Responsible for a Thought Leadership Budget? 12 Top Notch Ways To Spend Your Money

Thought leadership is one of the most impactful categories of online content—when it's done right. According to a LinkedIn study, many miss the mark: 71% of survey respondents said less than half of thought leadership content offers meaningful insight.

It pays to carefully plan out your thought leadership budget to avoid falling into this "less than insightful" grouping. Your final pieces of thought leadership content only arrive after detailed research and taking cues from experts in your field—so it makes sense to invest in advice, empirical studies, and the outlets where you'll make your thought leader's voice heard.

These 12 tips for spending a thought leadership budget can help ensure your brand is elevated in your readers' eyes; these are the first steps of your thought leadership marketing plan.?

1. Advisory: Seek Advice on Thought Leadership Strategy

There's no doubt you understand your industry, but you may need insight into what's lacking in the thought leadership field. Objective advice on your thought leadership strategy can help you know where you can find your niche and make an impact. Start by getting some advice; an expert consultant can provide you with the direction you might want to take with your content.

2. Topics: Use White Space Analysis and Horizon Scanning To Choose Focus Areas

Your content should strike a chord in your readers—whether those are your customers or influencers in your industry. White space analysis offers insight into your products and services so that you can see the unmet areas of customer needs. You can address these areas in your content concerning what your company proposes to do—or how your competitors may be missing the mark.

Horizon scanning is another fruitful area for thought leadership strategy; this is where you see things changing in your industry—and how your customers might respond.

Spending some of your budget to analyse these areas can ensure that your content is relevant to readers.

3. Survey Design: Qualitative or Quantitative Questionnaires

Thought leadership is most impactful when it offers original insight. Doing your research is one way to make your content stand out. Thought leadership surveys can help you gather unique intelligence about your areas of expertise. However, not just any old survey will do: spend some of your budgets on a well-designed study that will offer meaningful data to readers. Think scientific data, not a quickie social media poll.

4. Survey Tool: Use the Right Tool

For your data to have real meaning, it must be collected correctly. Spend some of your budgets on ensuring you have the right tool to gather survey responses: online, via phone, or in person. Consider whether incentives, such as a prize draw entry or a nominal fee per completed survey, will help you gather enough responses from the right demographic segments.

5. Survey Collection and Analysis: Get the Right Sample

Speaking of demographics, spend some of your thought leadership budgets making sure you're gathering insight from the right survey respondents. Look at different industries, regional and global areas, job titles and responsibilities, and companies with the correct revenue and workforce sizes. Remember, if your readers are enterprise CEOs, there's no point in offering survey data from small business owners.

6. Analysis from Other Sources: Social Media Listening

Do you know what others say about your brand? That's the insight social media listening can produce. It's a technique of surveying your brand mentions across social media. You can use these insights to determine what your audience may already believe about your company and either reinforce or dispel that perspective with new and innovative thought leadership.

7. Analysis from Other Sources: Data Science

Data science offers a deep dive into the reams of information about your industry. By commissioning or interpreting data science from other sources, you can demonstrate your unique perspective on what your competitors may take for granted. Remember, your new take on existing data can spark conversation—a feature that distinguishes thought leadership from content marketing.

8. Analysis from Other Sources: Secondary Research and Case Studies

You probably already use case studies in your other marketing efforts. They are an important way to demonstrate how you obtained results for your previous clients. Case studies offer the specifics of the problem posed by the client and how your solution was the right fit. As a form of thought leadership, case studies provide an opportunity to show a real-life customer need and how the industry may be falling short.

9. Analysis from Other Sources: Expert Interviews

Whether new to your business or a seasoned professional, you likely know people who can offer unique insights. Piggyback on those relationships by asking a friend or colleague if they might be willing to share the spotlight; depending on your network, this may take only a tiny bite out of your budget through the cost of a transcriber, videographer, or lunch tab.

10. Report Writing to Show Your Thought Leader's Voice

Have you ever downloaded a report from Gartner Peer Insights? If you have, you're not alone. If you haven't, you nonetheless likely understand the power of in-depth information to demonstrate your vast knowledge on a particular topic. Investing in reports gives you a concrete product for your insights. The options are endless: from a simple PowerPoint presentation to a podcast, thought leadership video, whitepaper, or review series, showing you hit the ground with your analysis will elevate your brand in the eyes of your audience.

11. Design: Packaging Your Thought Leadership Components

There's tremendous benefit in thought leadership with meaningful content—but will your potential audience notice if it's not presented correctly? Design, from graphic design to marketing strategy, is essential to your thought leadership budget. That ensures your data analysis, interviews, and first-person content have the hook sought by your audience.

12. Dissemination: Releasing Your Thought Leadership to Readers

You've developed high-quality thought leadership that's certain to elevate your brand. Do you know the best way to ensure the right people see it? The last tip for your thought leadership budget is to invest in expertise on dissemination. That may include a public relations firm that understands thought leadership marketing strategy, time spent by your marketing team, or consultants who can tell you what channels make the most sense for your business—and whether paid placement might, in some cases, be the way to go.

The thought leader's voice is virtually ubiquitous, but this content often falls short of readers' expectations. To make the most out of this opportunity, invest your thought leadership budget into solid research, industry insight, packaging, and dissemination, so you put together the right message—in the right place.