SPECIAL REPORT

Thought Leadership Marketing:

To be found, providers must churn out high-

quality original thinking that is based on hard

data rather than opinion and is leavened with proof

points from real-world experience with customers—

what’s commonly known as

Thought leaderships success requires a deep

commitment not just from marketing but from the

entire company. This led us to explore the

concept of the idea organization and we developed

a model—the

How to Build Relationships and Revenue

Through Ideas

Six Pillars

of the

Idea

Organization.

thought leadership.

Pillar 1. Create an idea culture

Marketing can’t create thought leadership on its own.

If it does, the output will be promotion, not thought

leadership. Marketing must get the buy-in, support,

and commitment of executives and subject matter

experts to become part of the idea-generating and

dissemination process.

A few ideas from some companies we talked to are:

• Have the CEO declare thought leadership a

strategic priority

• Make idea creation a part of career advancement

• Educate executives and SMEs about the

importance of thought leadership

• Use an internal collaboration platform to develop

ideas

• Make it competitive

that values ideas as much as revenue

Pillar 2. Use business themes

Marketers have a crucial role to play in making sure

that thought leadership relates to what customers

need and what the company does. Business themes

are clear, succinct expressions of issues that are

relevant to customers and prospects and link back

to a company’s strategy.

ITSMA research has found that business themes

give thought leadership programs a

deeper level of connection to target

audiences’ needs and goals and give employees

a clear, simple way to understand the strategy

and goals of the company.

to provide a flexible blueprint for thought leadership

Pillar 3. Validate your ideas

With research, ideas become fact based, and

therefore much more credible. Research has

particularly long mileage online, where people are

hungry for facts and stats that cut through the

haze of uninformed opinion.

There are three broad ways that B2B companies

are making research part of their thought leadership

programs:

• In-house research

• External partnering

• Secondary research

with research

Pillar 4. Create an

We must become as good at developing ideas as

we are at disseminating them.

With a stable of willing and able

contributors, marketers can create a

thought leadership supply chain that

balances idea development

with dissemination.

ITSMA research shows that marketers are putting

more effort and budget into the development side of

the supply chain. When we surveyed marketers in

2007, 70% of the thought leadership budget went to

dissemination; when we surveyed them again in

2010, the proportion was roughly split.

idea development and dissemination engine

Pillar 5. Set up a thought

Thought leadership and social media both require

internal experts who may not come from

marketing. Both groups also must coordinate—

they cannot exist as silos within the organization.

ITSMA research shows that B2B companies are

creating marketing centers of expertise for thought

leadership (social media, too). In our survey, 56%

said they have a central group or center of expertise

for packaging thought leadership. Though specialty

strategy consulting firms like McKinsey and Bain

have had these groups for decades, more

mainstream B2B companies are now stirring the

same kind of thought leadership marketing

transformation.

leadership center of expertise

Pillar 6. Use metrics to show

Thought leadership creates an arm’s-length

relationship with buyers through content. The trick is

to be able to track that relationship all the way

through to a sale.

Influencing the buyer is everything

in thought leadership. But influence is a murky term

when it comes to metrics. We need to break it down

into more concrete terms. At ITSMA, we categorize

thought leadership influence in three ways:

• Reputation

• Relationships

• Revenue

how thought leadership influenced the buyer

It’s time for a strategic

We see many B2B companies launching thought

leadership marketing for the same reason they

launched social media: because everyone else was

doing it. As many companies have already

discovered, that’s a prelude to failure.

Thought leadership is more than a marketing

tactic, it’s a strategy that requires the

buy-in and support of SMEs and top

executives in the company.

Thought leadership forces marketing to get out of its

silo and begin working—and leading—across the

organization.

Marketers must convince their companies to turn

out relevant, customer-focused ideas with the same

passion and commitment that they turn out products

and services.

approach to thought leadership, led by marketing

Learn More For the full story of the six pillars of

the idea organization and to learn

how B2B Services Marketers

can influence the buyer and

make an impact on revenue,

buy the ITSMA Special Report

our report Purchase

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Thought Leadership Marketing:

How to Build Relationships and

Revenue Through Ideas.

www.itsma.com