Thought Leadership Assessments and Acceleration Plans

Do you wonder why competitors are able to publish articles in prestigious publications that your firm has been unable to crack? Does top management in your firm envy competitors’ research reports and the press coverage they generate? Does your firm have superior expertise that just doesn’t get the market recognition it deserves, and wonder why?

Over the years, multiple companies have come to us with such questions. They want to know why certain competitors are better at thought leadership, and how to vault ahead of them.

Knowing we are experts on thought leadership, clients ask us for insightful assessments of their thought leadership content and their programs for developing and marketing it. Then, of course, they ask us how to improve things.

We provide rigorous yet respectful assessments of companies’ thought leadership activities. Rigor and respect are both crucial in our assessments. We believe anyone who is open to improvement can improve if shown tactfully and tactically exactly what they must improve, why and how. (We have a growing number of courses for improving core thought leadership skills.)

We base our thought leadership assessments and acceleration plans on the best practices that Bob Buday has pioneered in his nearly 40 years of crafting thought leadership strategies, developing groundbreaking content and staging effective marketing campaigns for companies large and small.

Our clients ask us to assess their thought leadership activities and make specific recommendations for improvement. These assessments take from 6 to 8 weeks and cover four domains:

• Strategy: Alignment of thought leadership activities with the firm’s overall strategy
• Content: Content quality, research approaches, content development and writing skills, content formats (types and graphic look)
• Marketing: Marketing mix (especially in campaigns) and message quality (social media, event invitations, email newsletters, website thought leadership section, etc.)
• Sales: Quality of sales force education and training on upcoming thought leadership programs; marketing-to-sales lead management.

The Value of Our Assessments and Acceleration Plans

The short-term impact: a deep understanding of the strengths of your thought leadership activities, areas to improve, and how to accelerate those improvements.

The ultimate impact: ratcheting up the thought leadership skills of your people (in conducting research, creating content and marketing content) and increasing the revenue impact of your programs.