Thought leadership is about sharing insights, perspectives and ideas that lead the industry forward, thus building up a reputation for credibility and authority on a subject. It is a particularly effective strategy in B2B communication, where it is often more important to join forces with the right partners than to ‘just’ buy and sell services or goods. Here we tell you more about what it is, how to get started and give you some examples of successful cases.
What is thought leadership?
Thought leadership is about establishing yourself as an authority in a specific field by sharing innovative ideas and insights. It is primarily about creating value for your target audience by addressing their needs and challenges.
Benefits of Thought Leadership:
- Increased Trust and Credibility
- Thought leadership builds trust by demonstrating that your company has deep knowledge and understanding of industry challenges.
- Longer Sales Cycles
- For B2B companies with long sales cycles, thought leadership can be particularly valuable. It provides the opportunity to engage potential customers early in their decision-making process.
- Increased Visibility
- By participating in industry events and publishing insightful content, companies can increase their visibility and attract more business opportunities.
Strategies for thought leadership:
- Elevate the brand and the people behind it
- Broadly speaking, there are two ways to go about thought leadership. One is to highlight the entire company as a leading force in the industry, a ‘go-to expert’ for reliable information and current situation analysis.
- In addition, you can highlight individual experts within the company. They can act as the face of the company by speaking out on their particular subjects and thus highlight the expertise behind the brand.
- Create valuable content
- Develop a content strategy that includes articles, whitepapers, webinars and more. Your content should be informative and based on research or solid experience in the subject.
- Engage through social media
- Use platforms like Linkedin and X to share your insights and participate in industry discussions. This helps build your company’s reputation as a thought leader.
- Collaborate with industry experts
- Participate in panel discussions and podcasts with other industry experts. This can strengthen your position as a thought leader and provide access to new networks.
Here’s how to get started
‘Well, that sounds great, you might be thinking. ‘But where do I start?’ If you see a potential customer or partner in front of you, imagine that they are looking for information about something new in their field of interest. What kind of information are they looking for? What kind of information would be interesting, provide value, and impress them? That’s a good starting point.
Here are two examples:
Scania has a large and loyal following. They have built up a lot of trust for their expertise in manufacturing trucks and buses. But, by comparison, their followers are so far showing a moderate amount of interest in their new product offering: electric vehicles. We started by figuring out what information they are looking for in relation to heavy electric vehicle transport and whether there are arguments to win them over to the Battery Electric Vehicle side, and from there the E-Mobility Hub was created. Read more about how we helped them develop a thought leadership hub to influence attitudes towards BEV and position Scania as innovators in the field.
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