And How To Do It Well (Deep Dive)

Bring revenue-generating thought leadership into your organization.

Transcript from Episode 21 of Good Revenue

Welcome back to Good Revenue.

There are two things that I think every business has to get right at any stage or size, but I think they become even more important if you are a larger or more established business.

And those two things are pricing and thought leadership.

Today, we'll get into thought leadership, both why it is such a compelling opportunity, if not the only opportunity for serious growth, and how you can do it effectively and efficiently in your organization.

So first off, the definition that I like of thought leadership is this.

Thought leadership is additive, newsworthy and educational.

It teaches your audience something that they didn't know.

It challenges the status quo and it helps your audience achieve a goal or get better at something that they really care about.

It's built on your expertise, but it isn't about you.

It unveils opportunities for your customers, but it's not transactional.

And that is why it builds trust and why it's such a powerful tool in your go-to-market strategy and in your product strategy when you do it well.

We're going to go through some of the data that I found that I think really makes a compelling case for why thought leadership works so well in the environment in which we are growing businesses today.

We're also going to talk about it in comparison with other types of content.

And then we'll go through our framework for building a strong thought leadership program and for distributing your ideas effectively.

So how does thought leadership contrast with other types of content?

I tend to see the world as having three types of content.

The first is transactional.

This is product or salesy content.

The second is educational.

And the third bucket is thought leadership.

In that transactional sales, like heavily product focused content, your expectation is often immediate ROI.

And so I think this content is pretty ineffective in terms of persuading or educating an audience.

And oftentimes it's not really intended to.

The other challenge with this kind of content is it can be very generic.

And if you are relying on content farms or if you're relying on AI, I think it's safe to say this is the kind of content where machines are talking to machines.

You might be able to produce it in great quantity, but your target audience is going to be using AI and other tools to sift through this.

I think this is also the kind of content that is very clearly already being weeded out by Google and likely by other search engines in the very near future if it hasn't happened to you already.

The second type is educational content.

This kind of content may or may not be commoditized.

For example, in financial services or healthcare, I think this is a very common and useful type of content.

But at the same time, it is usually not unique to your organization.

Quality and accuracy are really important in educational content, but it doesn't need necessarily to be novel.

It can still be really valuable.

One example of this is in a prior life, I led marketing at a financial services entity.

And the primary strategy for marketing and growth was really to build robust educational content that helped small businesses better understand their financial services options.

And there was a lot of value in this because while we weren't inventing new content types or anything like that, there was a ton of demand for honest, accurate and informative information about interest rates and loan terms and all sorts of different things because a lot of people in that target audience hadn't necessarily had a lot of exposure to financial services products.

So one way that we could both educate an audience, accelerate our pipeline and build trust with the target buyer was to provide strong educational content.

And we could really see the ROI and the value in our pipeline and in revenue to the business.

So this was a great strategy.

And if you're in a market like this, I think educational content makes a lot of sense.

The type of content that we're talking about today, though, and the type of strategy is actually about thought leadership, which again, if we go back up to the definition of it, I think a nice clean way of thinking about thought leadership is that it changes mindsets and it's also building trust.

It's also unique to you.

It really shows differentiated value because it's tied to your expertise.

That makes it hard to copy.

And it's also the opposite of commoditized, which is why I think for a lot of companies, especially if you're in a competitive, but not exactly commoditized market, I think thought leadership is the strategy to choose.

Now, the reason that I'm so emphatic about thought leadership being your only option to influence customers in competitive or what I would call interesting markets is because I continue to look at the data regarding the buyer journey and buyer preferences.

Because if this data is not on your radar already, it really should be, not just for thought leadership, but for everything you're doing to try to grow your business and to be more effective.

We also did a separate deep dive episode on this, so I won't rehash all of that data.

I'll link to it so if you want to dive more deeply into this, you can.

Here's some additional information.

Most organizations today, I think, are still set up in a waterfall demand revenue model.

So you often have a marketing team out there trying to spin up leads.

