Thought leadership marketing for companies that sell a process

At the start of this series of articles [https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/seven-thought-leadership-strategies-b2b-marketers-need-adam-benson/], I wrote about using the right thought leadership strategy to help business-to-business (B2B) organisations build credibility, carve out a niche in their marketplace, and attract the kinds of customers you want to serve.

The key to success is to choose the thought leadership strategy that’s right for your organisation.  

I mentioned the seven thought leadership strategies in brief as part of a model I’ve created. The reason a framework is so important is that: 

Until you define which applies to your company, there’s a good chance your thought leadership content-generation program will be misdirected, struggle for a flow of ideas and content, or not resonate with your sales leaders and subject matter experts, which means limited internal support. 

The seven thought leadership strategies are: 

1. People – we are the leading experts.  
2. Process – our process delivers a superior outcome.  
3. Product – our product is the best.  
4. CEO – our leader defines or leads the industry with their vision and passion.  
5. Societal – we are the most powerful and important voice on this issue or cause.  
6. Political – we shape the kind of nation, state, or community we live in.  
7. Cultural – our culture is what defines us and why we matter.  

Don’t think of these as values or strengths of an organisation. Clearly, every organisation needs people, processes, and products or they don’t exist.   

In the context of this framework, only one of these strategies can be applied to your organisation (as a seller). Remember, a strategy is about deciding what goal to pursue in the context of the resources (time, money, energy) that are available. It is by, definition, a singular pursuit.  

So, knowing which strategy to deploy is predicated on understanding the primary reason your customers do business with you. Or, to put it another way, understanding the nature of the value that is exchanged between seller (you) and your ideal customer.  

Process-led thought leadership 

Your organisation should leverage a process-led thought leadership strategy if the primary reason customers buy from you is because of a process you deliver.   

How do we define a process? It’s a series of steps which, when followed, deliver a measurable outcome. (I honestly thought the internet would give me an amazing quote from Drucker or some such here but apparently the idea of process has been around since humans worked out rubbing two sticks together created fire.) 

When I discuss process-led thought leadership in workshops or presentations, this one always trips people up. On the surface it seems people, product and process are inextricably linked; which is true. You can’t have a process if you don’t have people to run it (or invent it at least) or a product (even if that’s a service) to purchase. 

The way to work out if you need to build a process-led thought leadership program is to think about it this way: 

Your process is what your customers buy. Your process offers a unique value proposition which provides your customer with a superior outcome compared to other ways they could secure that same outcome.  

If you’re still not sure how to distinguish from people, product, or process in terms of why people buy from you, then answer these two simple questions. 

• Is it important to your customers to interface directly with a known individual for you deliver your value proposition? If the answer is ‘No’ then you don’t need a people-led thought leadership program. 
• Do you build unique products and services which people take ownership of once they pay for that product? (This applies to subscription services too: you own the right to use the service (limited ownership) for as long as you pay for it). If you don’t have a product, then you don’t need a product-led thought leadership program. 

A process-led business offers a unique series of steps (process) which deliver a superior outcome for a targeted audience. Often, the product or service delivered by the process is not that innovative.  

I’ll give you two examples. 

Core idea: Sell a secondhand household item. 

Old process: Take a classified advertisement in a local newspaper (yes, this was how we did it in the olden days). 

New process: Craigslist, eBay, Facebook marketplace (and any other online marketplace that lets you sell your stuff).  

The product is not new (your old sofa) and the concept is not new (sell your secondhand furniture). The process is where the innovation lies.

Online marketplaces completely changed how we buy and sell everything. Their invention heralded the end of newspaper classifieds (once referred to by an Australian media mogul as ‘rivers of gold’).   

So now, when we consider how best to achieve the outcome we’re looking for (selling our sofa), we will consider who we believe has the best process for achieving an optimal outcome (the best price, the least amount of risk, the easiest site to upload information to, the least complex to coordinate payment, the best at coordinating delivery, the largest potential pool of buyers and the list goes on).   

Where does the IP lie in online marketplaces and auction sites? It’s in the experience delivered to the buyer and seller.  

Here’s the second example. 

Core idea: Get yourself across town for an appointment. 

Old process: Stand on kerb and hail a taxi. You get what you get. 

New process: Uber/Lyft/Ola and the many others that exist around the world. 

I don’t need to explain how ridesharing works, obviously. It’s not that the product (pay someone to take you somewhere) is new. It’s the ability to create a real-time, high-trust marketplace where those with personal vehicles that are otherwise underutilised can turn those vehicles into revenue earning capital. And, buyers can source, de-risk, and prioritise the level of service and price they are willing to pay to access that service.   

Technology (mobile phones and software) has created a process which delivers a unique and superior measurable outcome compared to what existed before.   

So, if you’ve identified that your organisation needs to build a process-led thought leadership marketing program, what are the important elements to focus on? 

The most important thing, particularly in a B2B setting, is to educate the market about your process and to showcase the benefits it offers to your ideal prospects (the why). It is also important to explain new benefits that improvements to your process deliver as well. 

Creating alignment between the process you offer and the outcome your ideal customers are looking for is paramount.   

Each step in your process has to be explained in terms of how it de-risks concerns that customers have, how it aligns to the objectives that customers seek to achieve in their organisation, and how it will deliver a superior outcome to alternatives a customer may choose.   

All of this needs to be wrapped in demonstrable domain expertise.  

Some examples of process-led thought leadership artefacts will include: 

• customer referrals praising their experience with your process 
• explanations of why your process offers a superior way for achieving a customer outcome 
• insight-led content (tip sheets, white papers, guides) which demonstrate alignment to the industries and problems that your customers face 
• evidence of success and maturity in how the process performs 
• explaining how your process works (help your customers imagine what their experience will be like). 

One last point. 

If your process is new to world, then you’re in a race against time to secure market share. It’s expensive and complex to take on the job of explaining an entirely new category to an unaware market. The cost of educating the market, building process advocates (not just brand advocates), and then securing market share before the first competitors arrive is not for the fainthearted.   

On top of that, the infrastructure required to scale rapidly must be robust while access to cash to fund growth is a constant focus. It’s why many new-to-world, process-led companies are VC-funded. 

You can’t grow a process-led business organically. You need to acquire customers at a geometric rate (and often, the process you have invented, doesn’t actually work unless you get past a certain number of customers to create an effective experience). 

Pushing behind every process-led company is a list of competitors who can secure capital at a lower cost (risk is better understood thanks to the first mover), benefit from your market-creation efforts, and pick apart your process and improve it. They have no baked-in restrictions on architecture, brand proposition or other elements. 

So, move quickly, spend heavily to create your market and build your customer base and be prepared to innovate your process rapidly, partly to keep competitors at bay before they get a toe-hold, and to ensure you maintain relevancy to fast-changing markets. 

Process-led companies should be a hive of marketing and communication activity. 

This article is completely generated by the author. No artificial intelligence tools were used to create or edit this copy.