Looking back at 2024, thought leadership research has once again provided a range of insightful outcomes. Not only the success of thought leadership, but more importantly, the perceptions that marketing teams can aim to change. In this series, I'll be digesting relevant research on thought leadership and presenting the findings most actionable to marketers.
First up, Edelman-LinkedIn’s 2024 Thought Leadership Impact Report.
Surveying nearly 3,500 management-level professionals, the latest collaboration between Edelman and LinkedIn investigates the relationship between thought leadership and B2B buying behaviors.
Regarding Decision-makers…
- 73% say thought-leadership is a more trustworthy basis for assessing an organisation's capabilities and competencies than it's marketing materials.
- 75% say that a piece of thought leadership has led them to research a product or service they were not previously considering.
- 60% said good thought leadership makes them willing to pay a premium to work with the publishing organisation.
- 9 in 10 are moderately/very likely to be more receptive to marketing outreach from a firm regularly publishing good thought leadership.
Decision-makers also indicated that thought leadership could lead them to instruct a new supplier. Over half of the participants (54%) said thought leadership highlighted that an organisation they don't yet work with may have a better understanding of the challenges they face.
Despite these compelling findings, the research suggests those producing thought leadership content still experience barriers and are yet to fully understand its potential impact on their success…
- 50% of those producing thought leadership feel that it is under-resourced.
- Only 29% are able to link sales leads back to thought-leadership pieces.
To summarise, thought leadership that puts a spotlight on your understanding of clients' challenges and presents the solutions your firm offers is highly regarded by decision makers to influence their buying decisions. However, there is still a disconnect between the perceptions of the producers and consumers of thought leadership content. One final stat from this research encapsulates this…
While 86% of decision-makers felt likely to invite organisations that consistently produce high-quality thought leadership to participate in the RFP process, only 38% of producers expect their thought leadership content to have such impact.
More focus needs to be directed to the thought leadership producers. Providing self-serving resources and feeding actionable insights back to thought leaders around the real business impacts of their insights could help level the perception playing field and yield a higher output of consistent, high-quality thought leadership from organisations' experts.