Thought Leadership's Undeniable Impact on Attracting Clients and Driving Growth

If thought leadership is not part of your PR and marketing toolkit, both you and your clients are missing out. Recent studies confirm that decision-makers place a higher value on thought leadership content than on any other marketing data. In fact, a recent study by Edelman and LinkedIn found that a striking 75% of C-suite executives report that thought leadership content has led them to explore new products or services. This underscores thought leadership’s power to attract new customers and its potential to shift market dynamics by influencing existing business relationships.

Thought leadership influences customer decisions and drives growth

Business leaders place great emphasis on thought leadership content. Fifty-two per cent of decision-makers and 54% of C-suite executives spend an hour or more on average reading thought leadership content every day.

In today's complex business environment, especially in high-stakes industries, customers want assurance that they are partnered with leaders at the forefront of innovation. Thought leadership is a crucial public relations tool and marketing tool companies can use to demonstrate their capacity to anticipate and address complex challenges, thereby maintaining a competitive edge.

The study also found that, surprisingly, thought leadership not only helps attract and retain new customers but it can also help steal competitors’ existing business. Seventy per cent of C-suite executives admitting that thought leadership had led them to reconsider their current vendor relationship. About half of respondents (54%) said they had changed vendor decisions after a thought leadership piece from an alternative vendor made them realize they better understand their needs.

Beyond attaining new customers, the study also found that thought leadership helped businesses cross-sell or upsell current clients.

Not All Thought Leadership is Created Equal

Just because you or your client can write an article or blog post doesn’t mean you should, or if you do, that it will impact your business. The key is to ensure you are writing useful and trustworthy content. That entails real data an understanding of industry challenges and concrete guidance:

Creating trustworthy content will drive real results for your business.

That may sound simple, but decision-makers say only 15% of the thought leadership they read is either very good or excellent.Interestingly, the source of thought leadership might surprise you. While 62% of survey respondents prefer content from recognized experts, it isn't always the CEO who needs to be the voice of authority. Identifying the most credible in-house subject expert can enhance the trustworthiness and impact of the content.Equally important, readers want to not only see well written content, but content that is also well-presented:

The key is to write content that is useful to your audience.

Why Aren't More Brands Using Thought Leadership?

The question that begs to be asked is since we know thought leadership is an effective brand awareness and business building tool, why aren’t more companies using it?

The Edelman-LinkedIn survey found that half of respondents said they did not have the resources to be able to write good content. An additional 26% said their organization also lacked the skills to produce high-quality content.

While that is problematic, I like to think that acknowledging the problem is half the battle. It’s okay to recognize your business leaders can’t or don’t have the time to write an engaging blog post. It’s not okay to then abandon thought leadership as part of your communications plan.

Brands need to upskill their communications teams to write effective content and to understand social platform algorithms so that the content is visible to the right audiences. This is one of the cornerstones of strategic communications and is critical for branding and reputation management. If this isn’t possible, public relations firms like Amplify can create impactful thought leadership strategies and content that can help them amplify their message and differentiate them from competitors.

If you’d like help with your thought leadership strategy and content, please reach out to us at info@amplifyonline.ca.