The C-Suite Approach through Thought Leadership

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For the past few years, the dire warnings of “content shock” have cast doubt on the continued ability of thought-led content — or any kind of content marketing — to deliver results. . But the new research provides new encouragement for thought leadership marketers, especially those targeting high-level decision-makers.

I sat down with Gareth Lofthouse, one of the co-founders of thought leadership agency Longitude, to preview the findings in the study. their "Learn from Leaders."

First of all, do you differentiate between thought leadership content and other content marketing?

Gareth Lofthouse:
There is currently a ton of content that is best opinion interesting, and not much more than that. Worst of all, it's self-service and quite vending. Good thought leadership does more than that. It gives original insight backed by evidence, and that's why you consider research an important part of thought leadership matching.

Good thought leadership content

The C-Suite has always been difficult to reach for marketers, let alone meaningfully engage. Has your new research identified any promising new avenues for getting content to corner offices?

Gareth Lofthouse:
What was really, really motivating for me with this research (and we surveyed 1000 senior executives from a variety of industries, about how they interact with this type of content) is that they value thought leadership… as long as it's good.

And “good” executive-level thought leadership means:

It provides new insights

It's related to my problem

It is backed by reliable research

That appears very strong . They like opinions, but opinions alone are not enough. It must yield something else, some evidence behind the claims being made.

But if you take those three things and then you bring them to life in a way that's easy to consume and fun to engage with, there's a craving for it. There are enough happenings in the world, there are enough challenges that these executives aren't sure about, so practical insight tells them things they don't know, helping them solve business problems. business, valuable enough for them to participate.

Other things we found included how long they spent consuming thought leadership.

On average, in this study, senior executives are spending four hours using different forms of thought leadership content each week.

Senior executives are spending four hours a week consuming different forms of thought leadership content. Click to Tweet

If you compare that to some of the metrics digital marketers talk about, measuring success in seconds and minutes, that suggests something of real power.

What does research say about the impact of effective thought leadership?

Gareth Lofthouse:
It shows that top management uses it to inform decision making. For example, when they think a brand is particularly good at thought leadership, they're more likely to favor that brand when considering them for business bids.

You've seen how seniors use and consume content – but what do you observe about their role in building, planning, and leveraging thought leadership? Do they themselves need to become thought leaders?

Gareth Lofthouse:
The best organizations that have the right mix of marketing and leadership functions are driving these programs and campaigns on a daily basis.

But active programs are those that have a very high profile business stakeholder or a group of business stakeholders who want to own the message. They've been on the show since day one and it's their mission to be the face of the campaign.

And that happens internally. So if there's a really high-profile business sponsor, ideally right up to the C-Suite, that person should say, "This is our big bet for the year, this is what we're going to do. I need to build my reputation profile, and I'll be out there talking about it. ”

For example, we worked with a brand called AECOM, a leader in the architecture and engineering industry. They use this type of work at places like Davos, at the World Economic Forum, where their seniors take to the podium, cover research, and help establish the company's credentials as an employee. support and lead their industry on specific issues .

That's when you get a real double, I think, in terms of content. It jumps from text-based or even video-based reports and output into organizational dialogue, and it's woven into the C-Suite conversation.

What types of content are being clicked on with C-Suite?

Gareth Lofthouse :
One of the other things we learned from the research we did recently is that you have to make a choice about your business audience.

Nowadays, a lot of people prefer to view information in the form of videos or podcasts. However, there are still a lot of our executives who are traditionalists, in terms of their willingness to focus on the text. Therefore, I would not rule out the value of properties that have a longer form factor, which are certainly expressed in terms of real quality and reliability. You need a combination of serious research, more digestible content, easy to eat, and everything in between. This pendulum swings back and forth.

What do you see on the horizon, in terms of executive thought leadership?

Gareth Lofthouse:
We anticipate some changes. It's a very flexible space in cutting-edge approaches to moving forward.

First, I think is a more agile model for thought leadership. There's certainly a sense that the model as implemented by companies needs to translate to something where you take on a project that starts with a very heavy survey. You deploy the content, then the entire campaign comes along. Before you know it, you've spent nine months on this project before there's even anything ready to share on the market. can be a multifaceted process of research, so there are stories to tell and insights to share, such as a second month. And we started to come up with a story and market direction around that idea. Maybe it's qualitative or more opinion based, but you're also tracking the release of larger assets.

With that search for agility, the research toolkit is being challenged and expanded, so we ourselves are increasingly using things like listening tools and social media types. If you will, it took our cottage industry a while to learn how to use those to produce strong enough research findings convincing enough for the C-Suite. But I think we're getting close to that right now. It's much faster and much more cost-effective than some of these highly engineered approaches.

I don't think we'll see the survey go away, but I think it's being complemented by some much more nimble options. So that's one of those big, nimble trends.

Another trend is that we will see the emergence of data plus creativity, if you will, if you will. Right now, the content campaigns you see out there, the big ones, are largely based on the traditional thought leadership formula — lots of research and lots of data — but packaging and marketing. School can be a bit dry and academic.

On the other end of the spectrum, you see media-driven campaigns, at least the ones that are extremely beautiful and very creative in terms of visuals. But you dig a little deeper and that's the smooth message. I think nirvana is somewhere in between. We certainly advise our clients to move closer to a recipe that combines left-brain food and right-brain food, hitting both aspects of data-driven and creative vision, bringing new perspectives to the world. that world together.

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About the author:
Chuck Kent is the Director of Dialogue at Lead the conversation , a consultancy that makes it easier for busy executives to create more authentic thought leadership content, including videos, articles, and podcasts. He is also sometimes a musician for men in plaid.