Is Thought Leadership Just About Content?

Ben:
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Marshall. Marshall, welcome to the show.

Marshall Benveniste:
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

Ben:
Marshall, I'm excited for the topic today, but before we dive in, let's get to know you for a second. How did you get into content and marketing, and what do you love about the space?

Marshall Benveniste:
I absolutely love creating things and I love words, people, and business. If you combine all those things together, you have me about 25 years ago, starting in the world of financial services compliance, actually, where I'm scrutinizing words and advertisements to make sure they're not too inflammatory. I got my start there.

Over the years, I worked in financial services for about a decade and a half, creating content and different marketing assets. After that, I ran a small business in the construction industry in basement waterproofing. I did marketing for that company for about six years. I've worked freelance for a few years, and presently, I work for a software company that produces software for the commercial construction industry. It provides contractors, building product manufacturers, and estimators with information, insights, and analysis to help them do better at what they do, and that's build buildings.

Thoughts on Developing Thought Leadership

Ben:
I love that. That's exciting. So today for the subject, what we're going to talk about is how to develop thought leadership. And Marshall, you've been doing this for ages. Right now in your current role, it sounds like you're doing mostly just thought leadership. You have this really cool framework for how you think about thought leadership. In general, how does this work? How should we think about thought leadership in general?

Marshall Benveniste:
When I initially was doing thought leadership, it was basically providing someone's ideas or opinions in a document to give someone perspective on what they thought. For instance, it might have been an economist or a mutual fund manager who said, "Well, we're a little leery of the direction of tech stocks. Now they're getting a little high priced. We're cautious about it." So that's thought leadership, but I don't think the term was even invented then.

Nowadays, I'm in the B2B software environment. You've got to do a lot to stand apart from anyone else, and thought leadership also has some kind of negative connotations associated with it. It's usually something that's self-awarded if you will. "I'm a thought leader. Here's what I can do for you."

The way that I position it is more of a memory maker in the B2B market. People are not constantly ready to buy. They may be on the sidelines for days, weeks, months, or years. Even when they're ready to buy, you want to be imprinted in their brain. "This is the company that I want to help me solve my problems." So thought leadership, memory maker, brand builder, starting from that launching point.

If you take that, then you can produce original thoughts and ideas that help someone solve a problem. They look at you as an expert because you've imprinted original ideas in their brain about how to solve something that they're having a problem or a challenge with. You want to be one of the first companies that comes to mind when they're ready to buy.

Framework for Thought Leadership

Ben:
I think that's so cool. Something that came to mind as you were talking about that, and I absolutely love it. I think that's my favorite definition that I've ever heard about thought leadership. I love the way you put it. I'm not even going to try to summarize that because I don't think I could do it as well as you just did. But, good thing we recorded it.

Marshall Benveniste:
I don't think I could do it again.

Ben:
What I love about it as well is often we think about different channels as search engines. You look at how do I rank on Google so that I'm one of the first results that come up? How do I rank in the LinkedIn algorithm? That's just another search engine. Every social channel, everything is a search engine. Really, what you're talking about here is the framework for ranking in people's minds, and that's thought leadership.

Marshall Benveniste:
Exactly.

Ben:
It's one of the first things I think of. You get the visit, you get the consideration, and I love it because I think that's so cool. So let's start walking through the framework. How does this whole framework work?

Marshall Benveniste:
Sure, happy to. This is my approach, and there are other ways to do it. However, I know what has worked, and nothing is ever permanent. That's one of the things that I would preface thought leadership or memory making with. It's a situation where you want to be constantly measuring, making changes, and improving.

One of the first things that I like to start with is: What audience are we talking to? What do we want them to understand better? What do we want them to feel? Ultimately, what do we want them to do?

If you start with your audience, you want to look at the typical things that a marketer does. Who are they? Where are they? What are their pain points? With thought leadership or memory making, I can't emphasize enough, you must find out what keeps them up at night. It's the things that they have a big concern about. The things that make them sometimes have self-doubt, no matter how competent and experienced they are.

If you can identify those ideas early on in the stage of planning a strategy for thought leadership, particularly the people that are not yet in your category, that have not yet entered into the category of what you are marketing, then you have a really good chance of building those mental impressions and building them strongly. So the first thing is to find out who you're talking to and what their pain points are so you can develop content around that.

Moving Forward in the Thought Leadership Process

Ben:
I love it. So after we've understood our audience, really understand their pain points and what kind of content they need, where do we go from there?

Marshall Benveniste:
One of the key things about building impressions, building memories as a thought leader, is it's almost parallel to the consultative seller. You're not intending to sell anything. When you do, you're almost asking to get outside of the memory maker and into the rubbish bin as our counterparts in the UK say.

Ben:
Yeah.

Marshall Benveniste:
Don't start thinking product at all. Don't think benefits. Don't think features. Don't think product name. Identify what it is that keeps them up at night and then develop a list of topics. It's essential that you do your research and have authoritative material—ideas that can help an individual solve that problem.

That's the basis of creating an impression. Ultimately, you want to create some kind of value in your content that's going to drive action long term. Another thing I'd say is that thought leadership is never a short-term effort. The way that it works is through continuously being present, having a wide reach to a lot of people, and constantly improving, being on every channel where your audience is and finding new ones where they may be.

So, developing your content, once you find the audience, find some topics. You have to find a gap in what's out there. You have to find answers and insights to things that they may not have thought about. That's where you can really add value.

