The ROI of Thought Leadership

Episode 958: The ROI of Thought Leadership, with Susan Baier

The ROI of thought leadership, with Susan Baier. Learn the importance of being a thought leader and what’s the ROI of thought leadership.

Susan Baier has been a marketing strategist for over 30 years and founded Audience Audit in 2009 to help organizations understand their best audiences based on attitudes and needs rather than just demographics or purchase behavior. In early 2020, Susan partnered with the team at Predictive ROI and embarked on an initiative to gain better insight into the attitudes and perspectives of professionals who follow experts or thought leaders in order to evaluate the ROI of thought leadership.

Stephen and Susan discuss several of the key findings from the research in this encore interview.

Study parameters: custom quantitative attitudinal segmentation study of 325 professionals. 250 respondents came from a panel of professionals in a range of industries, with the remainder from Predictive ROI’s own contacts. All respondents indicated that they follow “someone you consider an expert on a business topic or industry”.

The ROI of Thought Leadership study had an overall margin of error of +/- 5.4 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

What you’ll learn in this episode about the ROI of thought leadership:

• How Susan and her team conduct studies and use the organic data they have collected to identify common, shared attitudes between respondents and identify patterns
• Why the research revealed 4 attitudinal segments (Trusting Followers, Jaded Skeptics, Discriminating & Engaged, and Self-described Experts) and why these segments make it critical to consider the specific problems you intend to solve for your audience and how
• How the information discovered through the study can be used to better identify, reach, and be helpful and relevant to your audience
• How the results indicated that 62% of people surveyed would be more likely to recommend a business service provider if that provider is also a thought leader
• What key lessons the results from the survey offer about the ROI of thought leadership, marketing, and their impact
• Why trust is an even more vital component for connecting with your audience and all four attitudinal segments within your overall audience
• Why saying that you’re a thought leader doesn’t mean you actually are, regardless of your audience or your content, and why trust is the determining factor
• Why it is important to remember that you can’t be an expert at everything and that you need to focus on your niche
• Why navigating times of crisis successfully requires a “relentless focus” on your target audience and being helpful
• How tailoring your message to each of the four distinct groups can help you engage your audience better and can help your message resonate
• Susan and Stephen also discuss how to plant your flag of authority based on the research findings — so that when you share your expertise it lands with your audience in the exact right way because you will have built a content strategy that keeps you from saying the same thing as everyone else

Resources:

• Download the free Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and the Coronavirus
• Website: https://audienceaudit.com/
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/susanbaieraz/
• Learn more about the ROI of thought leadership by reading this blog from Audience Audit

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority book written by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library
• Connect with Stephen Woessner on LinkedIn
• Learn what’s the ROI of thought leadership by reading this blog from Predictive ROI

 

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: Full episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning on Word Nation, I’m Stephen Woessner CEO of Predictive ROI and your host. Our special encore guest today is Susan Baier, founder of Audience Audit. And I am honored to say that Susan and her team are also our research partners here at Predictive ROI. So what does that mean when we want to step into the field and collect statistically valid research and strategic insights that we can turn around and share with our private clients and with you Onward Nation.

 

We partner with Susan and her team of experts to make that happen. In fact, Susan, I are now starting to share the results and key findings from our recent study around the ROI of thought leadership. And we’re going to use the time together today during this encore to share some of those findings. Key findings like there were four attitudinal segments within the study.

 

We didn’t know that. We had no preconceived notion. We had no bias. We did not go in to try to prove that theory. It just came out in the results. And that’s staggering. In these four attitudinal segments, they it is highly likely that they also exist within your audience, within your email list, your client list, your social media following.

 

And if you’re not paying attention to what each of the segments need and want from you and what they want from your content, you will continually miss the mark. We also uncovered the percentages for how often business owners, just like you and me, recommended expert or thought leader to a colleague, or the percentage that they’re more likely to recommend a service provider who is recognized as a thought leader, or the percentage of the time that the recommendations of a thought leader.

 

They trust those recommendations even greater than the advertising by a similar provider. So Onward Nation, we are without a doubt living in the era of authority. And if you are not doubling down on being helpful to your audience, to your clients, to your prospects, and to all of the stakeholders in your business, by being generous and sharing your smarts in really focusing on how you can build trust, it is a huge missed opportunity.

