Thought leadership centers on earning a position of trust and credibility and is most often obtained through the delivery of unique, relevant, captivating content – information, insight and ideas.

As you build a thought leadership position over time, your organization will be increasingly seen as an industry authority, resource and trusted advisor, enhancing your brand’s visibility and reputation, helping you generate revenue and inspiring customer loyalty.

In order to reach those objectives, a strategy is required which focuses on the creation of content that is relevant and compelling to your target audience, and engages those audiences where they congregate. In addition, this strategy should clearly define the criteria for program success, and be able to measure to what degree these objectives have been reached.

Whether your thought leadership program objective aims for a longer-term development of your brand and reputation, or has a shorter term goal of building revenue and generating qualified, inbound leads, our thought leadership services focus on results-oriented programs that deliver measurable performance for companies. Our programs enable companies to leverage thought leadership for business development, marketing, sales, and strategic branding needs.

In today’s business environment, conditions now exist which make the development of thought leadership programs ever more critical – prospects and customers are increasingly empowered by the wealth of information available online which they employ early in the buying cycle, long before they even consider reaching out and connecting with a sales organization.

We refer to this phenomenon as the Buyer Cycle Revolution, and it is transforming the way in which products and services are bought, both in the B2B and B2C environments. Most of today’s business communications and marketing strategies are simply not equipped to deal with this challenge.

Sales reps tend to spend most of their time with prospect during the final, selection stage of the buying process, whereas buyers themselves spend more than 90% of their time during the earlier, information-gathering stages. It is this misalignment of resources which thought leadership programs can successfully address – they present an opportunity for the vendor to be seen as a thought leader in its field on the sites and platforms frequented most often by these prospective buyers of its products or services.

Thought leadership content is often equated with white papers – but it is and should be so much more than that. Strategic thought leadership programs incorporate a lot of content types, depending on the maturity of your specific market and your thought leadership program, as the chart to the right indicates.

Content also isn’t just created and delivered by your organization. It’s increasingly your clients, and even your prospects and other stakeholders, who create content that’s relevant and can potentially impact your market position, help in product development or improvement, or spur product or service ideas. It’s through active and ongoing engagement with stakeholder communities that this can be fully capitalized on.

In terms of company-generated content, The Thought Net can help in the development and implementation of the following categories of content:

Research, Publications and Games
• Thought leadership content portals and microsites
• White papers with executive summaries
• Case studies and executive interviews, webcasts/podcasts
• Market research reports
• Global executive surveys
• Interactive business games: simulation games

For more information on ways to increase your company's brand awareness and become a market leader through thought leadership marketing and events, please contact us at info@thethoughtnet.com or call our number below. Thank you.