Ben:
I love that. Understand the audience, really dive into opportunities to provide value, solve problems that they're actually experiencing. From there, okay, now I've got a good idea of what I'm going to do. How do I move forward from there in that process?

Marshall Benveniste:
Some people can operate without a creative brief or a content brief. I've chosen not to as much as possible. There's some must-have-this-within-five-minutes projects where it just doesn't work. If you have a content brief or a creative brief that says who you're talking to, what you want them to do, and how you're gonna do it, it helps everybody involved. It keeps you on track.

So I like to operate off of a creative brief. Another thing that does is it makes sure that you're tying in your thought leadership with your greater objectives as an organization. It's got to be connected. You don't want to go off on some tangent in thought leadership that has nothing to do with what's being measured and what the objectives are at your organization.

So, creative brief or outline, whatever it is you or your organization uses—highly recommend building that into each piece of content that you create and into a broader strategy. Tie it into a broader strategy for your thought leadership.

The Importance of Expertise and Research

Ben:
I love it. So once we have that creative brief created and we're moving forward with that, what's kind of the next step in the framework?

Marshall Benveniste:
One thing I found out is that you can't necessarily award yourself the title of thought leader. You can do it, but maybe you're not one. So let's take an example: if you came to me and said, "I want to be a thought leader in handmade coffee mugs like this one I'm showing you," you may not know anything about that industry as a content developer.

What is essential is that you find the information that is unique, that is an idea that's going to resonate with your audience. So, you can become a thought leader without being an expert in your field as long as you have access to the experts and they talk to you openly and honestly. You can become a thought leader, an expert in anything you want, even if they're not in-house.

Talking to people, listening to the chatter, listening to conversations of customers, talking to customers, talking to suppliers, talking to vendors, connecting with people like on LinkedIn or in person—that's how you can develop thought leadership with experts without being one. In my present situation, I happen to work with two very skilled economists who are in-house thought leaders. I can knock on their virtual door anytime I want during working hours and get some expert advice that is useful to a prospect or a customer to build an impression, to build a memory.

But if you don't have that, go out and find it. Do your research. Make sure it's strong research, evidence-based. Make sure you're talking to the right people. And that takes time, which reinforces the whole idea: Thought leadership is a long-term commitment. It requires an investment in time and resources.

Ben:
I love that. My two cents there would be chat GPT is not a source and is not the research phase of this.

Marshall Benveniste:
That is true. Nothing can be truer than that. Unless you want to be wrong.

Ben:
You need to go to someone that has first-hand experience, 100%. Especially as you're talking about actually providing value, your conversation needs to happen with someone who is actually involved with this on a regular basis. I love that perspective.

Marshall Benveniste:
Without a doubt. And I found that most people, they're not going to give you the secret recipe for Coca-Cola, but most people will meet with you and talk to you about their business. Even if you don't work with them directly, you have to get out there and don't be afraid. Have some courage, knock on doors, make connections, go to trade shows, talk to as many people as you can.

Ben:
I think that's a skill set that we need to continue to develop and kind of a muscle we need to strengthen. It is one of the quickest ways to improve our content quality in a very positive way as quickly as possible.

Marshall Benveniste:
I agree. Use a little less technology, maybe, and a little more human interaction, and you'll get some stronger content. It takes both.

Ben:
I agree. I love it. That is true. So you've done the research. You know what you're writing about. You've got a brief. Where do we go from there?

Marshall Benveniste:
One thing I think that may be a misconception is that thought leadership is an ebook. Thought leadership is a social post. Thought leadership is an in-person presentation. Thought leadership is a quote in a periodical. Well, guess what? All of those things are thought leadership.

It doesn't matter where you are. Thought leadership can be saying hi to someone at an event live: "That's the guy that wrote that post that I saw about my business."

Ben:
Yeah.

Marshall Benveniste:
So build thought leadership into your greater strategy. Identify where your targets are and be there. Nowadays, that's everywhere, all the time, pretty much.

Ben:
Very true.

Marshall Benveniste:
The goal should be to build content that you can use everywhere without having to reinvent things. Start with maybe a long piece of content and break it apart. Use some of it on social. Use some of it for your email communications. Build it into your larger messaging so that you get the most mileage out of what you have.

Ben:
I love it.

Marshall Benveniste:
So sometimes where I'll start is a longer form piece of content.

Ben:
Yeah, I love that. So we're getting close to the end of the amount of time we have here. So just to finish it off, what are the final steps of the framework that people should be aware of?

Marshall Benveniste:
Think long term with thought leadership. Build memories, build impressions. Talk to as many experts as you can about the topic. Have original ideas. Be brave with your content. And make sure that it speaks to the end user in a way that's going to move them somehow. So when it comes time to decide what company they pick, it's yours.

Ben:
I love it. I think that is a great summary of thought leadership. Marshall, I have learned a ton even during this podcast. I don't know if you could see it, but the wheels were turning in the brain of, "I need to think about this and consider this and do this." So every time I have that experience, it's something special, and I'm sure every listener is having the same experience.

If anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?

Marshall Benveniste:
I am on LinkedIn, Marshall Benvenisky, so they can find me there. I'm happy to connect with nearly anyone that doesn't want to make an immediate sale.

Ben:
And that is a great caveat. I think that's a very fitting caveat for LinkedIn. So I love it.

Marshall Benveniste:
It's been an absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Ben:
Thank you, Marshall. Appreciate the time.

Marshall Benveniste:
Certainly.

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