The KPIs of Thought Leadership

I've been talking about the benefits of companies using thought leadership as a brand building strategy for the last few weeks and I hope you've caught some of the enthusiasm I feel for this type of content marketing. If you need more than enthusiasm to convince you that thought leadership is a good investment in your brand, this newsletter is for you. Today, I'll discuss how you can set and measure key performance indicators for a thought leadership strategy that will help you know whether or not the "juice is worth the squeeze" as one of my previous CEOs liked to say.

First, since we are talking data, let me hit you with some facts from Semrush on thought leadership. In a recent blog, they reported that

• 65% of businesses already include thought leadership in their content marketing
• 29.5% more are planning to start doing so soon.

They wholeheartedly agree that thought leadership is a worthwhile investment.

In terms of results, Semrush found that:

• 81.4% generates an increase in organic traffic?
• 64.9% boosts social media following and engagement
• 47.6% generates an increases in actual leads and sales
• 38.9% generates email subscribers
• 34.1% generates PR and media mentions

It's never easy to measure brand awareness. However, when you tie your thought leadership content to your online and offline marketing channels, you can measure results by increase in engagement, like we see with the Semrush data. Thought leadership can build your brand while engaging your customers and prospects at all points along their customer journey.

But wait! Don't just take these results as your KPIs. Your KPIs should reflect the goals of your company's thought leadership strategy. Your business is unique, so your marketing and brand strategies should reflect your unique goals. Before you start any strategy (business, marketing, what's for dinner?), establish your goals.

Here are some examples of goals for a thought leadership strategy:

• increase brand awareness within a certain group of people or in a community.
• become the go-to resource for an expert speaker on a certain topic or specialty.
• attract a new set of customers to your business for a new product or service line.
• change a negative reputation/consumer perception
• overcome common objections from prospects or leads in the sales funnel

Once you have your overarching goals, make them SMART. SMART goals are goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timebound. So, the goals above would turn into:

• increase the number of residents within the city of Columbus who have visited the website by 25% by the end of 2023
• earn 5 invitations to speak on panels about content marketing in Q2 and Q3
• build a strong prospective client list of at least 100 people for new product before launch in Q3
• increase Google review rating to 4 stars by the end of 2023
• renew lapsed 10 lapsed sales prospects in Q2

With these SMART goals, you have the overarching measurement as well as more specific KPIs like web traffic, PR mentions, new sales leads, etc. Once you set your tactics for thought leadership marketing, you'll then be able to make a list of the KPIs that contribute to one or more of the SMART goals.

For example, if you start a blog, you will want to measure whether traffic to your product pages increases from the blog page. You'll also want to measure how your readers are finding your blog (organic search, email, social, etc.). Of course, you always want to measure which marketing or sales strategies generates sales.

Make a list of the KPIs that will help you reach each sales goal. Make a monthly tracker to measure your results over time, not as one-and-done metrics. It's always best to look at KPIs over a longer period of time, especially for thought leadership content. This is a long-term accumulative strategy.

I hope this article helps you see how thought leadership can help you reach your overarching business goals. If you need help in building a strategic thought leadership and brand building strategy, I'd love to help! Visit my website for more information or contact me here on LinkedIn today.