 

So to help, Susan and I are going to share some of the biggest and most helpful golden nuggets with you now during this encore interview. And then you can also go to the show notes of today’s episode. You can download the free executive summary from our research. Okay. With that said, there’s a lot to get through. And Susan, welcome back to Onward Nation, my friend.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: Susan Baier’s Introduction

 

Thank you Stephen. I am just thrilled that we have this opportunity to, you know, record this encore and share it with Onward Nation. But, first, I just really appreciate you taking the time to step through the research results from this really exciting project.  So thanks very much. I know you have a schedule, and I appreciate it.

 

That’s my favorite thing to do. I’m always happy to do that. Well, thanks very much for your generosity. Let’s start with the segments, and I and I want to make sure that we kind of set the foundation and sort of get a foundation in place for Onward Nation as we slice this apart. Sure. So let’s start with the segments, because one of the and I know that you do this all the time with Audience Audit, and you’re running studies on behalf of clients all the time.

 

And I’m a layperson, as a business owner, seeing this, you know, come back and the results from our study was so one of the things that was surprising to me, I know, not surprising to you, but surprising to me, was the fact that there were four segments, especially for audience segments or attitudinal segments. Right. And then there was even distribution.

 

So, when our audience sees that, I’d love for them to have some additional context from you as to maybe why that shouldn’t be surprising and maybe why you think that they’re that, that having an even distribution made a lot of sense. So can you give us some context there? Yeah. I mean, I think, one of the things that happens when clients look at our segment results is they say, why did you pick for, segments and why are they all even, for example?

 

Okay. and I think the important thing to remember is, first of all, we didn’t pick for the results are organics. So we don’t go in saying, well, we think we’ve got these four buckets or these three buckets or these five buckets. Let’s see how people fit into those sort of predetermined groups. We have is, you know, for this study, we had a list of about 40 attitudinal statements that everybody in the study had to rate.

 

And then we go into analysis with those ratings alone. No demographics, no answers to any other questions besides those. And start analyzing the data. And what the analysis is doing is finding groups of people who are joined together by the fact that they link certain attitudes with each other. Okay, so for example, I like pickles and I like turkey.

 

And for me, turkey, I like of turkey and pickles is connected to each other. The more I like turkey, the more I like pickles. And everybody in my group is that same way. Now, there may be people in another group who also like Turkey who also like pickles, but those two things aren’t related for them at all.

 

So what our segmentation is looking for is not really how much do you agree with this? But it’s how does your agreement connect to how you feel about other things that are in the list. So measuring relationship. Yeah. So what happens is the analysis turns and turns and turns and turns. And what it’s looking for is groups of segments that are linked together for sizable groups of people.

 

So it’s not going to let you know. I think in your study we have what about 350 respondents. So it’s not going to let a segment exist. That’s three respondents just because they happen to have the same group, because it’s looking to describe this population in a healthy and helpful way. So it’s going to keep working if it finds that and then see what other relationships it gets.

 

So we end up with an organic result. Sometimes we have three segments, sometimes we have five segments or six or whatever. In your case, the best answer was four, because all of the data crunching, all of the various analyzes, we do have really high standards for what sticks things together. And the best solution to the segmentation of this audience is your four segments based on the questions we asked them that they rated.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: The Four Segments

 

Okay. So Onward Nation, the four segments. And then I’m going to ask Susan to essentially slice apart or give us her definition of what the segment represents, if you will. So the four segments are trusting followers. says first. Second is jaded skeptics, third is discriminating and engaged. And then the fourth is self-described experts.

 

And remember, as you heard in the introduction that our whole goal with this study was to evaluate thought leadership from a return on investment perspective. So, Susan, why these names and what does each of the segments, in your opinion, represent? So, it’s important to remember that the groups that we surveyed all follow thought leaders.

 

That was a predicate for participating in the study. So there’s nobody in this that outright rejects thought leadership. Okay, everybody is following thought leadership. But they’re doing it for different reasons and they’re doing it at different levels. So the first group that we have, those trusting followers, our first segment, these folks, really are excited about thought leadership.

 

They’re very enthusiastic about following thought leaders, about sharing, and referring thought leaders to other people who are sort of like them. But the deal with these folks is that they are using sort of publicly available metrics to determine who’s a thought leader and who is it. So this group is much more likely to say you’re a thought leader if you’ve got a well known podcast, if you’re a professional speaker, if you speak at a lot of events, if you published a bestselling book, those are the indicators that they’re using to say, I trust that you are a thought leader.