You might have business development or sales development representatives who are trying to book meetings and trying to screen really low quality leads, if you can even call them that.

And then you have a sales team or account executives who are trying to more deeply qualify and persuade buyers to move forward with your product or solution.

This is a really expensive business model because in the last five to 10 years, buyers have really changed the way that they buy.

And the model, when I look at the data, is very clearly that buyers want to self-serve wherever possible.

So it's not enough to get leads and signals and then have your SDRs cold call people to try to get meetings.

You can certainly do that if time and money are no object to you.

But I think that the way to reliably, efficiently, and effectively reach buyers is to employ thought leadership.

So here is a little bit of data that might be helpful.

One data point that I discuss often comes from Gartner because I think it's a source that is very established that regardless of your opinion about analyst firms, I think most people feel like Gartner has been around for a long time.

And in 2019, they share data indicating that 83% of the buyer journey is fully independent of vendors.

That means just 5% of the journey is with you and about 12% of the time is spent with your competitors.

In 2021, the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute released data indicating that only 5% of your target market is in market at any given time in a given quarter, which I think is just incredible.

So that means that 95% of your target market just isn't in market right now.

In 2021, Korn Ferry issued a study with this quote, buyers don't view sellers as a valuable resource.

Now that might be tough to hear if you are a more sales-centric CEO, CFO, or if that's just kind of organization you've been in.

But when you look at the data from customers, you can see why that's the takeaway.

The top three resources that B2B buyers actually listen to are one, their past experience with a vendor.

This tracks with other data that we've shared in the past from Bain.

Two, subject matter experts from industry or third parties.

Three, industry or professional online communities and social networks.

And Korn Ferry is not the only source to have this information.

I have seen this from everyone ranging from G2 to TrustRadius to McKinsey to Bain.

In 2022, TrustRadius noted that 100% of buyers wanted to self-serve all or part of the buying journey.

And their data aligns very closely with data I've seen from McKinsey around the same period, post-COVID.

In 2022, Bain also noted this, 80% to 90% of buyers have a list of vendors in mind before they do any research.

And 90% of buyers choose a vendor from that day one list.

Korn Ferry also noted that 79% of buyers wait until after they have fully defined needs to reach out to sales.

And that 75% of buyers said that they would only engage sales if the buyer was facing a new, a risky or a complex initiative and if the buyer perceived that the seller could actually educate them on their opinions, mitigate risk, or help them build consensus for change.

Which means that they are expecting a lot from a seller if and when buyers do choose to engage with a seller.

So here's my thinking.

If you want to communicate to an audience that doesn't already know you, and you probably do have to do that if your goal involves any kind of growth, you've got to find a way to build trust and add value to your customers, which doesn't have anything to do with having your sales team try to take them to dinner or any of the traditional methods that might feel more comfortable.

And my point in sharing all of this data is to just emphasize that you really have to think creatively if you want to communicate and connect with your audience.

I won't even get into the data around how busy everyone is and how crowded the markets are.

We've talked about that in other episodes.

And I suspect that if you are an executive listening to this, you're already well aware of how challenging it is to reach an audience because everyone is busy.

And if you yourself never respond to anyone's cold call or outbound email, I can guarantee you that the people you want to sell to aren't doing that either.

Now that we've gone through the buyer journey and how challenging it is, let's talk about thought leadership specifically.

LinkedIn and Edelman have done a series of studies over the last few years about thought leadership.

And their most recent data set is from 2022.

They studied 3,500 executives, and one of the findings that they noted was that 61% of decision makers say that thought leadership is more effective at demonstrating potential value versus salesy, product-focused content.

50% of C-suite executives say that high-quality thought leadership has more impact on their purchase decision making during economic downturns than when times are good.

And another interesting point is that of the thousand organizations that produce thought leadership, there's a lot of room for improvement.

Only 33% of thought leadership producers thought that their overall quality was very good or excellent.

And when you kick it up to the C-suite, that number decreased to 29%.

So it seems like there's quite a lot of room for improvement.

Another interesting data set was released this year by Kickstand and Pavilion.

