How To Take Your B2B Thought Leadership Content From Good to Great

Top-of-funnel (TOFU) content for SEO isn't the end-all, be-all anymore for B2B brands. If you’re going to ask your buyers to lock themselves into a pricy, long-term contract, they need to feel confident that they're working with the best. 

Enter thought leadership content — compelling, forward-thinking ideas that inspire and influence peers and customers to go off the beaten track in their industries. 

Authoritative content helps demonstrate that your brand is knowledgeable and trustworthy. But creating it isn't always easy — it takes more work than typical B2B marketing content. 

If you want to level up your thought leadership content or start off on the right foot, this post is for you. Here, we provide tips that, if well-implemented, can elevate your thought leadership to new heights. 

Understand who your ideal customer profile really is

Researching your ICP (ideal customer profile) is the foundation for better-than-good B2B thought leadership. After all, you can't create great content without knowing who it’s for. 

Understanding your ICP allows for targeted messaging. When you know everything about your target audience, from their pain points to their interests, you can create more engaging, valuable, and relevant content tailored to these business leaders.

A proper ICP understanding also sets the stage for forming deeper connections with your audience. When your content speaks directly to your audience’s wants and needs, they're more likely to regard you as a trustworthy source of information, which is vital for long-term engagement. 

To understand your ICP, use social listening and direct customer interviews, focusing on current challenges, needs, and goals. Most of all, leverage your sales team — sales has conversations with real prospects all the time and knows what they care about, so they can provide valuable insights. 

Stay up to date with industry trends

To become a thought leader, you have to stay informed about all the new challenges and opportunities in the B2B space. Building content about yesterday's news isn't going to demonstrate to your ICP that you're an expert in your field.

With up-to-date information, you can create content that addresses current industry trends and challenges, maintaining your position as an expert. Remember, the best instances of thought leadership communicate insider industry knowledge.

It also becomes easier to develop forward-thinking insights. After all, it's only through present data that you can predict future trends and provide actionable insights for decision-makers. 

No matter who your ICP is, they want content that addresses their present and future needs. So it goes without saying that staying up to date can help you maintain their interest and engagement. 

There are all kinds of different ways to stay updated in your niche:

• Subscribe to industry podcasts and newsletters: If you're a marketer in the B2B SaaS space, subscribe to newsletters from outlets like SEJ (Search Engine Journal) and listen to podcasts like Ten Speed's. They follow the latest industry news and provide insights from subject matter experts, keeping you in the know at all times. 
• Read industry publications: Keep up with reports from research firms like Forrester and Edelman, as they're based on original, current data. 
• Pop in on sales team meetings: Your sales team is one of your greatest assets, as they interact directly with B2B buyers and decision-makers. Talking to them about the questions or concerns B2B companies pose can provide industry insights you may not even get from external publications and whitepapers. 

Offer unique and meaningful insights

It isn't enough for you to just know what your industry is doing and share that information with your audience. Odds are, almost every other brand is doing the same. The same tired old tips, recommendations, and “hacks” are available across all of their websites — and your audience wants more.

To stand out and get eyes on your content, you need to push your industry forward with new, thought-provoking insights and ideas that audiences won't find elsewhere. This is what sets thought leadership apart from basic content marketing. 

If you're unsure whether a particular piece of content suits your thought leadership campaign, map its goal, and you'll know. Is the purpose to build authority and brand awareness — or is it to put eyeballs on your website and drive form fills? If you answer the latter, what you have is likely the typical marketing content audiences can find anywhere. 

To make sure your content provides unique perspectives and valuable insights (the basics of thought leadership), start by talking about what's hard in your industry.

• How would you solve, simplify, or eliminate a particular challenge? 
• What advice would you have for someone who just started in a new role in your field? 
• How have you found success in places where other people have struggled? 
• What do you think will happen next in your industry, and how can businesses get ahead of or capitalize on it? 

Answer these questions, and you've got the start of something insightful.

Take Ryan Law's article "Education Isn't Enough: How to Market When Information is Dirt Cheap." It moves away from what every marketer writes regarding digital marketing — taking an education-first approach — and instead offers novel ideas like creating entertaining content and running experiments to give audiences new information. 

It's this kind of out-of-the-box thinking that positions him as a thought leader rather than a typical content marketing strategist. 

Don't be afraid to rock the boat

Sometimes, the best thought-leadership content takes a contrarian stance. So don't be afraid to offer seemingly out-of-this-world ideas. As long as they're well-founded, they're likely to do you more good than harm — they'll spark discussions among peers and position you as a thought-provoking industry leader. 