 

Okay. So they’re less likely this group to say, like, I really know what I’m doing, more likely to sort of feel a little less secure that they already have all the answers. And they’re looking to people that have been sort of publicly recognized as a thought leader. You know, these are the people that they see on the keynotes and who have some top selling books and all of those things.

 

They trust those things. And, that for them that defines a thought leader. Got it. Okay. So not only the proof points from the thought leader who they might be following, the pieces of content. But then also it sounds like some third party validation of that person’s thought leadership really is valued by the trusting followers, too.

 

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And when these folks have found somebody that is sort of marked as a thought leader by those sort of public validations, right? They are actively looking for those people. They are actively following them. They are trusting their advice. They are listening closely and they’re trying to incorporate what those folks are saying into the work that they are doing and the decisions that they’re making.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: The Jaded Skeptic

 

Okay. Super helpful. Okay. So then so give us a similar orientation then to jaded skeptics. Jaded skeptics are almost exactly the opposite of those people, right? Jaded experts are least likely of everyone in our survey to trust the expertise of thought leaders. And the reason is because they keep seeing the same kind of advice, the same sort of tired stories coming out of people, nothing new and exciting.

 

They see a lot of egotism and self-promotion, in the thought leaders that they see. And they just, quite frankly, don’t think that these folks have the expertise that they’re advertised to having. So they’re just a, you know, they think a lot of these folks are doing a lot more self-promotion than actually trying to be helpful to the audience that are listening to them.

 

So they’re very skeptical. In fact, if you say you are a thought leader, they’re probably likely to ignore you because they have. That term is so heavily loaded for them with all of this other stuff that doesn’t represent anything of value, but only of self-promotion and egotism to them. I love that I think I’m a jaded skeptic.

 

Well, and you follow thought leaders, right? Like, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re a jaded skeptic because you have a lot of experience in space. You see a lot of people who come and go who maybe don’t meet your qualifications for what true thought leadership is. You’re a discriminating guy, and you know, these folks have just kind of had it with this whole industry of thought leadership.

 

So they do follow thought leaders, but they are going to come in absolutely with a wallop, with a big skeptical wallop. Well, in his own words, she knows because we’ve talked about it sometimes is that, you know, the self-aggrandizing and where it’s clear that it’s about them. And not actually being helpful to the audience. And like you said, promotional when there’s something on the back end of that, you know, with some of these fingers in the audience’s wallet, it drives me nuts.

 

Yeah. And just not being helpful. Right. Like this. These people are griping about this group is much more likely to say that most experts are more focused on self-promotion than trying to provide any real help, which is important to people. Helpfulness matters. That absolutely does. And in on we’ll talk about how that syncs up with some research that Edelman just did around the topic of trust as it relates to specifically, the coronavirus, in a special report that they just did.

 

I mean, for 20 years, Edelman has built a reputation of around that word of being one of the world’s leading authorities on the topic of trust. But just this special report really hooks into what Susan just mentioned. 

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: Discriminating and Engaged Segment

 

So, Susan, in the segment of discriminating and engaged, what stood out to you there as far as who these people are?

 

So this group is really interesting. They follow a lot of experts, 3 to 5 on average regularly. What they want is someone who is clearly working hard to be helpful and be someone who has demonstrable expertise and success in what they’re talking about. So these are the folks who we both know, like Jay Baer, right? Really strong business influencer, thought leader.

 

These folks, the first group that we talked about are going to like Jay because he’s got a lot of keynotes, he’s got a lot of great books, he’s got a lot of podcasts. This group is going to like Jay because he is still operating a very successful marketing consultancy and has been successful throughout his career. Got it up for this group.

 

They’re going to be a little, they’re not just going for the big labels. They really want to see that you know what you’re doing. You’ve demonstrated success and that other people in your industry are recognizing you for that in their industry, not in the thought leaders industry. Right. So if I work in, you know, heavy equipment, I want somebody that other people in heavy equipment or my conferences or whatever are recognizing and somebody really knows what they’re doing in our space.

 

So if Jay is on stage and he’s delivering this really polished keynote and he’s got his New York Times bestselling books and all of that is lovely. But then if he takes and knits that together with, as a practitioner in the trenches with convince and convert clients the name of his firm with their clients and how that equaled X result outcome for their clients.

 

That really proves value to discriminating and engaged with our tracking with you. That’s right. And the testimonial that’s going to get these folks isn’t. His presentation was amazing, and I see him at all the biggest conferences, but it’s client testimonials that say, this guy really knows what he’s doing. He and his team are doing this every day and they’re always helpful.

