There are several companies that are striving to identify the efficacy of thought leadership and identifying the efforts along with business outcomes. In a recent study, it was inferred that 74 percent of those people who publish thought leadership do not have a strategy linked to the sales in future. One of the apparent reasons could be the difficulty in projecting the link between the strategies of thought leadership with sales characterized by traditionality and the objectives of marketing. There are attempts made by marketing teams to stick to the idea of statistics so as to identify the link to sales or marketing outcome apart from sorting out to scale the impact of thought leadership.
This article intends to look at the importance of exposing the thought leadership strategy and also finding out some techniques, tools and processes that could help with this.
The benefit of measuring your thought leadership strategy
It is indispensable to define the key points of success that are related with the content creating process. The outlook of success has to be identified and its measuring process as well. The stakeholders have to be equipped with an understanding of the desired e of the programme and its time period. Having a clear and succinct expectation from all sides can be instrumental in ensuring sales and participation across the business boundaries. While thought leadership programmes take time to yield results, it’s also critical to find ways to identify the impact on a regular basis so that your team can learn in actual time. The process of learning will help you with your short-term sales efforts by giving you quicker input on where you should concentrate your money.
The tools and processes to use
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to which dimensions and performance measures to use because thought leadership strategies are as unique as the companies that adopt them. However, there are many methods and mechanisms that can assist you in determining the best ways to evaluate the success of your material.
Output
Calculating the quantity of posted pieces of content will help you keep track of your thought leadership strategy’s progress. The limitation is that you’ll need to find alternative ways to assess the effect of your results, so concentrate on variety and quality.
SEO metrics
Since it’s simple to track SEO-based analytics with tools, they’re a popular way to figure out what information is trending and bring the most traffic to your web. You should also examine how visitors arrive at your website. Spin ratings will help you figure out how many of your followers read all the way through your posts and go on to other pages on your web.
Another strategy to see if your thought leadership content relates to your SEO goals is to count the amount of backlinks from related websites to see if your thought leadership content is being shared by major source in your market. Recognising which pieces of content are shared and connected the most will help you figure out which concept and subject your community is most interested in.
Press coverage
Your team can keep track of prominent mentions of your thought leadership material in the media by using media tracking dashboards or even basic resources like Google or LinkedIn alerts. Recommend putting track of the number of speaking requests and rewards you’ve won since you started your thought leadership plan. While attributing each of these occasions to individual content pieces can be difficult, keeping a track will provide you with a valuable image of general attitude over time.
Qualitative data
Surveys and brand reviews, in addition to quantitative metrics from SEO and other distribution methods will provide rich qualitative data from your potential customers. The results of a survey will provide you with profound insights into particular problems and point you in the direction of new viewpoints that you may not have considered. It’s crucial to bear in mind that this is a long-term strategy, as brand surveys and net promoter scores are often conducted around once a year.
The customer lifetime value
Instead of concentrating solely on acquiring new clients, consider your customer’s lifetime value in your marketing funnel. Since thought leadership can have a major impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty, why not monitor repeat business from current customers?
Create a culture of continuous optimisation
Working to ensure that everything you learn is incorporated into another round of idea creation and content preparation is amongst the most crucial elements of assessing the success of your thought mentoring program. Construct more long-form content if you notice that your audience reacts well to it. Develop additional angles to discuss the topics if a single subject or concept achieves a lot of momentum. Your KPIs will also aid in the optimization of potential content and the evaluation of the return on investment of content in this manner.
