• The quality of marketing content impacts the ability of marketers to drive top line growth with digital, social, native advertising and mobile channels. For example, 61% marketing executive’s view earned media – driven by thought leadership marketing, influencer marketing, and content marketing – as a primary driver of top line growth in their company. 1 Marketing executives are learning that subject matter expertise and a strong point of view are now essential to success in the digital, social, and mobile channels that buyers use to during the majority of the buying process. Sales executives realize original research and compelling insights make it easier to open doors, start quality customer conversations, generate referrals, cross sell, and influence buyer perceptions of value. An ounce of thought leadership is worth ten pounds of “me too” content when it comes to improving marketing effectiveness, differentiating your brand, and giving customers the relevant insights they are seeking. • Senior executives regard finding ways to differentiate the customer experience in social, mobile and digital channels as being vital to achieving growth goals as media fragmentation and changing buyer behavior diminish the value and effectiveness of ad impressions.3 Regardless of the medium, one message is becoming clear – investing in creating thought leadership has become essential to driving growth in sales, marketing and media channels. If you want to improve sales effectiveness, differentiate your brand, and give customers the engagement and insights they are seeking - invest in a Thought Leadership Selling. Every successful business has unique intellectual property and subject matter expertise. The problem is most of this institutional knowledge lies “between the ears” of your employees – product managers, top salespeople, solutions specialists and executive leadership. The new marketing challenge is to devise a scalable thought leadership strategy to productize this knowledge, and monetize it with customers, prospects and influencers. “Any successful organization, from a tire business to a research lab, has experts who can help customers solve problems and teach them useful lessons”, according to Grant 4 Butler, author of the book Think, Write, Grow. Marketing executives are slowly learning that white papers are more than a tactic for social and earned media channels. The most sophisticated marketers in the consulting, technology, and financial services industry have realized that the publishing process has become the backbone of their go to market strategy. These marketing leaders are distinguishing themselves with channel strategies that amplify the impact of their thought leadership content in their sales, marketing, and media channels and support every step of the go-to-market process. These market leaders wrote the playbook for using thought leadership assets to: • Cut through the advertising clutter and more effectively take advantage of high growth media such as social networks, online video, mobile applications and search engine optimization; • Drive sales with compelling ideas that open new doors and provide relevant reasons to continue to call on high potential customers; • Differentiate their offerings and value proposition from the competition by educating customers, delivering good ideas, and providing a unique perspective; • Demonstrate that they understand the needs, preferences and behaviors of their top customers; • Increase ROI by better leveraging their marketing content in the go-to-market process; • Make it easier for content to be consumed in media, marketing and sales channels. Thought Leadership Selling Page 4 © Revenue Enablement Institute 2022