 

They always have good ideas, and they’re really in the thick of it. Okay. Super helpful. Maybe I’m discriminating against okay. But all in all fairness, my guess is that business owners who enjoy in the trenches work and enjoy being the operators and enjoy taking something that might seem theoretical and then make it practical and tactical.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: Keeping Up With The Latest Trends

 

So it works in the field, if you will, that probably has some draw for them. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. The other thing about these discriminating experts, too, is that they’re more concerned that anybody that their businesses will suffer if they don’t pay attention to what’s going on in their industries, resources, tools, insights, they really feel like they need to keep up with things or they’re going to fall behind organizationally because they might miss that next trend, or okay, which speaks to why they’re so engaged with the thought leaders that they follow.

 

So our last segment is self-described experts. And so what stood out to you with this segment? So the real thing with these folks is that they feel that they have more expertise than almost any thought leader that they know they’re very experienced in their industry. They’ve seen a lot, and, you know, quite honestly, they’re very few things that other quote unquote experts can tell them that they don’t already know.

 

So do they follow thought leaders? They do, but they’re more likely than anyone else in the study to only follow 1 or 2. They’re also the most likely to say that an expert and a thought leader aren’t the same thing. Okay? It’s deep expertise is what they’re going to require for them to follow you.

 

So they’re more likely to consider you an expert than sort of this label of a thought leader. Yeah. In an audition, I would certainly not suggest, no matter where your target audience is, we’ll get into this in just a second, where your ideal client avatar is in one segment, multiple segments, you know, whatever that you would be the self-proclaimed thought leader that just feels yucky no matter what segment you’re trying to appeal to.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

 The ROI of Thought Leadership: Asking People Which Best Represents Them

 

So don’t call yourself that. That should not be part of your content strategy. And so, Susan, is it possible? So I think the way that we structured this, although I’m asking for your clarification as I’m asking this question too, is that somebody is in a segment they’re not in, they’re not represented in multiple segments, I think is the question I’m asking.

 

Right. So in our analysis, we assign a segment to each person based on the affiliation they have mathematically with this group of defining characteristics. Now, it doesn’t mean that an individual doesn’t always have some resonance with other segments, right? It’s not that. And ultimately we all know marketing is 1 to 1, right?

 

But because this work was done the way it was done and it is statistically reliable, what’s going to happen if you ask people which of these best represents them, which sounds most like them? Most people are going to pick one because it aligns most closely with sort of the group of things that they think. Yeah. As you just walked us through sort of a foundation, if you will, for each of the segments, like when you went through, I knew when you mentioned trusting followers, I knew that wasn’t me.

 

When you went through Jaded Skeptics, I thought, okay, there’s some interesting characteristics there. And some commonality with my own belief and value system. Yeah, but when you went to discriminating and engaged, I’m like, okay, this is probably my tribe here. Yeah. Self-described experts. That’s not me. And so I think if I’m tracking with you and as we think about our own ideal client avatar for our businesses, you know that Onward Nation represents that, that Onward Nation business owners would look at these four segments and think, how does this best align with who we ideally want to serve?

 

And how does that match up with one of the four segments? And then we create content to that. Am I tracking? That’s right. That’s exactly right. And I think pretty much anybody doing marketing, content development, whatever would agree that the whole idea with things like your email marketing or your social content or the resources you’re building, right, is to try to get people into the place where you can have a more one on one conversation with them.

 

That’s the whole funnel model. Like that’s the example, right? Let’s get them interested. And the way these segments are used is to help you and the folks who are listening and Onward Nation, from a thought leadership standpoint, understand that there are four major kinds of thought leadership followers, and they’re very different from each other. And what they are looking for is very different.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: The Depth of Relevance

 

The kinds of things that are going to mark you as a thought leader are very different. How they feel about their own level of expertise is very different. And those can all be fodder for an understanding of what the best way is to talk with them and reach them, and be relevant to them so that they don’t immediately look at your stuff and go away.

 

In fact, they say, oh, that’s interesting, I’d like to learn more. Well, in candidly, I mean, could there be anything more fundamental to ROI? Right. That’s right. It’s relevance, right? That’s what generates ultimately ROI, relevance and origin in initial conversations, continuing depth of relevance to the problem that you can help me solve as we go along, that sort of conversation path.

