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Separate Your Firm
from the Pack:
Turn Your Senior Officers into Thoughtleaders
By Ken Lizotte CMC
In good times and bad, the trick for chief marketing officers is always to find a way to help your firm stand out from the crowd. Though most action plans embrace news releases, newsletters, e-letters, and website dazzle, many smart CMOs have latched onto an underutilized strategy for winning more attention: transforming company officers into thought leaders.
Why adopt this approach? For one thing, it’s far less expensive than even a modest ad campaign, and CEOs often like that. For another, the combination of writing/publishing and public speaking, the one-two punch of thought leadership marketing, earns double benefits by promoting products and services and at the same time educating target markets about the existence and value proposition of the company. Thought leadership converts whole companies - and their executives, sales reps, customer service representatives, and, well, the whole team - into proven experts. This brands the firm’s core values as a cut above, and separate from, even the most aggressive competition.
But I know what you’re thinking: How would I get the process, and in particular, how could I get my CEO and CXOs to actually sit down and write anything? The truth is many executives respond enthusiastically to this idea, leaping at the opportunity to see their name in “lights,” or rather print. And though they will undoubtedly need some help with editing and shaping their drafts, in the end they usually do a pretty good job of getting their core message across in the article, so that you the CMO can then get it out to a waiting editor for publication.
One hint: The best way to begin is NOT to ask your officer(s) to start writing an article. Instead, formulate a list of article ideas based on your firm’s strategic objectives and then compile a list of publications read by those representing your target market. Have your marketing staff begin pitching to these publications with the aim of obtaining an editor “go-ahead.” This approach typically results in contact with editors who truly want to publish your articles and will do so. All you and your C-level officers need to do is physically produce the requested article draft.
After articles begin to come out, invitations to speak at conferences and other events should follow, particularly if you leverage your article in the following ways:
- Send an email announcement to your corporate e-list of clients, prospects, colleagues, and friends. Getting proactive ensures an article that builds a buzz.
- Pass the article out at company events, during sales calls, and at networking events. Send it off directly to influential contacts.
- Search out calls for speaking proposals, especially at organizations that sponsor conferences that would offer a promising platform for your firm. Each published article now becomes a valuable, thought leadership credential to include in such proposals.
- Always post published articles on the company website, adding a line at the bottom informing readers that the author is available for public speaking. List a company speakers’ bureau on your website as well as a calendar of past, present, and future engagements, a tactic that bolsters your firm’s credibility as a haven for thought leaders in constant demand.
Having embarked on the thought leadership highway, use the media in traditional ways to augment the process, by sending out news releases announcing newly-published articles and recent speaking engagements, inducing editors to call and request interviews with your thought leaders. In your releases, provide a link to the company web site page where articles and speaking synopses can be found. In this way you develop yet another device for driving traffic to your website, i.e., the firm’s door!
Follow these steps to thought leader success and your firm’s credibility will be enhanced by third party endorsements of both publications and professional groups. The resulting media attention will boost the company to a stature far beyond that of your competitors. Once this level of competitive advantage arrives… enjoy the ride!