Thought leadership, when it combines primary research with a marketing campaign is designed to position the publisher as a knowledge leader and expert in a specific, relevant subject. The primary research element is used as a source for developing the concepts and ideas that underpin the campaign and provide it with substance. However, the importance of this is not always properly understood. To address this, we’ve looked at several aspects where primary research adds value.
How does primary research add value?
1. True Differentiation
In order to achieve maximum impact thought leadership campaigns need to be built on the ‘wow factor’ of their ideas and their potential to transform thinking. Thought leadership generation therefore needs to hypothesise these ideas at the very start of the process, before going on to qualify their validity and applicability through research, quantifying their impact through in depth analysis, and then packaging them into thought provoking campaigns. The whole process is based on the inventiveness, freshness, and originality of these ideas.
During the process of creating thought leadership, research support will be required, owing to the unique, sometimes even unprecedented nature of the ideas that a campaign is addressing. Substantiating these with existing research can become a challenge due to a lack of available sources, which is where primary research becomes invaluable if not essential. Put simply, this entails identifying and accessing the right sources and then extracting the required information, which may for example, be individuals, or hard to access data.
The common availability of secondary information sources also presents its own set of difficulties as a basis for good thought leadership as these can be challenged, disputed, and refuted with relative ease by the audience, should they wish. These sources can also fall short of providing true differentiation to a campaign, precisely because they are known knowns, i.e. things/facts/information that are already available. In addition, this can also cause confusion at a time when you need to convince your target audience of the new ideas you are presenting. Primary research, on the other hand, provides a direct window into hard-to-access information, particularly when it also includes insights from industry experts or a narrowly segmented audience, for example.
2. Testing Novel Concepts
One of the core aspects of any good thought leadership campaign is that it seeks to develop and communicate concepts that are wholly new and unique. Since thought leadership, by definition, involves a novel concept, it can be difficult to find relevant information that validates and supports these ideas from sources already in the public domain. In addition, the true novelty of a piece of thought leadership is best tested and validated by engaging directly with subject matter experts, key opinion leaders, and industry experts. It is this first-hand knowledge that can help to crystalize these concepts, and ensure their acceptance, or conversely, highlight where your thinking needs adjusting. Secondary research is not only inadequate here but, pragmatically, the wrong approach for this.
As part of this process, it is best to engage a research agency that not only has exclusive coverage across the relevant hard-to-reach audiences being targeted, but also has an understanding of the means and methods for engaging with them successfully. The agency also needs to be able to grasp the concept behind the thought leadership campaign itself.
3. Creating Original Content
The ideas and concepts that form the basis of a thought leadership campaign need to be packaged into tangible messaging if you are to achieve your goal of being considered a thought leader by your audience. The findings need to be promoted in ways that generate attention, validate both your authorship and ownership, and go on to cement your influence within your market and audience.
Such a campaign includes:
- Launching a marketing campaign to promote your ideas and findings,
- Crafting a publicity campaign to create spontaneous association of the idea with your organization, and
- Launching thought-provoking content and additional resources on platforms and in formats that inspire the imagination of the target audience
Producing content that reflects the unique and novel nature of the ideas behind the thought leadership is central to successfully promoting your findings and should include exploring a range of aspects from different perspectives, and considers the opinions of industry experts, think tanks, influencers, etc. The multitude of platforms and formats now available also needs to be considered, to reach as wide an audience as possible in ways that they are most likely to engage with it, whether digital or hard copy, and ideally using a combination.
This is essential for:
- Establishing the credibility, relevance, and feasibility of the ideas put forward through your campaign,
- Raising awareness of your business as an innovative thinker with your target audience and enabling engagement opportunities,
- Creating talking points for exploring business opportunities with new and existing clients, and, potentially,
- Cultivating communities dedicated to further exploring these ideas and developing them into concepts with business applicability, and
4. Fundamental Value of the Campaign
Thought leadership is a highly intellectual undertaking, which requires the conceptualization of novel ideas, exploring the various facets associated with them, and deriving business use-cases from these ideas. It requires an intellectually-charged research input, in the form of in-depth discussions, brainstorms, and open-ended conversations with key and hard-to-reach audiences. This should then be reflected in the quality of the content published.
The audiences targeted with thought leadership often comprise individuals who appreciate the value of novel ideas and have little interest in thought leadership which goes over ground they already know. This is why they are often willing to participate in the research phase and share their own thoughts, contributing to the development of new concepts, relevant to them. This is also why the ideas behind thought leadership need to be, not only of sound logic, but feasible, and makes it all the more important that these ideas be well grounded, qualified, and thorough. Reliability can best be achieved by engaging a mix of industry and subject matter experts, key opinion leaders, and other key hard-to-reach members of your target audience.
5. Effective & Efficient Way To Understand ‘Why’ & ‘How’
Thought leadership is an exploratory activity and conducting research to flesh out any campaign requires an understanding of the hows and whys of the concept itself. Diving deep into the subject and asking these fundamental questions is key to testing not only the fundamental concepts but also the arguments that support these ideas. Primary research is a dynamic way of addressing and probing these questions, in the ways outlined above. In comparison, secondary data is static and can only provide already accessible facts and figures, and has no access to thoughts and ideas from an individual’s point of view. So, while primary sources can provide foresight into emerging and upcoming trends, secondary data can only give hindsight.
Primary sources are also the best route for exploring the answers to very specific and targeted questions. Its dynamic nature, generated through engagement with industry experts and so on, allows for the capture of thoughts, as they are being formulated. In this way, primary research allows for the best possible means to understand the whys and the hows associated with any original thought leadership concept.
In Conclusion
Primary research is an indispensable instrument to piecing together an impactful thought leadership campaign. It enables the creation of an evidence based and in-depth understanding of specific ideas and concepts through an open-ended exploration of the subject. The ideas put forward in any good thought leadership also need to be novel and unique, which is why the proprietary and hard-to-reach information gathered from primary sources makes all the difference to a thought leadership campaign.
