How can you balance product information and thought leadership in your content?

You need to be clear about your content goals and who you're targeting when. Thought leadership is often more top of the funnel content, to build your brand and authority. Thought leadership helps people know to go to you when they have a certain pain point. Product information often comes later in the funnel. There are times you might talk to a top of the funnel prospect about product, but it's only when you have a really big, highly innovative launch.

Keep product information and thought leadership separate. Make this a rule. Thought leadership articles inspire and help customers solve their big problems. Product information helps them understand your product, compare it, and then onboard and troubleshoot once they are your customer.

Clearly identify your content goals - whether it's to educate, build brand awareness, generate leads, or establish expertise in a particular domain. This will help determine the appropriate balance between product-focused and thought leadership content. Conduct thorough audience research to understand the needs, interests, challenges, and preferences of your target readers. Tailor your content mix to align with their specific pain points and information needs. For audiences seeking solutions to immediate problems, prioritize product-focused content that highlights features, benefits, and use cases.

Define the following: Purpose of Content: Clarify the content's objective. Target Audience: Identify the intended recipients. Post-Content Action: Determine the desired response. Thought Leadership Impact: Explain how thought leadership supports the objective. Content Distribution: Plan how the content will be shared. For instance, when creating a whitepaper on an industry use case showcasing your product's benefits, leveraging industry-specific expertise (e.g., addressing challenges, standards) reinforces the value proposition to customers.

The most important thing to consider here is the overall objective of the campaign and the persona you are targeting. You need to clearly understand if the content is directed toward the top of the funnel (early in the buyer journey) or the bottom (late in the buyer journey). In my experience, the earlier in the buyer journey the more focus on Thought Leadership. The second piece will be the persona that you are targeting. In my experience, the personas that are part of the C-Suite or Leadership of your customer will tend to favor Thought Leadership content. On the other side, the personas tied to operations will likely favor more of the Product content.

Ensure you don't go off-brand when adapting your content for different channels. Don't try too hard to align information about your products with what seems to be the prevailing format/convention of the platform you're targeting. Say, for example, your product is an accounting solution with a brand identity that's "serious", "detail-oriented", and "professional", and you want to start putting content on a platform known for short and fun bits such as TikTok. There's a serious risk of aiming to be too quirky and funny in your posts, which potentially undermines the brand you've carefully built. Instead, you'd aim to create multiple short accessible pieces that are each still detailed but remain nonetheless professional in presentation.

In my experience, this is again where you have to be very aware of where in the customer journey will the content be used and what are the target personas. Based on this, you need to identify the best way to deliver the content where (channel), how (format) and when (buyer's journey) the customer wants it. It's simple when you let your ???????????????? ?????????????????? drive the work.

Leverage different content formats to cater to both product information and thought leadership goals. For example, use case studies, demo videos, and product guides for product-focused content, while leveraging whitepapers, webinars, and blog posts for thought leadership content. Strategically choose the right channels and platforms to distribute each type of content. Product-focused content may be more effective on your website, product documentation, and sales enablement tools, while thought leadership content can thrive on industry publications, social media, and third-party platforms.

I think any complete story needs to: 1) start with context 2) explain the problem 3) introduce the approach 4) sell your solution If you don't have context, you don't have relevance. If you sell your solution without explaining the problem/approach, you sound like you're selling snake oil. When you add these components to combine thought leadership and product information, the audience gets why this matters to them and sees how your solution is the best answer to their problem.

It's all about the channel, which is often driven by the stage of the buying funnel. When consuming an article, ebook, or whitepaper I'm looking for advice and insight. I may not be in the market or even know I have a problem yet. You can plug your product at the end, but if you do it in the beginning or throughout, I will abandon your content. Once I have engaged with your content and understand the overall challenge, then you can tell me about your product and how it can help me solve for my challenge better than anyone else.

Consistent brand voice is maintained, employing clear language for product details. Thought leadership will seamlessly include insights that align with industry trends. Balancing language complexity, engaging brand story, and visual elements enhance both product information and opinions. Lastly, encourage interaction with a clear call to action, to increase engagements and feedbacks to cement brand authority and relatability.

