When you sell professional services—benefits consulting, management consulting, IT consulting, etc.—your expertise is the product. There are hundreds of thousands of firms out there competing with you—the key to attracting your audience is developing a strong point of view and sharing how you think.
Here are some tips on how to develop and maintain a steady thought leadership program for your professional services firm.
Know your audience and their pain points
Developing a successful thought leadership program means you have to understand who you are talking and selling to.
- What problem can your expertise help them solve?
- What challenges do they commonly face?
- Where can you lend your nuanced point of view?
Good thought leadership isn’t just about mentioning that you can solve their problem (that’s what your services pages are for), it’s sharing deep knowledge of an issue and anticipating what the challenges around it are.
For example, an employee benefits firm Scribewise has been working with for more than a decade has published thought leadership content on a wide range of topics that correspond to their services. During Affordable Care Act Implementation, we interviewed subject matter experts, wrote about the various changes taking place and what their audience needed to know so they didn’t get fined for compliance violations. These thought leadership articles demystified new laws for HR audiences and demonstrated our client’s smarts, thereby building trust with their potential customers.
Create content consistently
Consistency compounds thought leadership efforts, especially in the AI search age, where new content is more frequently cited than content that’s a year old, for example. Writing and publishing a steady stream of thought leadership builds credibility and trust over time, enough to make someone comfortable enough to buy from you. It also helps illustrate your depth of expertise and ability to solve problems. Creating thought leadership over time gives SMEs the ability to dominate the conversation and be seen as the go-to expert in their niche.
Distribute thought leadership to the right channels
Obviously, you can’t write in a vacuum and reach your engagement goals. Distribute thought leadership to the right audience across the channels where they hang out:
- Post blogs and share them on LinkedIn (and potentially other social platforms)
- Write long-form social posts
- Send out a regular cadence of emails to clients and prospects
- Pitch story ideas and bylines to trade publications and business media
- Produce webinars
- Share content at industry events
- Publish helpful content in association newsletters
Use data to inform your content
While your opinions and expertise showcase your thinking, there’s no better way to get a point across than to use data alongside it. Today’s internet is filled with millions of opinions; yours will stand out if it is centered on an actual fact. Use third-party data from reputable sources to support your point of view; better yet, conduct your own research to survey your audience. A well-planned survey can fuel thought leadership efforts for months (or longer) and help you create content that people want to consume.
Create content in different formats
Atomize content from articles and blog posts into social posts, email blurbs, etc., to get more out of the work you put in. In addition, your ideas can translate into social graphics, talking head videos, infographics and webinars.
“Content” is not a blog post or an infographic—it’s an idea. You want to share your idea in as many forms as possible to make it accessible to the widest possible audience.
A final word on how GEO fits in
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of making sure AI platforms consistently pull your firm’s thinking when people ask questions in your category. What separates GEO from SEO is that generative engines prioritize authoritative, original, trustworthy ideas—not just keywords—and they are trained on content across the internet and beyond. This is why it’s not enough to publish blogs; it’s vital to have a distribution strategy to publish content outside of your website, too.
Creating consistent thought leadership that is specific, helpful and unique is useful in marketing and selling your firm’s expertise, and it also increases your chances of appearing in AI search. Win-win. The goal of a thought leadership program is to spotlight you and your firm’s expertise. Increasingly, that spotlight is shining on AI search responses.