 

And ultimately, my determination of what you do is so relevant to me that I’m going to pay for it over paying for something from someone else. Well, so let’s take that piece, because you did such a great job of defining and giving us a good foundation there. So hopefully it doesn’t seem like really abrupt to Onward Nation that I want to jump into.

 

I’m really showing my bias here because one of the really cool golden nuggets, at least that I, grabbed hold of right away. And I should also say Onward Natin to because, just for full context and transparency. So when Susan and I first started talking about this project, you know, we’re both, you know, giddy about it and thinking, oh my gosh, well, what have we learned this and what have we learned that.

 

And with that said, you know, once I shared my initial fuzzy OSM and why and how I thought this was going to be really helpful for you Onward Nation as well as our Predictive ROI clients. Candidly, I removed myself from the process and the reason being is because I am not a trained researcher.

 

Have I been involved in research projects? Private sector as wealthy university? Sure. Have I designed surveys before? Basic ones? Yes, this is outside that. So I knew that in order for this to be a high quality project and for it to be statistically valid, I could not be a part of it. And also I did not want to inject my bias into it.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: The Research Methodology

 

So Susan designed the research methodology. She designed the survey instrument. She helped us, actually build the sample and the panel and all of that. So I want to make sure that I give one thank you into the right kudos, because this was absolutely something that Susan built from the ground up. I had some input into it, but I did not guide the results in or guide the survey in any way, shape or form.

 

So yeah, when I saw this result come out of it, but I’m about to say it this long winded kind of prelude, I was so excited that this was one of the results, because certainly I did not, like, steer it toward that is what I’m trying to get at. So, and please correct me if I’m sharing this incorrectly, Susan, but 62% of the people thought that thought leadership that they would be around the topic of thought leadership, 62% of the people would be more likely to recommend something that they heard recommended from a thought leader.

 

I think I did a really horrible job of team that up. So could you correct me there? Because it’s a really cool find, you know? So that stat is that 62% of the people that we surveyed would be more likely to recommend a business service provider who, if that provider was also a recognized thought leader to me, is number one.

 

One nice job of cleaning up my bungling. First of all, you’re just blending a couple of things because we also did see that a majority of our respondents would also be more likely to recommend a product or service that was recommended by a thought leader that they trusted. So let’s go through both of those in depth. 

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: Be Assumptive

 

But let’s go back to the first one and then share. You’re like, what does that really mean. Yeah. Well you know, it’s to your point about earlier you called it bias. Really. It’s about assumptions that we all have about things. And one of the things I think is really important when you do a study like this is to make sure that you test those assumptions, because if you don’t ask the question, you could go on thinking your assumption is still true.

 

And maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. So knowing that your assumption, because of the business you run and the work you’ve done in your career, is that thought leadership helps drive ROI purchase, right? Profitability, all of those things. Obviously, we’re going to have a question in the survey that says, you know, assuming you’re happy with their service, if a provider was a thought known as a thought leader, would that make you?

 

How would that make you feel about recommending them? And they have a range of options. You know, we didn’t say. Wouldn’t that make you more likely to recommend them? That’s a question built with bias in. Right. So they have a whole range. And what we saw to your point was that, you know, almost two thirds of these folks said, yeah, assuming I was happy with their service, the fact that they thought leader two would make me even more likely to recommend them to someone else.

 

And then we also saw that about half of respondents have made a business purchase based on a recommended recommendation from an expert or a thought leader. And 62% of them said that the thought leaders recommendation for that service would have a greater impact on their consideration than advertising by that provider. Okay, so that’s fascinating.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: The Influence of a Thought Leader

 

So why does that stick out to you? Is being relevant to the study? I mean, I can think of several things, but again I don’t want to bias you. So why does that stick out to you? Well, I mean, first of all, people sometimes underestimate the impact of advertising, right? Just because I say advertising didn’t have an impact on me doesn’t mean it doesn’t.

 

But this is almost two thirds of our respondents saying that if a thought leader recommended someone, however, they define a thought leader, as we talked about in the segmentation, it would have a bigger impact in their current thought on considering that service provider than advertising would. And I don’t think that says you shouldn’t do advertising.

 

I think what it shows us is how powerful thought leadership can be for people across the spectrum who look at thought leaders, even the ones who think a lot of thought leaders are B.S. and egotistical, and whatever the people they do follow have an impact on the services that they choose to purchase. If a thought leader says, hey, I love this tool or you need to read this book, or these folks are the best at building pools, that has an impact.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: A Content On Advertising

 

Okay, so let’s take that a little bit deeper using. Let’s go back to Jay Baer for a second. So if I’m tracking you, if Jay is, you know, talking about some research and then this is how we apply to convince and convert. These were the results in oh by the way these were the tools XYZ Xcom 123.org, whatever that we used in order to deliver these results.