Use an authoritative yet approachable tone that establishes expertise without sounding overly salesy or promotional when discussing product features. Avoid hype. Blend factual descriptions of product capabilities with narratives, examples, and perspectives that provide larger context and meaning. Thought leadership should inspire, not just inform. Vary sentence structure, vocabulary, imagery, and language formality to keep things engaging when moving between product details and big picture commentary. Avoid stark shifts.

Think of thought leadership as "consulting in public". This means you should spend 99% of your effort talking about your customer's problems. And before you start talking about your product, you should educate them on the approach to a solution first. If you do this right, you'll create high trust and credibility — And prospects will then come to you directly to learn more about how your product solves their problem.

One of the things I've come to value in respect to this over the coming years is Narrative Design. It sets you up to do a couple of fundamental things: - clarity the unique insight you have on the market - formulate your point of view on what's broken (your villain in the story) - articulate how to think differently about this (your approach) and what this will result in. It's a great way to tell stories that resonate It's a great way to avoid bashing competitors It's a great way to attract the right people, and credibly detract the wrong ones. Plus - most important: It sets you apart.

The best simple test of whether you're providing value with your piece is to take out all mention of your specific product's name and branding/iconography and see if the content still makes sense, particularly to someone who hasn't read the piece before. If it stops making sense, then you've (probably and) accidentally put too much emphasis on your marketing angle rather than on providing an actual solution to a real problem.

In my experience you have to have a passion for the product to be able to communicate the value to the customer and instill their confidence not only in the product but also you. Once you have built trust, your audience thrives on your thoughts and opinions.

Ensure product details relate directly to the audience's needs and interests. contextualize features with real-world benefits. Spotlight only the most impactful capabilities needed to convey thought leadership. Avoid exhaustive feature lists. Use thought leadership commentary to frame how a product innovatively solves a problem. Show don't just tell the value. Share insights that broaden the reader's perspective on key issues related to the product. Go beyond just product information. Provide diverse content formats like videos and infographics to deliver engaging value beyond text. Vary information delivery. Write for snippets and skimming. Use scannable headings, bullet points, and summations to facilitate quick value gain.

Set KPIs to track content performance for both conversions and engagement. Look beyond vanity metrics. A/B test different ratios of product details to thought leadership commentary to find the right mix for audience response. Analyze click-through rates on product links/CTAs vs. shares of thought leadership commentary to guide future content.

Challenge the status quo with collaborative content creation! Break away from the solo act of self-promotion and embrace collaborative content creation. Partner with industry experts, influencers, or complementary brands to co-create content that blends product relevance with diverse perspectives, fostering a sense of community and credibility. And, rather than simply regurgitating industry trends or generic insights, dig deeper to uncover thought-provoking perspectives that challenge the status quo. Offer fresh interpretations, bold predictions, or contrarian viewpoints that spark meaningful conversations and establish your brand as a forward-thinking leader in the field.

In the B2B SaaS context, establishing credibility is crucial, particularly for newer brands. Thought leadership integration can be subtle yet impactful. This might entail highlighting adherence to industry standards, referencing successful customer engagements, showcasing team expertise, or leveraging content from experienced individuals. While standalone thought leadership pieces are less common now, weaving subtle elements throughout content remains effective.

Know your target audience, know what channels they prefer to use, and how they prefer to receive information. Different audiences (users, support, influencers, buyers, etc.) use different channels to find information about your product, look for competitive products, learn about your product, try your product, etc. Each of these channels have different formats that work best. Make sure you understand what those formats are (text, audio, video, gamification, etc.) so you choose the appropriate format. That knowledge, combined with a thorough understanding of who your target audience is and what they are seeking, will guide you to the correct balance of product information and/or thought leadership.

Align content formats to goals - ebooks and guides for product details, stories and narratives for thought leadership. Curate contributor voices to add external perspective to thought leadership, not just internal product pitches. Repurpose and cross-link content across formats and channels to get more mileage from both product info and thought leadership. Produce ongoing content series centered on key themes vs one-off pieces to fully explore complex topics. Visually reinforce differences through typography, layouts, color blocking and more to cue changes in tone and intent.