Measuring Thought Leadership Efforts

One of the most difficult aspects of any thought leadership efforts a company decides to pursue, is measuring the impact that those efforts have managed to generate that can benefit the company. Plenty of the advantages of thought leadership that companies can get need to be measured in ways that are beyond the attention span of a single business, however, the most straightforward measurement is in the form of direct sales that are linked to the thought leadership efforts from the company.

Metrics

No matter what the company wants to achieve through its thought leadership efforts, it’s important for the sales department inside the company to include these types of campaigns in their performance metrics, so that the source of each lead can be connected to the thought leadership efforts. Another way for companies to keep track of their thought leadership efforts, and how effective they are is by directly asking the customers what motivated them to make a purchase, or begin any sort of relationship with the company, in the form of a survey. Otherwise, the companies can keep track of the performance of their thought leadership efforts by analyzing social media sentiment, or mentions in media outlets. However, the latter one is a great way for companies to figure out how they and their messages are connecting with the target audience, instead of simply the thought leadership efforts from the business.

Customers interest

When companies invest in public relations efforts and thought leadership content, they create the content, publish it, and then promote it, such as advertising, public relations efforts, and announcements about it, and sharing it on social media platforms. If the thought leadership content itself is high-quality, valuable, and effective at getting the audience to understand what the company is trying to convey, then the requests for more content, whether in the same or other formats, as other types of promotional offers from the company are going to increase.

That means, if a company is known as a thought leader, or an industry leader in its market, it’s going to get requests for more information on the subjects that it has previously covered through its thought leadership content, such as requests for quotes, lectures, webinars, or even complete articles on various platforms or even trade journals. This way, instead of the company having to force its way into the minds of the target audience, as well as the market, the opposite happens where the market starts pulling the company into itself due to the interest. Another way that companies can generate this type of interest is by inspiring customer loyalty to the point where the customers become brand advocates, instead of simply customers to a company. That means, companies need to have great products and high-quality and valuable thought leadership content that’s going to motivate past customers to advocate for the business and its solutions to their social circles.

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