I had the opportunity last week to visit with a friend from college, Marshall Sonenshine, whom I had not seen in 25+ years. We had a nice visit in his Park Avenue office, learned that our companies employ roughly the same number of people, and that we market in very much the same way. Both service businesses, they depend on the learnings and experience of the people who run them. The big difference? He’s in investment banking, and I am in public relations. So he gets paid more… but that’s apart from the topic at hand.
When I asked him how he markets his firm, he said, “I run a boutique investment bank. Clients come here for two reasons. First, they have a connection, a preexisting relationship with someone at the firm or someone who has been a client, and they see us as a firm they want representing them. Second, they are open to using a boutique instead of a big bank, because of the ‘care’ factor, the quality of the work, and the absence of conflicts.” In other words, if they don’t already know him or his firm, and if they don’t already have a predisposition to working with a boutique, then they may well not bother, and that’s fine with him.
His comment reminded me that in many cases, services – professional services and financial services alike – are reasonably indistinguishable if seen from the outside. As my colleague and mentor John Bliss has said, “Companies that buy a service are looking for one thing – a predictable outcome.” An error-free audit from a CPA firm, a successful trial from a law firm, a brilliant candidate from an executive search firm. Or, from my friend’s firm, a strategic and profitable merger.
Because services are delivered by people, they don’t offer the predictability of products. That makes experience the key to the buying decision. And, in my opinion, thought leadership – writing, talking, speaking, blogging about the person’s area of expertise in stories, examples and observations – is the best way to communicate the individual’s expertise, as well as his or her care factor.
Monday, Gartner issued a press release titled: “Once the reserve of Large Consultancy Firms, Thought Leadership Is Rapidly Becoming an Established Field Within Marketing.” In the report, Gartner stated that:
“An organized discipline of Thought Leadership Marketing (what they short-hand “TLM”) is only now emerging, allowing marketers to use this as a manageable tool to drive business. Gartner defines TLM as the giving — for free or at a nominal charge — of information or advice that a client will value so as to create awareness of the outcome that a company’s product or service can deliver, in order to position and differentiate that offering and stimulate demand for it.” (emphasis mine)
“Its essence is to show, rather than tell what a company can do, and to do so in a way that positions and differentiates that company’s offering for the chosen target audience.”
In my opinion, thought leadership for professional and financial service firms – as opposed to IT companies – is less about differentiating and educating, and more about showcasing wisdom and reassuring the target that the desired outcomes are likely.
In fact, very few service companies – only those who are investing a new category, or introducing a new methodology or tool – need to spend a ton of time educating. Most of us know what search firms and law firms and investment banks do. But in the trifecta of B2B service marketing – the brand, the service and the people – it’s the people, and their wisdom, who need to be front and center. They don’t need a “unique selling proposition” – they need to communicate what they know, demonstrate how much they care, and, by implication, how reliable their outcomes are.
Do you agree? What firms do this well in your opinion? Can your firm better showcase its wisdom without becoming pedantic?
To reach Abby:
Phone: 212.840.0088
Email: abby@blisspr.com
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02/08/2010 at 10:13 PM Permalink
Abby,
I generally like what you’ve said about thought leadership marketing, but I believe that communicating what you know, how much you care, and how reliable your outcomes are is necessary, but not sufficient, to be thought leadership. I think you have to truly understand the needs of your market, to put significant effort into thinking about these needs, developing a point of view, and actively engage with your market. Companies like IBM have been doing this well for years. Unisys has started a strong thought leadership marketing campaign around the concept of cloud computing. My former employer, PM Solutions, is a great example of a small business that has positioned itself as a project management thought leader.
02/09/2010 at 11:45 AM Permalink
Thanks for your comments, Jim. I agree with you 100% about what makes true thought leadership, and especially in a corporate environment and in the tech industry. The thinking there is leveraged by a large brand presence and an army of business development foot soldiers. Where most of my comments were directed are at audiences where individual professionals — attorneys, investment bankers, management consultants — are both selling and delivering the work. In those instances, the bar for a unique and robust thought leadership platform is lower, at least in my opinion. The services being sold are often comparable, and the expertise and experience needs to be sold/told in stories.
02/11/2010 at 3:43 PM Permalink
Abby:
I enjoyed your post, but have a bit of a different perspective. I am a believer that there is a real qualitative difference when dealing with “true” thought leaders as contrasted with those who have simply adopted the moniker for marketing purposes. I have actually come to loathe TLM as I believe real thought leadership has little to do with marketing, but everything to do with contribution. I don’t deny for a second that marketing plays a big role in creating some of today’s perceived thought leaders, I just question the authenticity of such efforts. A real thought leader’s body of work should speak for itself. The following link will take you to more thoughts on the topic of thought leadership: http://bit.ly/83Iui2
02/11/2010 at 10:06 PM Permalink
Mike — Certainly there are levels of contribution, and that a TED-level “true” thought leader is different from one who is simply drawing from his/her experience to join the dialogue around an area of expertise. To quote my colleague Meg, who recently blogged on a similar topic, “From a tactical standpoint, the term “thought leadership marketing” means different things to different people. As in traditional marketing, there are endless possibilities for inputs (e.g., statistics, stories, analysis, opinions), spokespeople (institution or individual),outputs (e.g.,books, videos, podcasts, documentaries, articles) and objectives (e.g., credibility, awareness, loyalty, positioning). But what’s unique about real thought leadership, to me, is that it’s edu-marketing. It’s one part promotion/persuasion, one part teaching/giving. True thought leadership helps audiences make sense of things — e.g., the world, a sector, an experience, the future. It’s marketing, of course, because it drives revenue by (1) boosting credibilty; (2) engaging customers; (3) creating differentiation and (4) triggering the reciprocity reflex. But it also inspires.”