7 Ways to Build Your Brand: #7 Thought Leadership

Each week we are working our way through the 7 ways to build your brand, and this week is #7: Thought Leadership.  You can click here for the overview, click here for #1: Target Audience, #2 Specific Messaging, #3 Points of Differentiation, #4 Touchpoints, #5 Strategic Brand Plan and #6 Content Creation.

You are an expert at what you do.  Your company is different (and better) than the other organizations in your space.  You know more about your industry, and your services provide better solutions than the other options.  Everyone would pick your company if they just knew more about you.

Does any of that sound familiar?

If you have found yourself saying things like this, then you need a thought leadership plan.

Take the knowledge that is in your head from your years of vast experience and find a way to share that information with your target audience.  Whether it is through ebooks, white papers, website landing pages, webinars, tradeshows and conferences, or even lunch & learns, find a way to share what you know.

Your first thought might be that if you publish what you know and put it all out there, then your competitors will copy you, and your customers will just learn how to do it for themselves.  

Well, there are ways you can share your knowledge without giving away your secret sauce.  Besides, your competition will always try to duplicate you, but you can still stay two steps ahead of them.

These are the basic first steps to a Thought Leadership campaign:

1. Determine the target audience to whom you are going to focus your efforts
2. Develop the messaging that addresses their pain points as well as your specific advantages in solving their problem
3. Create audience/message-specific website landing pages 
4. Provide downloadable ebook/vlog/white paper that requires email address to access
5. Connect your website to your database.
6. Follow up with these leads and turn them into customers

The more you can create processes to automate this system, the less time it will take to implement and the more effective it will be.  If you want to learn more about how to develop a system like this for your company, be sure to sign up for our Trust Based Selling workshop. Get more info here.

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RUSSO is a strategic branding agency that uses consumer insight to change the conversation; forming emotional connections with the target audience. To learn more, click HERE to learn more about our process, RAZOR BRANDING.