Skeptical? Look at the Harvard Business Review article, "Don't Cut Your Marketing Budget in a Recession" by Nirmalya Kumar and Koen Pauwels. 

At first glance, the idea of not reducing B2B marketing budgets (even if they're the most flexible) when there's a market downturn seems preposterous. But, upon further reading, you can't help but think, "Huh, maybe I've been looking at marketing during hard times all wrong." 

Know what exemplary B2B thought leadership content looks like

As popular author Anthony J. D'Angelo aptly put it, "Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow." Knowing what successful thought leadership looks like can help you replicate the same success for yourself. 

Explore great thought leadership content to identify what distinguishes it from average thought leadership. A great place to start would be to identify remarkable thought leaders in your niche.

As a marketer, you can learn a lot from experts like Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing and the founder of L2 Inc (now acquired by Gartner), or podcasters James Carbary and Benji Block, hosts of the Sweet Fish podcast. These experts are remarkable thought leaders who introduce fresh perspectives and new ideas to get B2B brands to think outside the box. 

As you learn from these thought leaders, you’ll come to see that: 

• Great thought leadership prioritizes quality over quantity. 
• Subject matter experts (SMEs) are integral to developing thought leadership content. 
• Thought leadership can take many forms — podcasts, case studies, blog posts, webinars, etc. — and using multiple content formats is a great way to enhance visibility and reach. 
• Thought leadership content is sometimes controversial. 
• Great thought leadership doesn't just explore industry challenges. It also provides innovative solutions that can help B2B businesses improve operations. 

Take a strategic approach

If you don't have a strategy, you risk scattered topics and no actual gain in brand authority. You need to make sure that all the content you create supports your larger goals by thinking strategically about thought leadership. 

Rather than looking at thought leadership as independent, integrate it into your larger content marketing strategy by:

• Adding thought leadership to all marketing channels: Whether you prefer to engage your audience via social media platforms, your website, or a podcast, embed thought leadership in all pieces of content to build your authority across the board. 
• Updating current content to demonstrate thought leadership: If you have existing content, give it a boost by introducing new perspectives and original research. 
• Focusing more on content quality than quantity: It's better to produce a few well-thought-out, high-quality content pieces than many subpar ones. Great pieces are more likely to enhance your credibility and promote audience trust. 
• Aligning thought leadership to your brand: Create content that relates to your industry and demonstrates your brand's value proposition — without sounding too salesy. 
• Being interesting: Thought leadership content doesn't have to be boring. Use storytelling to break the monotony and make complex ideas easily digestible. This can encourage more engagement from your audience. 

Measure the impact of your efforts

Measuring the impact of thought leadership lets you know if your current strategies are working. This allows you to make well-informed adjustments and ensure that resources are allocated to the right avenues. 

But measuring thought leadership, especially using traditional content marketing metrics, may not provide an accurate picture of its effectiveness. For example, if you measure your impact by search engine rankings, you may assume your content isn't effective in positioning you as a thought leader. 

But in reality, thought leadership content typically focuses more on value than SEO, and since it’s subjective, it’s rarely going to resonate with your entire audience. 

Still, it's a good idea to monitor your performance. A good rule of thumb is to use both quantitative and qualitative metrics, such as:

• Backlinks: A high number of backlinks could indicate confidence (or at least interest) in your content. 
• Website traffic: Audiences typically visit websites they trust for information, so increased website traffic may indicate success. 
• Content downloads: If you offer downloadable content like newsletters, podcasts, and research reports, many downloads could point to high-quality content. 
• Speaking engagement invites: Podcast, webinar, and conference hosts and planners typically invite thought leaders to share industry insights. Invites may, therefore, indicate effective thought leadership. 

Partner with thought industry experts like Ten Speed

Taking your thought leadership from good to great requires quite a bit of an investment. You need to conduct market research to understand your ICP, track industry updates, align thought leadership with your overarching content strategy, and regularly monitor its performance to identify improvement opportunities. 

No doubt, this can be challenging for your internal team. That's where Ten Speed comes into play. 

We know how to build quality thought leadership and integrate it into your larger content marketing strategy. Over our years of experience working with B2B brands, we’ve developed a clear methodology for creating meaningful content that your audience actually wants to engage with.

Talk to us today to see how our team can level up your thought leadership efforts for enhanced authority in your industry!