According to a poll by Marketing Insider Group, 71% of marketers say they have benefitted from thought leadership. A thought leadership strategy can help to establish and identify a unique expert leader for your brand to create content that can separate it from other brands within the industry.
What is Thought Leadership and How Can a PR Agency Help
Thought leadership is a long trusted marketing tactic used by public relations professionals and marketers to transform an individual into an industry expert. This spokesperson serves as a key opinion leader and go-to resource for the company and is seen as credible expert in the space. This PR strategy involves creating powerful ideas, thoughts, and opinions to help build credibility for the brand.
A thought leadership strategy serves as an avenue for brands to stand out from the crowd and set themselves apart from competitors. The main purpose of thought leadership is to claim an expert title by earning it over time and influencing a specific target audience. Thought leadership can provide several benefits including:
- Raising brand awareness and exposure
- Drive meaningful press coverage for the brand
- Increase consumer demand and sales for the company
- Position your business as an expert in their industry
A PR agency can assist with crafting this valuable content, building relationships with key media in the industry space and more. They can also help repurpose content to be leveraged across social media platforms, speaking engagements, and additional valuable press coverage.
A PR Agency’s Five Tips on Creating a Compelling Thought Leadership PR Strategy
Create a Thought Leadership Content Strategy Plan
Establishing an organized content strategy can help drive successful results for your company. This strategic plan can be mapped out through a content plan full of your experts’ thoughts and ideas, staying plugged into trade publications’ editorial calendars, and through relevant industry trends and updates that are influenced by the news cycle. These content plans are always subject to change but can be used in years to come as the foundation.
Positioning Your Spokesperson as an Industry Expert
Being a reliable source or spokesperson for your company’s industry is one of the quickest ways to establish credibility and build a reputation. A company’s niche industry plays an important role in creating thought leadership content and expressing what your go-to expert and business exemplify. To begin your thought leadership strategy, you must identify someone from your team, whether it be the founder, president, nutritionist, or other notable expert related to your field, to be a credible source and main spokesperson for the organization. This person is responsible for sharing their unique opinions, ideas, and expert insights with the public.
Identify Goals
An important part of a thought leadership strategy to keep in mind is the end goal. Many of our clients at Konnect are focused on increasing social media chatter or have a few media outlets on their wishlist where they’d like to secure coverage. To stand out from the crowd, determine your core audience and who you want to reach with thought leadership content. From a media standpoint (the backbone of what we do!), we find it best to identify all the publications that the brand engages with most. This can include trade, business, consumer, and regional — whether it’s for a national newspaper or reputable business magazines.
Securing Interviews To Establish Credibility
Securing interviews for your client’s thought leader opens the door for invaluable exposure opportunities and meaningful relationships with the media. Interviews that convert to press can increase brand exposure for the company and create a long-lasting relationship between your spokesperson and the media contact. These expert interviews can include email/phone interviews, podcast interviews, and even speaking engagements through trade show events. Building beneficial relationships with the media can increase your expert’s chances of their insights and ideas being included in another feature and opening the door for new business opportunities. The more interviews secured for your client elevates their reputation to a bigger audience within their industry.
Driving Valuable Content Through Media Coverage
Creating valuable thought leadership content can drive meaningful press for your client. A strong thought leadership pitch increases your client’s chances of securing additional opportunities for future features. Thought leadership coverage includes trends, predictions and opinions from your expert leader that amplify their reputation. A successful thought leadership pitch should include a compelling, personal and unique story about your client that will make them stand out from the crowd and make the content more memorable.
Final Thoughts
Thought leadership has become a more valuable strategy used in public relations than pitching traditional coverage by positioning the client as an expert in its field. Over time, the benefits of utilizing thought leadership in public relations and marketing not only raises great exposure for the business and its leadership, but it can help to increase a company’s growth and consumer demand.
Looking to create a thought leadership strategy? Konnect with us to learn how we’ve helped other brands build a thought leadership strategy to garner amazing PR results.