3/4 of your B2B buying decision makers trust your thought leadership over your marketing materials...

Thought leadership done well can dramatically improve your commercial outlook, but what is it all about..?

I’m a huge fan of the Edelman and LinkedIn joint 'Thought Leadership Impact' studies, they are gold dust for anyone in sales, marketing, business development and responsible for growing a B2B company. We use them as a foundation for our training on creating strategic thought leadership in our clients sectors.

It’s a free and fantastic insight into your buying world and the 2024 Edelman LinkedIn joint study is out. It's titled “Reaching Beyond The Ready : Thought leadership’s impact on Engaging Out of Market B2B buyers" and it doesn't disappoint, thought leadership as a commercial gamechanger is on the rise.

This is the sixth annual collaboration of the 2 powerhouses examining how thought leadership influences buying behaviours among B2B decision makers and C-suite executives.

Who did they survey?

From the summary “We surveyed nearly 3,500 management-level professionals in December 2023 for insights into how thought leadership can do more than just increase brand awareness. Done well, it makes buyers re-examine their assumptions and inoculates you against competitors trying to woo away your customers.”

What is Thought Leadership?

There's are mixed perspective on the definitions of thought leadership, this is how they have defined it in the 2024 survey:

“Thought leadership refers to content that offers expertise, guidance or a unique point of view on a topic or in a field. It includes content like thought pieces, essays, videos, webinars, live presentations, PowerPoint slides, and research reports that organizations make available to the public for free (or in return for registering or giving contact information). In this context, “thought leadership” does not include content that is primarily focused on describing an organization’s products or services, or thought leadership that you pay to receive — such as client deliverables, subscription services, or reports that must be purchased”.

Thought leadership does far more that create a favourable impression of your brand - its deeper, more nuanced. It's causing your buyers to pause, to glitch and rethink and, it hits the spots that brochures and 43 page slide shows cant.

I've often said that these studies are akin to free, high value consultancy, the insight is incredibly helpful when placed at the heart of a comprehensive Social Selling or Digital B2B Influence strategy.

Have a look at this statement from the executive summary:

"Times are tough for B2B marketers. At any given time, a staggering 95% of business clients are not actively seeking goods or services. Lingering economic uncertainty is extending sales cycles, with nearly 90% of global buyers indicating their purchase process became more drawn-out last year. Moreover, B2B buyers now prefer a self directed journey of digital discovery."

95% of global buyers are saying that their job became more difficult last year– and this is playing out close to home, someone who works at a large PLC recently said to me, “if you think its hard for sellers right now, think how hard it is to buy…”.

But there is something in the last sentence above, something that we should all think about carefully "B2B buyers now prefer a self directed journey of digital discovery".

Our buyers and the people who are responsible for buying sign off are finding out about you on digital channels, and we know from other studies that there is a serious swing to finding out the truth about you and you company on Social Media.

The study tells us that B2B decision makers and C suite leaders consistency consume thought leadership content, over half are spending an hour or more per week - are they reading yours or your competitions...?

And here is the kicker...

73% of buying decision makers say that an organization’s thought-leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities and competencies than its marketing materials and product sheets.

All positive until now...there is a problem, buying decision makers want thought leadership content the supply chain don't understand how to get it to them...

30% of supply chain companies say their organisation does not know how to use Thought Leadership as a Sales or Marketing tool...

Only 29% can link a sale back to a specific piece of thought leadership - "Without clear measurement of sales impact, companies may hesitate to invest in thought-leadership initiatives — a cycle of negative reinforcement that leaves organizations vulnerable".

We can wait to get out thought leadership into a magazine twice a year or perhaps wait for the twice yearly speaking opportunity or we can harness to power and continual accessibility of the the powerful prospecting and networking location available today...Social Media.

Imagine for a second...

Your Leadership team publishing regular thought leadership content that resonates across your markets, your engineers leading your markets in strategic thought leadership content that appeals to your engineering buyers, your HSE people doing the same with their peers in your target organisations, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Quality, Technical, IT....the list goes on.

This is way deeper than having your marketing team post the occasional thought leadership piece on your company pages...this is about owning the influence in your sectors with strategic thought leadership across functions.

Your buyers want rich and diverse thought leadership content from the people across your organisation...lets give them it and make sure its the best and most prevalent in your sector.

The evidence is powerful and the good news is that you and your team can start out on a journey to become the leading technical and commercial Digital Influencers in your sectors with strategic thought leadership...you just might not know it yet, but its there and its commercially powerful.

Ill leave you with this to consider, its one of the closing slides from the study...

We are here to help you.

Eric Doyle (F.ISP)

Consult Crux

Eric Doyle is the Managing Director of Crux, specialist in Digital B2B Transformation. Creating leading Technical and Commercial Influencers in their chosen sectors.