The role of thought leadership in driving inbound enquiries

Marketing is often the area in a growing consulting business that is significantly under-invested in. But, according to our founder, Marc Jantzen, “As your professional services business matures, and assuming you’re doing all the right things elsewhere (i.e. you’ve established your target market, you’ve got a clear proposition and a slick sales process, your team are able to deliver using your documented methodologies, and client projects are delivered profitably and to a high standard), marketing innovation should be your next priority.”

Trevor Lambert is a marketing consultant specialising in advising B2B organisations. His recent webinar for The Consultancy Growth Network’s members focused on the thought leadership aspect of marketing and how to use it innovatively to drive inbound enquiries.

Good is great. Bad is destructive.

In his webinar, Trevor explained that thought leadership, the pinnacle of the content pyramid, is the type of content that’s longer term, that’s delivered 2 or 3 times a year, and that has the potential to have the greatest impact on your audience.

He was keen, though, to emphasise that the quality of your thought leadership is absolutely critical. “According to a survey by Endelman and LinkedIn,” he said, “more than half of c-suites executives said that their admiration for a firm had decreased because they’d seen poor thought leadership from them. And more than a third had decided not to award any business to a company because of the poor thought leadership they had seen. So you need to make sure it’s good.”

Make the most of every step

Trevor shared his framework for making sure that the quality of thought leadership ensures it positively influences others, and then he explained to our members how to engage their clients and prospects throughout the thought leadership cycle.

“As you develop your thought leadership, there are numerous opportunities other than at launch to raise your profile, build your reputation and attract inbound enquiries,” said Trevor. He took our members through each step of the cycle, at each one sharing ideas for establishing and nurturing relationships with prospects, and also explaining how to use reciprocity to increase the number of people who interact with and respond to your material.

Here is Trevor explaining the benefits of inviting contributions from contacts during the research phase:

Trevor also shared a key tip for helping your survey results appear in your target publications:

At the end of his webinar, Trevor bravely asked our members if, having heard what he’d just said, they would now consider producing thought leadership. 86% said they would (the remainder said they needed a little more convincing). Phew!

Members of The Consultancy Growth Network have access to the full recording of Trevor’s webinar via Slack, our online chat platform. Non-members can attend one of our events for free before choosing to join the network. Please contact George on info@consultancygrowthnetwork.com if you would like to more about us or our events.

You can find out more about Trevor on LinkedIn.