age of AI and social media platforms like X and LinkedIn, it seems everyone’s a thought leader. But, ironically, we’re still hungry for original thinking.
True thought leadership is the expression of fresh ideas that cut through the noise, catapult a company or leader to the forefront of important conversations, and grow mindshare that ultimately results in market share.
If correctly communicated and packaged, thought leadership provides an opportunity for a company to offer the kind of clarity needed by both customers and industry players.
What’s intentional thought leadership?
Thought leadership should manifest as a strategic program to communicate the ideas and innovations created by leaders within your company. It’s an opportunity to inspire, to influence, and to take the lead on big industry conversations.
For thought leadership to be effective, it needs to be:
ORIGINAL Thought leadership should offer unique, fresh lines of thinking. It should ask bold questions and deliver intriguing answers or possibilities. Any leader can have her say on the issues of the day, but effective thought leadership helps shape big-picture conversations and provokes epiphanies. It supports and expresses a company’s overarching vision.
AUTHENTIC Thought leadership conveys real people’s real ideas. It’s almost impossible to deliver effective thought leadership unless the message is backed by substance and conviction. The thought leader needs to have been there, had the experience, taken the journey, and come out the other end to share their learnings. (“Leader” implies that others will follow.) AI tools can’t produce thought leaders because AI doesn’t have subjective experience or novel thoughts—it only reprocesses the data on which it was trained.
ACTIONABLE Thought leadership should not only be interesting, but applicable. If you want to capture your audience’s attention, your ideas must be relevant. Whether sparking new approaches, offering solutions, or presenting a fresh perspective, thought leadership should be useful to your audience for dealing with the real world, not pie-in-the-sky theory.
This is why so many people viewed earlier days of TED talks as thought leadership— and rightly so. The presentations were generally original and authentic and provided a plan of action. And they never were for selling products.
What it can do for your company
Thought leadership isn’t just an intellectual exercise or an expression of individual ego. It has real benefits for companies by:
CREATING VALUE Thought leadership should offer valuable insights that can, in turn, help your audience create value. A consistent and well-executed thought leadership strategy also creates long-term value for your company. Offering a larger vision makes your brand greater than the sum of its parts.
INSPIRING TRUST True thought leadership is authentic by its very nature. And authenticity inspires trust, especially in a world where customers are savvy about sales pitches. Honesty and sharing a larger vision can break through those barriers and turn cynics into brand champions.
SETTING YOU APART Authentic thought leadership goes beyond branding to make a company stand out. This kind of differentiation is critical in today’s enterprise technology market, where parity among products exists on many levels. Thought leadership can help potential customers see beyond specifications and features to the important ideas behind your product—and brand—and its value to their business.
Whose job is it?
One could say that thought leaders are themselves responsible for good thought leadership, but that’s not the whole picture.
Product marketers, accountable for the overall success of a given product or service, are integral to bringing thought leadership to life.
To be effective, marketers need to respect the strategic nature of the exercise. Setting overall goals must come before planning the details of how thought leadership will be delivered.
Product marketers should be thinking about how to roll out original, provocative ideas that merit attention—not just on a keynote stage, but in almost any format and on any platform: blogs, articles, webinars, videos, or social posts.
Thoughtful thought leadership
Thought leadership deserves more thought and more leadership than it currently receives. It can be an effective way for a company to achieve distinction in the crowded enterprise technology space, but its full potential often goes untapped.
The good news is that practically every company already has building blocks for a strong thought leadership program. All successful businesses have leaders with interesting perspectives, ideas, and innovations to offer. Too often, these invaluable assets are underutilized. A deliberately designed and strategic thought leadership program harnesses the power of good ideas to drive meaningful success.
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