Thought leadership is all the buzz in 2022. And rightfully so.
When done well, it significantly influences B2B buyers and brand perception. According to the 2021 Edelman/LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact study, B2B decision makers did the following after engaging with thought leadership content: ·42% invited the org to bid on a project that was not in their original consideration set ·48% awarded business to the org ·53% increased the amount of business they did with the org ·54% purchased a new product/service from the org
This week’s TMI 3 in 10 guest is Jenny Goco, Director of Communications for Brown & Brown. Jenny takes us through her 3 tips on doing thought leadership well, based on the pilot program we started together for Brown & Brown in 2021.
For my full 10-minute interview with Jenny, take a listen here.
Just seeking her 3 tips on thought leadership? Read the Cliff Notes below.👇
Here are Jenny’s 3 tips for doing thought
leadership well in 2022:
1. Understand your thought leadership “why.” Thought leadership is not a given for an organization, it’s a strategic choice. It requires consistency and diligence. When you follow your thought leaders, you will find some fantastic results.
Why engage thought leadership? People want a
better look into the heart of an organization, whether that's prospective customers, existing customers and teammates. Everyone wants an understanding of who your organization is, what you stand for and how leaders are helping to drive the organization forward. 2. Pick the right leader + start with a pilot. A
critical component of creating successful thought leadership is picking the right leader to engage. Then, start slowly. We built a thought leadership pilot program at Brown & Brown by first targeting a leader, our general counsel and our executive vice president, Bob Lloyd, who was excited about jumping in as a guinea pig. Once you've identified the right leader and you start to build your program, let the journey evolve organically. We had a lot of ideas on how we could execute, but found that when really digging in with our leader to help tell his story, we needed to follow that journey naturally. 3. Have a roadmap for ROI. Leveraging the thought leadership content that you're creating across multiple channels will be critical to your ROI. Starting with a pilot program allowed us to have maximum flexibility as we learned what works best for us, for our leaders – and what resonated with our audiences. It's also allowed us to really target both intangible and intangible results. Tangibly, you can look at views, reactions, comments, shares, connections, followers. But, as a communicator, we all know that ROI can be about intangibles too. It's the name and brand recognition and reinforcement. It's the infinite organic reach that you can get by putting your leaders and your organization and your story out there. Connections with other industry leaders, prospective customers, teammates, the market considerations and that competitive advantage. All of those things work together to give you a differentiator in the market. We've also seen a lot of internal engagement with teammates, pride and leadership. They want to hear from our leaders, and they want to learn a little bit more about them. Bob has done a wonderful job of not only providing insights on business considerations, but also explaining where he comes from and adding some of his personal life to the mix. All have equally contributed to the unique ROI we’ve gained from the thought leadership pilot. BONUS: What's next? When you create a piece of content that you
can use in multiple applications, the value of time and effort go up. We’re looking next at layering in some video applications, some Q and A's, keeping those sound bites and that application stackable, quick, tight, concise, and then also welcoming other leaders into the program as well. Ideally, maximizing the return of everything we're doing as we are diversifying the things we're putting together.
Thank you, Jenny, for your concrete advice on executing a thought leadership program!
Are you a marketing ⭐️? If so, I’d love to feature you in a future TMI 3 in 10 episode. Reply to this email and tell me about your specialty marketing focus and what you’d like to talk about. All the best, Mindi 😊
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