This is 2023 data.

Buyers say high-value content has to include customization of their specific industry or needs, success metrics, and original research or data.

And I think this is a really helpful indicator because this tracks back to the definition that I like for thought leadership.

92% of respondents agreed that content is a critical factor in differentiating between competing vendors or service providers, and 86% said that engaging with content had accelerated their purchase decisions.

Digging deeper, there's some interesting information when it comes to executives.

And for almost every company I've ever worked with, and B2B in particular, people love to sell to executives.

They're never happy with a lower level person, even though I find as an executive that you often do assign meetings and other processes to more junior staff on your team.

And again, I suspect if you're listening to this, you would agree.

But nonetheless, this data is interesting because it notes that executives were 20% more likely to consider original research and data as a key element of high value content.

Executives were also 27% more likely to agree that original research and data increased their trust in a brand.

And one last point to encourage you to really consider the value of unique insights.

They're going to be weighted more heavily in search, which is something to keep in mind when we get to distribution.

Google in particular is rewarding unique information that demonstrates what they call information gain according to search engine land.

And we'll include that citation along with the others in the show notes.

This was a lot of data.

And if you have been here before, you know that I love data.

So I'm sure we'll do this again soon.

Here are a few implications.

Just keep in mind as you process all of that.

Unique data and insights are rewarded by buyers.

Your best opportunity to influence and educate buyers is through high value content that changes mindsets.

Transactional content does not build trust with buyers.

And you have to build trust with buyers if you want to be in the frame before decisions are made.

Some of the high level implications are also that it's not enough to just call it thought leadership while you're secretly trying to sell your widget, because buyers are smart.

And if you look into these reports, you will see that very clearly in the data, particularly when it comes into LinkedIn's study.

Thought leadership isn't a vanity project.

It has to be bigger than any one person, although I do think that it needs to be expressed by someone who is close to your firm.

Your ideas and insights also need to be backed by data.

You can't outsource the thinking to AI or to a PR team.

And it's not enough to just do this.

You've got to do it well.

So at its best, thought leadership is going to unveil really interesting opportunities for your customers.

It's bringing your unique expertise to bear in service of your audience, which is pretty cool.

And that makes it necessarily differentiated.

So just to recap, it works because it builds trust.

Now, with all the data, we're going to move into the framework section of this episode.

Here are five questions that I think you need to keep in mind that will help you evaluate an idea or an insight to see if it really meets the bar of thought leadership.

First, what are you trying to change in the world?

That is the kernel of thought leadership.

If you're not changing something or doing something new for a good reason, it's not thought leadership.

It's just sales.

And it's going to be very transparent to your audience.

It's also going to be really clear to the media outlets who you will eventually want to pitch because they care about their audiences, too.

So you've got to know why this is important, whatever change it is that you want to drive.

And your insight necessarily has to be bigger than your product.

We're talking mentally at the level of category creation.

And I say that because it may not be that you are trying to create a new category.

Although I think there's a lot of great thinking and a really interesting debate out there about whether that is or is not the best place to put resources.

I happen to find it very exciting.

At its best, thought leadership unveils those opportunities and it's going to break the status quo or accepted thinking.

That's where some of the power resides.

The second thing to know is who is this for, which sounds simple, but you've really got to know who your audience is and you need to be aware of who these insights are for.

I think it's particularly important to set aside your biggest customer, early adopters, investors, et cetera.

You really need to set aside ego and to think about the non-transactional ideas that could benefit people who don't work for you or invest in your company in terms of the audience.

Third, what is the non-obvious insight?

This is a big question, too, because you're surely an expert in something or if it's not you, it's someone else in your company.

And what it means is that that person has standing to share expertise.

You very likely have something you could teach your customers, which isn't just about your product.

You spend more time and energy thinking about your product and the problem you're trying to solve than your customers any given day.

You also surely spend more time on this than your shareholders or any other stakeholder.

So you do have this opportunity.

You just need to leverage that expertise and pair it with your unique insights backed by data.

Fourth question, how is this unique?