 

It’s likely then that x, y, z and one, two, three are probably going to get some favorable impact as a result of that. If somebody in the audience thinks of Jay as a thought leader. Right. And I think it doesn’t necessarily just have to be in the audience. Right? I mean, in a live audience. I mean, you know, Jay does this a lot.

 

Jay has some great posts on how to do video and the tools he uses to pull off his video stuff and all these things he’s done over the years. And people can absorb that in a variety of ways through his talks. If he’s talking about it, through his blog posts or his podcasts, if he’s doing that, but also if he allowed one of the providers to say, Jay thinks we’re the best tool for this in their advertising.

 

So there’s a, you know, there’s sort of advertising the vehicle and then there’s advertising the content. What is the content of that advertising? And I think it’s important to recognize the power of thought leadership across the board. I think that’s what this measure shows us is the thought leadership, the recommendation of a thought leader as content and whatever platform is going to be very compelling relative to other things.

 

Okay. Well said. Love that. So let’s see if we can. I shouldn’t say let’s see if we can tie this into trust, because I think that there’s ties all over this internal trust. But it is, you know, as you and I were talking about in the green room before we started recording, I’m a big fan of Edelman’s research around, trust.

 

Read this blog about the ROI of thought leadership from Audience Audit

 

The ROI of Thought Leadership: You Must Always Be Helpful 

 

And as I mentioned, just a few minutes ago, they did a special coronavirus report. I think it was in mid-March. If I’m remembering the timeline correctly and Onward Nation, you can Google Edelman, special report Coronavirus Trust. You’ll find and you’ll be able to go to the Edelman website and download the report. One of the things that I found very interesting, and it feels to me like it dovetails together, but would love to get your professional opinion is that one of the findings is, that we’re actually two of the findings that stood out to me was one that trust always an important topic.

 

But trust couldn’t be any more important today than it ever has been in human history. It is so incredibly important that what people want now more than ever is that whoever they’re paying attention to is a trusted authority, a trusted advisor, a trusted expert, and they have little attention span for anybody who doesn’t, actually provide them with something that is useful.

 

And into that, this is the time to be helping and not selling. And it seems like some of those findings really dovetail nicely into our research to that, that this is the time to be full on teaching and sharing and being super generous with your expertise, as opposed to giving the guise of that with some sort of conversion downstream, like some sort of like, yep, you know, setting somebody up for the sale.

 

Yeah. No, I think what we saw in our study is we saw help for helpfulness being a pervasive theme in the definition of all of these segments. Right. Our first segment, a little less experienced, a little less likely to say, you know, I really know what’s going on. They’re looking for helpfulness. The second segment, the jaded and skeptical.

 

Their big gripe is that people aren’t being helpful. They’re only self promoting help from this. Incredibly important for the discriminating helpfulness, also important for the experts. That’s what people want. So that’s absolutely true. I think the laden word in here is trust, because people don’t trust things for the same reasons. Right? You think about Instagram influencers who are, you know, on beaches and all of that kind of stuff.

 

Well, how are they generating trust? They’re generating it by lots of pictures. That looks like they’re having a great time in these places. Associations with well-known brands and people think, oh, well, if they’re working with so-and-so, they must really be great at this travel stuff, you know? Whatever. Right? But then we saw different groups in our survey really having different levels of what’s required to gain their trust.

 

And I think that’s what’s important for people to understand who we’re listening. You’re not trusted as a thought leader just because you say you’re a thought leader. Okay. Even for our first group, who is the most trusting, the most willing to believe a lot of their trust is coming from, as you pointed out, third party ratification, that they know what they’re doing.

 

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The ROI of Thought Leadership: Walk The Talk

 

Okay. So I think we have to get off this idea. I have a young man that I was sort of mentoring earlier in my advertising career, and he, I had started my own business, and we got together for drinks and I asked him sort of what he was doing, and he just finished his MBA program. Smart guy.

 

But he said, well, I think what I want to do is be a consultant. And I said, that’s terrific. How are you going to learn what you need to know to be a consultant? Right. Because just saying you’re a consultant doesn’t mean that’s going to fly with anybody who knows. You just got out of your MBA program, right?

