9 Easy Steps to Launch a Thought Leadership Program

Written By: TMSA Staff | Aug 4, 2016 12:00:00 AM





By Jill Schmieg, Founder and Chief Strategist, Sol de Naples Marketing

TMSA continues to bring you great ideas and perspectives on what it takes to get a Thought Leadership program off the ground in your organization. TMSA introduces our “Perspectives from Thought Leaders” series, where visionaries in our industry share their ideas, perspectives and stories about the essence of thought leadership. This blog post is the first in a Thought Leadership series brought to you exclusively by the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association.

Thought leadership and content marketing are all the buzz for today’s modern marketer. They should be; did you know that 70% of people would rather learn about a company via an article than an ad, according to the Content Marketing Institute? *

Whether you’re just getting started with your first thought leadership program, or you’ve been executing for a while, here are 9 easy steps any marketer can use to be successful:
1. Conduct research, which will provide intelligence about the audience to reach, what your customer’s perspectives are, and how your topic is unique compared to what competitors could be doing
2. Define the audience you want to engage with, and determine what is relevant to them.
3. Align with stakeholders, which could be internal employees, management and industry leaders and influencers
4. Find ways to differentiate your message, perspective and position on your thought leadership topic
5. Define a primary channel for deploying your content, and then re-use and re-purpose your content across multiple other channels
6. Execute consistently and frequently across multiple channels
7. Measure awareness with metrics such as # of downloads, impressions and followers
8. Measure leads & revenue which can be used to prove ROI for campaign renewal and expansion
9. Re-evaluate & adjust the campaign regularly as your reach grows and performance is measured

TMSA invites you to learn more about Thought Leadership marketing by ordering:

Webinar: How To Launch A Thought Leadership Campaign in 90 Days 
E-Book: The Ultimate Launch Kit for a Thought Leadership Program 

Guest author of the TMSA Thought Leadership blog series is Jill Schmieg, Founder and Chief Strategist of Sol de Naples Marketing. 

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