You can't look at the competition for thought leadership.

I hope I don't have to say this, but I'm going to anyway, because the insights need to be non-obvious.

If this is something everyone knows, then it's not going to change mindsets and it's surely not unique.

So while industry specialization is going to help you in pitches or with specific types of customers, what you really want when you're evaluating thought leadership is outside the box thinking.

You want creative new ideas for your customers.

You don't want to share the same industry report that everyone else is doing, because if it's not new, it's not news.

Fifth, this one's my favorite.

Does the customer get more value from this than me?

You need to approach thought leadership with a teaching mindset, not a sales mindset.

And there is a paradox at the heart of this project.

You have to benefit customers, even if they don't buy from you.

This is a really hard concept for fixed mindset CEOs or executives in general, because it's a calculated risk.

There is no guarantee of success, but I can guarantee you that if you only focus on transactional salesy content and the go-to-market motion that's not working that well for you lately, I guarantee you you are blocking your own growth.

When you actually test the insights value, these are the questions you should be asking yourself.

Again, the first one is provocative.

Do people who don't work for you or haven't invested in your company find value in your insight?

I think it's a really good starting point, and you got to be honest with yourself about this.

Second, how does the insight change minds?

How does it move people?

What might the before and after look like?

Third, how memorable is this insight?

Can it be expressed in a punchy tagline?

Is it going to be memorable?

That kind of thinking will help you with brand building, which is part of what you're trying to do in this initiative.

Fourth, how will the insight expand over time?

Are there future dimensions to it?

This is important too, because if you think about this, now that we are quite a ways into this talk, it really can't be one and done when you're getting into thought leadership.

There might be a kernel of an idea, a spark that lights all of this.

But once you've started to change someone's mindset, maybe starting even with your own mindset, it's hard not to see all kinds of ideas and opportunities and possibilities.

So really think about how that insight could expand over time.

And fifth, can you turn this insight into a content franchise?

Now this might sound a little tactical, but I think it's helpful in this part of the process because it forces you to think about how you might build against this insight going forward.

And this is something that you're going to want to draw on because maybe it's a show or maybe it is a podcast.

There are all sorts of different mediums that you can use to tell this story over time.

And it's going to pay off for you when it comes to more tactical things like SEO and the future of AI and other elements of brand building down the road.

Next, let's talk about execution.

You've done all this great work up front to really go deep.

And you have a great idea for a thought leadership strategy that has legs and will travel.

So let's turn to the executional piece of this program.

There are four steps to keep in mind, and they are resourcing, digging deep for the data, getting the word out, and using the right KPIs.

So starting with resourcing.

You don't have to be a huge corporation to do thought leadership well, but you do need to invest some resources.

And obviously, this is going to require some time and intention to really develop and then to promote thought leadership.

Instead of spending $50,000 on an ebook and a lead gen campaign on LinkedIn, I think you should be spending that $50,000 on market research or an analyst, maybe partnering with someone.

And you also want to add in at least a good writer, a strong designer, maybe some video editing talent, all of whom can help you package up this insight.

I have found that it is better to have a team focused on this rather than drawing from regular resources.

But if you have the capacity on existing teams, that's great.

Third, this program is going to dramatically increase the ROI of your marketing campaigns in general.

So in my view, those campaigns should be focused more on content now versus on demo requests and sales meeting demands.

Because remember, your customers are ignoring all those messages anyway.

So I would really look hard at my ad budget if I'm committing to a thought leadership program.

And you can certainly test into this.

If it makes you nervous to just chuck everything, totally fine.

I think it's reasonable for some organizations.

Now, other organizations might say, hey, it hasn't been going well for a really long time.

And so instead of throwing good money after bad, we're willing to be brave and we're convinced with this data that you're sharing, let's go big.

And I love that too.

If the insights you're sharing are strong, I can promise you this will succeed if you follow these steps.

I know that's a big claim.

I'm going to stand by it.

The second step in this executional piece is digging deep for the data.

So this is about really finding the information behind the insight, which you probably have a good sense of if the insight is strong.