 

It takes work. It takes expertise. Just like thought leadership. Okay, so we have to get off this idea that just labeling yourself a thought leader or throwing out a self-published book that you can hold up that says, I wrote a book, makes you a thought leader. It doesn’t, I don’t care how big your stage is. Just because you say you’re a thought leader doesn’t mean you are.

 

But what we saw in our study was how differently people think about the level of trust. You have to gain with them to be considered a thought leader or an expert. And it’s different and it’s different. And that bar should be high, shouldn’t it? Well, I don’t I mean I think the helpful bar should be high. Yes. Okay.

 

I think that the expertise bar can be varying places depending on what your game is. Right. Like it’s sort of pointless to try to make yourself a thought leader for these most discriminating groups who want years of expertise and years of business success. If you don’t have that right, like, that’s like putting a clipart of a conference table full of people on your website when you’re only two employees.

 

Okay? It’s just you can’t. That’s not going to be very sustainable. Well, it’s not, it’s not genuine. It’s not genuine. And people are going to find out. Right. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a population for you that will trust you and will find your stuff helpful, even if it’s not the experience of 30 years, because maybe they don’t have that much experience either in their beginning stages, right?

 

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The ROI of Thought Leadership: Determining Someone’s Depth of Expertise

 

When Drew and I, so Onward Nation context, Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute in a couple months ago, Drew was back for an encore where he and I walked through our most recent book, entitled Sell With Authority. And Susan and Drew have been friends longer than I. And Drew have been friends long time.

 

Yeah, a long time in one of those essentially kind of the ten truths or ten kind of proof points, if you will, Onward Nation about thought leadership or if somebody is an authority is the fact. Do they have a depth of expertise, like can they actually teach around a particular topic? And I think what we found in Susan would love to get your point of view on this.

 

I think what we found in the results was that the four segments, though, quickly figure out whether or not somebody actually has substance like something of or is it like smoke and mirrors? Right. Yeah. Oh, they’re going to figure it out. And I think that, you know, and this isn’t just about being competent or incompetent, Stephen.

 

This is about sort of we know some of our groups really want a depth of expertise in their industry. Okay. So say you’re an agency that does a lot of work with associations. Okay. Then if you own that agency and you’ve been working with association marketing for 20 years or whatever, that’s great. You have that.

 

If you’re a generalist agency and maybe you’ve done an association to, but your expertise is really in email marketing. Okay, then the depth of experience in associations isn’t going to fly very well unless you’ve got a lot of email experience with associations like you. Just sort of part of this is thinking about how it’s so important to realize that we’re not for everyone.

 

We can’t be for everyone. And that’s okay. And it’s okay. It’s good not to be for everyone because the less likely you are for everyone, the more appealing you’re going to be for the groups that see you as being for them. That’s just the reality. And I think that we all need to think about sort of where our expertise is and where we are most likely to be trusted, and how do we build on that?

 

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The ROI of Thought Leadership: Being Super Focused Around a Particular Niche

 

And, you know, it can change over time. I didn’t start out as the expert that he is now. He had a lot of acumen. He’s a great presenter. He tells amazing stories. And earlier in his career, he was still a thought leader for the things he knew how to do. But it’s not like today. So this isn’t something that’s, you know, it’s carved in stone forever.

 

But certainly I think we need to look at the expertise that we can really bring to bear for each of these groups and whether they’re going to find that it meets the bar that they expect. Well, and so there’s some really great nuggets there. And one of those is around niche and getting narrow and really developing a depth no matter who you’re trying to attract, you know, out of the weather segment.

 

But getting super, super focused on and specializing around a particular niche. And so that when we talk about the ROI thought leadership so that everything that you’re investing all the content that you’re trying to create, Onward Nation is focused on a particular industry, a particular niche, because it’s going to be that much more helpful because it’s going to be that much more relevant.

 

Right, Susan? Or I mean, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be an industry. It could be an expertise. So my company Audience Audit does research work with agencies. And as a result, we do work for every possible kind of client you can imagine. You would not believe the topics that we have researched. And so as a result, we are not solely experts in higher education segmentation.

 

We do a lot of that, but we also do a lot of other stuff. Our expertise is in attitudinal segmentation research that applies across a lot of things. And so I think that you just have to decide what your niche is and just go for it. You know, some, some less industry specific niches can get you very nice placements and thought leadership speaking opportunity at like marketing B2B conferences or B2C or online marketing or, you know, those kinds of things that I just think it’s most of us don’t think about it enough, you know, we think about what we sell and not how that dovetails with where we’re trying to help people and how what we’re offering can help them.

