How to take your thought leadership campaign to market – strategic business imperative

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I have never come across a thought leader who didn’t share his or her thoughts the two just don’t go hand in hand.

However, how you take your thought leadership position to market is critical to the success of your campaign and the degree to which you are viewed as a thought leader.

Once you have a thought leadership position worked out, there are six critical actions needed to help you or your brand achieve thought leadership status:

1. Make it a strategic business imperative
2. Know your audience
3. Share openly
4. Cultivate the media
5. Write and speak about your campaign
6.  Pump up your content online

In this post I am going to speak about the first and will cover the others in subsequent posts.

This is not a box-ticking exercise - you don’t have to complete all of these to drive your thought leadership position.  You will, however, need the first two and preferably you will need to carry out one or two of the others well to help get your point of view out there.

Action 1:  Make it a strategic business or brand imperative

By making your thought leadership campaign a strategic business imperative it will more easily slot into the short-, medium- or long-term business objectives of the company. Given this, and having identified a thought leadership champion, makes it much easier to position this as a strategic business imperative because you have already won senior management support. It is even better if the thought leadership campaign/idea is owned by the CEO or managing director.

Ownership at the top ensures commitment at a senior level, board buy-in and an easier ‘sell’ to the various departments, staff, third party endorsers and suppliers who may be involved in the campaign.

It also ensures commitment at a senior level and alignment of other business activities to the thought leadership campaign.

Thought leadership needs senior support

Without senior management commitment you run the risk of the organization’s skeptics squeezing the life out of the thought leadership effort.

At times things can go awry or the campaign is not delivering as fast or as well as it should.  At this point the avoidance or blame game begins and so starts the death spiral for the campaign…that is unless the CEO or senior management sees the thought leadership campaign as integral to the organization’s strategy and is still prepared to back it as a result.   

If a leader makes success non-negotiable it is amazing how much impetus it can give the campaign.

Make no mistake, you will still need to make sure that you have a well thought out and presented plan.  This should cover the thought leadership idea in detail but also, importantly, how you intend to roll it out.

As part of this you should identify clear objectives, your rationale for doing this and measurable outcomes.  The more measurable your outcomes the more likely you are to gain credibility for the campaign across the senior management ranks and for future funding.

2 Responses to “How to take your thought leadership campaign to market – strategic business imperative”

1. Sean Williams says:

   December 28, 2009 at 23:49

   Craig, I’ll be eager to read the remaining posts. As I’ve heard someone say, “good on ye” for taking it on.

   Thought leadership is a goal expressed frequently by executives. They want to be seen as smart people who have a lot to offer. I frequently tell them that we need to discover their distinctive voice, their interesting perspective and drive it through our messaging and our selection of when and where to share it.

   I’ve had the fortune to work closely with two CEOs and as part of a wider team with several others. They wanted thought leadership status for members of their team, not themselves. In that, they were thought leaders — as that characteristic (of concern more for your team than yourself) is a leadership touchstone.

   You say>
   “As part of this you should identify clear objectives, your rationale for doing this and measurable outcomes. The more measurable your outcomes the more likely you are to gain credibility for the campaign across the senior management ranks and for future funding.”

   That’s dead on. I’ve frequently been amazed at how simple that is — and how rarely executed in business.

   Get going on those other posts, man, time’s a wastin’!

   Cheers — and happy new year…
2. craig says:

   December 30, 2009 at 21:11

   Sean happy new year to you too. The gap between wanting thought leadership and finding that ‘distinctive voice’ as you call it are poles apart. It is this gap that is the success or downfall of good thought leadership material. It is this gap that requires the most work and it is this gap where so many people fall down with their thought leadership because they don’t find that point of differentiation or that white space.

   Thanks for your comments and insights.
   Cheers
   Craig