But what you need to figure out is what are the sources of data that are going to help make this case to help educate the target audience.

Internal analysis, I think, can be very rich.

If you are a large organization or even a medium-sized organization, you have tons and tons of data that probably no one is really looking at for any of this kind of work.

So I would very much prefer to assign an analyst or a small team to really dig into this data with me and try to identify trends that journalists or key opinion leaders would find interesting.

That's a great starting point.

And I think once you're on the right track, it's almost as if the insights like find themselves.

That's been my experience.

Another approach is to collect market insights.

I really like this.

I've had great success with this strategy as well.

This is about being curious.

It's about asking questions that other people don't ask.

And I also think it's important because this is basically doing qualitative and quantitative market research.

Although in this instance, the qual is likely heavier on what you have already determined internally or what you know to be news to your audience.

And so I think the quantitative piece matters more.

The reason that you still need data here, though, is you don't want it to just be like, hey, it's me Neeta, I have this great idea.

Isn't this cool?

Because while I'd like to believe that my word alone is enough for most, it's just not going to be.

People want to see data, and if they're interested in it, they're going to want to go fact check whatever it is you're telling them.

So you're better off.

And as we showed in some of the insights earlier in this talk, the insights are really part of what are going to move those buyers and executives, other people that you want to communicate with in future.

So take the time to explore questions that might be related to the barriers your audience is facing in solving its own problem.

So you're tying this market research back to your insight into a solution that can really help your customers.

A third option, which I've also had great success with, is using public sources of data.

Governments, particularly in the United States, if you are based here or if you're selling into this market, have a ton of data.

And if you're in financial services, which I have spent a fair amount of time in over the years, for example, the Federal Reserve or the Small Business Administration have a lot of data that is publicly available.

You do, of course, have to source it and credit them, but it's available to anyone.

So you can either use insights that they've already packaged up or oftentimes there's raw data, and you could have your own team analyze it and see how it backs up the insight that you are wanting to highlight.

A fourth option, you can partner with an aligned stakeholder.

Maybe it's someone with a unique data set or a novel set of customers, and those customers might be a source of the market insights.

I've seen some really interesting partnerships, including in this talk, we had two examples earlier of organizations that have partnered with an aligned stakeholder.

The third step in the executional piece is getting the word out.

And this is a lengthy one because if you're going to do all of this work and you've not only taken the time to find a really meaningful insight, but you have amassed data to back up your case, you got to get the word out.

Otherwise, does it even matter?

First thing to figure out is who will be the spokesperson, who will get the word out?

I think that this individual or this small team needs to be very closely tied to the insight.

They need to be long term in alignment with your company.

They need to be credible.

And they need to care about the success of this work.

So hopefully this is an insight that excites that person too because I think it would be really difficult to be the advocate, the face of this and not really care about what you're trying to teach the customers.

I just don't have many examples of where that has worked well.

You could also have a key opinion leader strategy.

I have seen that in both financial services and in health care.

It's pretty common.

And another option might be that you could partner with someone or another organization again.

They can help share costs and also potentially spokespeople.

And so that is another way that you can make this bigger than you, which is very much to your benefit if you find the right partner because those external sources or resources are going to add credibility to what you are teaching and you're going to benefit as are your customers.

So I see this as a win-win-win.

You also have got to figure out, and this is step two, is what is your distribution plan?

You need a launch plan in the classic sense.

It needs to include layered campaigns across earned, paid, and owned media over a significant period of time.

It is not enough to just launch a report or a YouTube channel or whatever you've chosen to do.

You also have to plan to distribute content over time and in social media feeds, because that is where your audience actually lives.

This is not the kind of content that can just sit on your website or in press clips.

That is a huge waste of all of this effort.

Of course, you can also house it there, but do not just rely on it, is my point.

Closely related to that, do not gate this content.

Don't get any content while you're at it.

Your goal isn't to get leads.

It's to educate and influence your audience in their own comfort zones.

