Crystal Clear Communications Blog

When I do first-hand buyer persona research, I ask participants if thought leadership matters when making purchasing decisions. The answer has unanimously been “yes.”

I’d argue that thought leadership is more important than ever, given that buyers do almost all their research before contacting Sales. In fact, marketer and author Joe Lazauskas says, “6sense research shows that the first company a buyer gets in touch with wins the deal 84% of the time. If you’re the second choice, your odds of winning are 16% or worse. In other words, by the time a prospect wants to take a sales call, the buying journey is largely over. You need to win during the research phase.”

The 2024 Edelmen-LinkedIn Thought Leadership Impact Report shows just how important thought leadership is—for both prospects and current customers. The survey found that more than half of decision-makers and C-suite executives spend an hour or more reading thought leadership each week. And three out of four decision-makers “say that an organization’s thought-leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities and competencies than its marketing materials and product sheets.”

Three out of four also said that reading thought leadership “led them to research a product or service they were not previously considering.”

Clearly, thought leadership works. Yet many of my clients complain that their subject matter experts (SMEs) don’t have enough time to devote to thought leadership.

Thought leadership starts at the top

If thought leadership isn’t important to your executives, then it won’t be a priority for your SMEs. Sharing third-party research, such as the Edelman-LinkedIn study, can help your C-suite folks see how important thought leadership is to acquiring and retaining customers.

It also helps to measure the results of your thought leadership to help prove to your executives that the time and effort are worth it.

Make thought leadership matter to your SMEs

At one of my companies, one of the best things I did was persuade management to put thought leadership in goals and performance reviews for our SMEs. Once they knew their yearly review was tied to helping Marketing with thought leadership, they suddenly had more time for us.

Once they did, they were delighted to continue to help after seeing how becoming more well-known in our industry helped their careers…and their egos.

Ghostwriting can help you produce thought leadership

If you simply can’t get your SMEs to take enough time for thought leadership, you can ghostwrite for them. Try to get at least an interview with them, and ask them to record themselves when they give presentations.

Often, once you produce the first piece and they see their name in print, it will persuade them to give you more time in the future.

You can find more tips on ghostwriting for thought leaders in this blog.

One word of caution, while it can be tempting to use AI to create thought leadership content, AI generates content by using what’s already out there. Thought leadership needs to be new, original from a real person to get the results you desire.

Thought leadership matters when acquiring and retaining customers. Persuading your executives of its importance and working closely with your subject matter experts can help you succeed.

Have questions about marketing and communications? Get answers weekly or email me at ariana@crystalclearcomms.com.