How to build an effective thought leadership campaign

By guest author Jacqueline Booker, Eleven Hundred Agency.

Getting noticed in the world of technology can be a difficult game. The market is crowded, the media is fast-paced, and your company might be competing for attention against tech giants with deep pockets.

PR can be a great way to promote your company – but how do you use it most effectively to stand out from the crowd?

A quick glance through the Eleven Hundred Agency blog will reveal many a tool and tactic to help boost brand awareness. One highly effective method, and my personal favourite, is to develop a thought leadership campaign to amplify a technology company’s voice around a key challenge or issue facing organisations today.

What is thought leadership and why is it important?

Thought leadership – the positioning of an organisation and its spokespeople as leaders in their field – is an established way to elevate an organisation’s brand awareness. The aim is to seek to shape the media discussion around hot and trending topics by sharing your company’s opinions in a variety of different ways.

From responding to breaking news with quickly issued commentary, to drafting longer-form articles, the principle is to get your company positively associated with the burning media topics of the day or, even better, to set the media agenda by bringing an emerging issue to the fore. Do it well and it can position your company ahead of the competition and, more importantly, get noticed by prospective customers.

Laying the foundations of a thought-leadership campaign

As with any well executed PR campaign, thought leadership requires a robust strategy behind it. Working with a PR agency, such as the team here at Eleven Hundred Agency, will help make this process a smooth one – ensuring that you promote your core messages through the right media to reach your target audience.

Here are our top tips around how to craft a stellar thought leadership strategy.

1. Identify stories and topics that are important to you (and your customers)

Thought leadership campaigns centre around the issues, challenges, and problems that are being faced by your customers and that you have a credible reason to offer an opinion on. Are you a cybersecurity company that can comment on a widespread security breach and how the risk could have been mitigated?

Maybe there’s a new piece of legislation coming into force that you could help organisations comply with? Or perhaps your products’ foundations are in AI and you can offer an opinion on the benefits of the technology? A thought leadership campaign will be truly effective it if positively and credibly associates your organisation with the issues that your customers are seeking solutions to.

2. Be targeted and selective

Look carefully at what issues you want to own and focus on them. Don’t try and comment on everything, you’ll only get lost in the media noise. You’re better to take a targeted approach and become known as an advocate for a particular issue rather than confuse the market with lots of messages about different things.

Consistency is key. That way the media and your target audience will begin to understand what you offer. In addition, be focused in your media outreach. Your media targets should be carefully selected based on the types of roles and industries you are trying to reach.

3. Find the right voice

This is not a time to sit on the fence. Thought leadership campaigns work best when they offer opinions and practical solutions for organisations facing challenges. Strike a balance between offering a unique take on the news, being authoritative in your tone, and offering guidance and help. Remember, this is not a sales pitch and not an opportunity to wax lyrical about the strength of your products. The goal is to be considered an “expert” in your field.

4. Think carefully about your spokesperson

Who you use as your spokesperson is key to the success of your thought leadership programme. Once again, consistency is key so select a limited number of highly-credible subject matter experts who you can turn into familiar faces.

Being an expert isn’t always enough. Pick someone who will be comfortable and authentic when speaking to the press. Offer media training if they haven’t had it before to make sure they can appropriately field media questions. It’s important to also think about job titles (alas, sales titles won’t wash with the media) and about the spokesperson’s location. For quick responses, you ideally need someone who is readily available and in the same time zone as the media you are targeting.

5. Be timely

With thought leadership campaigns – you are best to strike before, or while, a topic is hot. You can’t be late to the party. Look ahead and see what’s coming up. Is there a piece of legislation that is being enacted with upcoming deadlines for organisations to meet? Are we witnessing a new style of cyber threat? Keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground and try to be on the front foot as much as possible.

6. Establish which tactics are going to work best for your organisation

Thought leadership campaigns can make use of various tools and tactics, some of which work better for some organisations than others. Here’s a few:

• Rapid response – responding to breaking news stories with brief, pithy commentary in written form or via an interview talking about the significance of the news. This type of activity is particularly effective for companies in fast-paced industries – such as cyber security. Success in this area hinges on the ready availability of spokespeople.
  
  
• By-lined articles – these present a chance to explore challenges in greater depth and are attributed, or by-lined, to your spokesperson. As these are often promoted across social channels, they give organisations a great opportunity to amplify their expertise still further.
  
  
• Feature comment – while traditional editorial forward feature planning is less of a focus these days, publications still put out requests for comment or interviews on a variety of topics. Most PR agencies subscribe to such services, allowing them to quickly act and respond to such requests on behalf of clients. Again, quick approval processes are essential here as journalist turn-arounds are quite tight.
  
  
• Long-form interviews – these are typically secured by your PR agency proactively pitching you to a publication for consideration. If the pitch is successful, a journalist is likely to interview you around a whole host of topics, not just the hook that was used to pique the journalist’s interest, so a spokesperson must be prepared to talk about the industry in general. For these opportunities, you are unlikely to see the questions in advance and you certainly will not be able to approve the journalist copy (so don’t ask!). However, with the right spokesperson and some preparation, these are fantastic way to talk more about a particular issue, tell more of your corporate story and showcase your expertise.
  
  
• Podcasts – there are a whole host of relevant tech and business focused podcasts out there that offer an ideal platform for tech companies to reach a wider audience. Identify some targets and have a listen to some past episodes to make sure the content is a good fit. Then pitch in to the host/producer to see your spokesperson can be considered as a guest on the show. Here, it’s essential that you have a quality spokesperson who is confident speaking to the media and can articulate key messages clearly. A podcast guest will stand out if they can give some great soundbites – so preparation is key to success here.

Taking the next step

Creating a B2B Tech PR campaign is not an exact science. There is no one size fits all for every client. However, in the two decades that I’ve worked in the sector, thought leadership has always proved to be an excellent way of putting a company on the media map and helping to open the door on conversations with prospects.

So whether you’re just beginning to explore PR or you’re looking to add in another dimension to your campaign, get in touch! We’d love a conversation with you about how we can help elevate your brand profile.