I know it's really tempting to some folks to want to measure every single download of your report or whatever the output is, but I promise you it is self-defeating and is going to wreck the performance of this initiative.

You want this content to go as widely as possible without customers worrying that your sales team is going to hound them for bothering to read a report.

You're just making it harder for them if you do that.

And if you're under pressure, you need to talk to your CFO about reworking your plan to focus on real business metrics, not on driving pointless leads that no one actually needs to make their number.

Don't make it harder for people to learn from you.

It really defeats the purpose of thought leadership.

Your media strategy is an important jumping off point oftentimes.

It may not be true for every situation, but this is actually a great use of a media team or a PR agency.

And if you have done a good job with your program, I guarantee you your press shop is going to be super happy to help you think through this distribution plan.

Here's what they're going to tell you and what I strongly believe.

You've got to be thoughtful about pitching your company.

I think this is true in general, and I think a lot of CEOs sometimes miss the mark on this.

You have to think about this in the perspective of the news outlet, especially these days when the media business has so much trouble and they are struggling for viewers.

Think about who is their audience.

Why would that audience read, watch, listen or scroll on whatever information it is you want them to share on your behalf?

Because at the end of the day, your story or the series needs to get past an editor.

And you're also up against the challenge of reporters who generally want to spend their time finding the news.

They are not sitting around waiting to get spoon fed about your point of view.

That is generally going to be something that they're pretty strongly opposed to, in fact.

So it's got to be compelling.

And to the extent there is a timely hook, something really relevant, like that is the way to at least get their interest.

Or maybe it's the data, maybe that you've done such a great job amassing insights to back up your unique idea, your unique point of view, that that is what they're really curious about.

And you need to feed that curiosity.

When you're working with a PR team on this too, just like anytime you're working with a PR team, make sure that they have strong media relationships.

And one of the strengths of a great communications person is that they can help you fine tune your story.

That is going to help you meet all of your interim metrics, like getting this thing going, but it's also going to help you over time.

On the flip side, you as the CEO or whoever is championing this needs to keep in mind that your PR team is not there to pitch everyone in the world for you.

They have to protect their own relationships and they need to maintain credibility with editors if they are doing a good job, and that includes doing a good job for you.

So be judicious and respect their expertise, because if you've done the work, they're very much going to want to help you with this.

The last piece of distribution is the downstream strategy.

The media strategy is fun and flashy, but the downstream strategy is just as important, if not more so, than media, because it's going to have a much longer lifespan.

The advantage of media, especially in the olden times, is that you could go really broad.

That often doesn't exist anymore, in fact.

But on the flip side, you do have some opportunities for targeting, even in traditional media outlets, that didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago, so that's kind of a cool benefit.

However, downstream strategy, the content that you're building off of your thought leadership program needs to work in the feed.

That's crucial.

Social media platforms are going to penalize any content that pushes people to your website or even your YouTube channel unless it's tied into Google.

And so you've got to think about a distribution strategy that works and adds value in the feed if you want to reach your core audience.

So just getting a little more specific about that.

If you have a really big initiative and a ton of data, there's a big report, something that you can do that's really easy is pull off the top three, 10, 12 insights, calendar them, put them out, have different people on your team share them.

If it's across an executive team or if it's a smaller company, obviously more people can participate or test it.

Maybe it's more effective if all of this is actually just coming from the CEO or from another expert on your team, or maybe it has more legs if it's wider across your company.

It's worth playing with this because depending on your sector, what the insight is, how many people it might affect, there might be some opportunities here.

And this is something that your marketing team can really help you with because again, if you've got strong content, everything else becomes a lot more fun for everyone, and you're going to get more value out of it for the business.

The last piece of the executional puzzle is using the right KPIs.

Now, I bet you thought that I was done for data, but you would be wrong because I am not.

The content that changes mindsets and influences buyers can't be easily measured by attribution software.

And like I said before, it is not going to lead to MQLs.

This is going to cause a lot of heartburn to some folks, but I promise there is a payoff.

You just have to let go of things the way they were, because once you see the data, I think it's easier to accept that we have entered a new world, and therefore we should try to make the most of it.

