Thought Leader Strategy and Development

“You are the thought leaders on ‘thought leadership’.”

Client of four years praising Clearly’s reputation for creating sound thought leadership content that creates influence, impact, and new income generation.

What is thought leadership?

Thought leadership is about building on your area of expertise and then creating content that provides context, relevance, meaning and value to your audience.

It is about recognising the pain points, challenges, needs and wants of your target audience and generating a response that provides a semblance of a solution or enhanced understanding of whatever ‘it’ is.

This type of content can be specific to an individual or the organisation and can take many forms (see below) and the choice of content is important. Luckily for you, we know precisely what content delivers the highest returns.

Read how one thought leadership campaign we ran for a tech firm targeting the Pharma industry generated x4 the number of targeted new business meetings, $250,000 in sales mid-way through the campaign, and exposed them to over 8,000 prospects. Read here.

Who we support

Clearly’s Thought Leader Strategy & Development service is ideal for businesses with a need to raise the profile and influence of their key people. They typically include:

• Senior Managers, Departmental Heads, Regional Managers, Directors
• C-suite, VPs, Chairs

Clearly-owned market research on thought leadership

We surveyed 300 business leaders and decision makers on their thought leadership content creation and consumption. Here’s what they told us:

• More than half (55%) of senior figures engage with thought leadership content themselves more than once a week.
• 53% of business leaders/senior executives have been influenced to make a purchasing decision based on a piece of thought leadership content they consumed.
• One in five (20%) state that thought leadership content supports their organisation’s lead generation efforts.
• Half of all respondents (53%) say that thought leadership content creation is essential to building their brand and wider industry influence.
• A quarter (23%) consider an organisation’s thought leadership content is critical to improving customer trust and brand loyalty.

We also asked senior figures what formats they prefer to consume for business-related content. They ranked their preferences as follows:

1. Articles and interviews in the media
2. Podcasts
3. Videos, such as pieces-to-camera and explainers
4. Whitepapers based on original research
5. Company blogs
6. Webinars
7. LinkedIn content, such as long-form posts and carousels
8. Digital assets, such as infographics
9. Case studies

In our experience, the most effective thought leadership campaigns include a mix of most if not all of the above.

Doing it for ourselves

We operate in a highly competitive marketplace, yet few PR leaders generate as much regular media coverage as Clearly PR’s Founder, Paul MacKenzie-Cummins.

You can see examples of recent examples via ‘Clearly in the News‘ which include:

• See also: Personal Brand Strategy for Executives