I think there's some great companies out there like Spark Toro and Refine Labs who are doing the work out there to help CEOs and companies understand how attribution has really changed over time.

But the short summary is there is just no perfect way to track what people are doing on the web.

And honestly, as a user of the web, I think that's probably a good thing, and if you were thinking about yourself and maybe your family, you probably feel the same way.

But it does make our lives a little more complicated when it comes to business.

That's fine.

We're smart people.

We can figure this out.

I want to point out some data that Spark Toro cited, which I thought was super interesting, and I'm going to quote from it too, because I love Rand Feshkin, and I think he's such a fun writer.

So three trends that spell doom for the age of tracking, as we used to know.

That's a quote from him.

This is applicable to three things.

The first is the rise of zero-click content across search, social, and content networks.

And you know what this is.

This is when you go to search something on Google, and you get the answer right on the search page, and so you never click and go to find the flight or whatever the thing is that you're looking for.

That has absolutely proliferated.

And so while a site might have delivered you information, it's impossible for that site to know that they helped you or that you received information from them because you never clicked and went to their website.

The second piece is that the organic and ad tracking changes from Apple, Facebook, Google, TikTok, and others have been really significant.

This is the loss of cookies and a whole host of associated changes.

The third is, and I'm quoting again, the intentional obfuscation efforts by the web's big players to turn organic traffic, e.g.

marketing that doesn't give the tech giants any ad revenue, into dark traffic, which is devoid of referral data and impossible to attribute in any analytics tool.

That is a mouthful, but here's the gist of it.

Because organic traffic, which is something that marketers are not paying, to tech companies, that traffic is less valuable to tech firms.

And therefore, it's impossible to get the referral data and the attribution information to prove, oftentimes, where someone came from.

And again, the easiest way to understand this, if you are not a marketer, is to see your own buying habits, whether it is personal or business.

Somehow, one day you wake up and you realize you had a problem, and if you are following jobs to be done, that is the struggling moment.

And at that point, you actually start paying more attention to possible solutions to your problem.

And you might suddenly think of a vendor or a company that sells the t-shirt or the tech tool or the manufacturing equipment, whatever the thing is, that might solve your problem.

That process cannot be measured by any sort of technology.

At best, we could talk to you in some kind of customer insights program to get a sense of how you heard about us, what was your thinking, what was your thought process, what did you consider, how is it that you walked in the door or more likely visited our website to buy our product or service.

That process happens all the time, and it happens increasingly in the modern world.

So all of this to be said, the KPIs that you actually do want to use are closer to earned media KPIs.

Some people, again, may have some discomfort with this, but I think that you really are going to benefit if you can let go to needing to prove every step of the journey, because that is just not available to us anymore.

Instead, we want to look at things like share of voice, we want to look at a brand tracker and its metrics, how someone is progressing through unaided awareness, awareness, familiarity, consideration.

Those are typically the stages in a brand tracker.

We should also be using customer reported attribution on our websites.

And I also think, and I talk about this all the time, that there just isn't a substitute for having a committed, ongoing insights program where you talk to customers.

And the reason it comes full circle, and I'm spending time on this, is if you have nailed your thought leadership strategy, I'm going to make another guarantee.

I guarantee you that your customers will tell you about it, and it's not going to show up as an MQL.

Instead, it's going to show up as customers coming in when they are in market, ready to buy, because you will be in their consideration set.

Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive episode.

I hope you can tell that I really like this topic, and I hope that it was helpful to you too.

And I just want you to remember that thought leadership content changes mindsets.

That's what makes it your future competitive advantage.

It's your best and only viable and cost-effective strategy, particularly in noisy markets or in markets where you can't get access to the buyers who want to self-serve 100% of the journey.

It builds trust and credibility.

That is also known as brand.

And it can uniquely get you on that day one list that Bain and company talked about so that people pay attention to your offers, your services, and your products when they are ready.

Good content builds trust.

Good content builds brand.

And good content builds great revenue.

Thank you.