 

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The ROI of Thought Leadership: How To Market Your Way During a Crisis

 

I agree with that. I think most business owners, and this is not a great characteristic of us, especially in a time of crisis like we are today. Yeah. Is that we I don’t want to say aimlessly wander, because right now there’s not a lot of time for wandering.

 

I think that there’s the desperation of trying to sell what it is, whatever it is that we produce, whatever service offering it is to whoever will buy it. That’s right. And I certainly understand the rationalization for it that you’ve got payroll to make. I get it and understand it. Yeah. We’ve all been there for sure. Of course, in times of crisis, maybe we have to knit together the PNL on a monthly basis until we get through the crisis.

 

But I will also say that there is plenty of research of which I shared, a lot of it. And thank you again for your help in distilling and curating. As I was getting ready for my solo cast that we aired not too long ago, and that was, are there opportunities to market your way through the crisis in a progressive way?

 

Yes. Are there ways and strategies that other companies in six previous recessions have marketed their way through that particular crisis, their particular crisis, and they came roaring out the other side? Yes. Why? Because they invested in R&D. They invested in marketing when everybody else was cutting and they got super, super focused Onward Nation, just like Susan is recommending that you do too.

 

And yes, I understand that when you’re in a time of crisis, it’s hard to separate in and have discipline. I get it, but if you do the things that Susan’s talking about, then when we do come out of this, which we will, because we have every other time in human history, when we do come out the other side, you’ll be ready to roar out of the recession while your competitors are still aimlessly wandering and spinning their wheels.

 

Yeah, and I really think that the difference between the people who are successful, the organizations that are a pull out of this and the ones that are and the ones that we’ve seen do this before and be successful is their absolutely relentless focus on their target audiences. Yes. What they’re struggling with, what they need and how sort of that toolkit that we have of stuff we can do matches up.

 

Right, so that our content and our marketing is less about what we sell and more about we get you and we can help. This is a problem that we’re very good at solving, whether that’s segmentation research to help you understand your audiences or whether that’s, you know, helping associations make the most of retaining their members or putting on great trade shows or, you know, whatever it is, it’s it’s more about the help people need and how we can connect that with the work that we do, as opposed to the work that we do, and trying to find people who might buy that.

 

Yeah. And, you know, that might sound like a subtle shift or might sound like a big shift for our listeners, but it’s the right shift. It’s the right point of view because then you’re truly being helpful. Yeah. And then things like content and stuff become a lot easier. I mean, I think that as your listeners become more familiar with this research and the things you’re going to share with them, what I would encourage them to do if they’re if they’re pursuing thought leadership efforts individually or within their organizations, look at those four segments and think about what you would say to each one of those people if they were in front of you? What would you say about your expertise that would get them interested in hearing more from you? 

 

And I will guarantee that it will need to be a little different for all those groups. And that’s where you can see how the content that you might provide would be, might be different. The tone might be different. The resources that you might have available might be different.

 

And for me, that’s really where the rubber hits the road in this. I mean, I’ve been a marketing strategist for 30 years, and most of the most frustrating marketing engagements for me, for when we were sitting around trying to come up with what we should say that would resonate. And this kind of research tells you what you should say to different people.

 

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The ROI of Thought Leadership: Understanding The Problem

 

And that’s where the success is. That’s where the ROI comes from. When Drew and I were teaching in January, this past January in Florida at our workshop, he said something that I thought was really compelling, and it totally stuck with me. And he said, your content strategy, you should prove to your audience, you should come to your audience with trying to be interesting for your audience, which means being helpful.

 

It’s about them. It’s not about you. So be interesting and not interested, right? Don’t come to them and show how interested you are in them being your next client. Because I feel lucky. Yeah, right. And instead come to them with how I can be helpful to you during this crisis? Yep. And then at some point they will come to you and say, oh my gosh, Susan, every time I turned around and I had a question there, you were to be helpful to me.

 

This is amazing. And now let me talk with you about this project, right? Yep, yep. I think that I tell clients that we need to meet our prospective customers where they are, which is in the problem that they’re struggling with, and then we need to get them to walk with us to our solution. Because if you just show up and say, I sell this, you’re losing a lot of goodwill and quite frankly, opportunities from people who don’t wouldn’t in a minute think that what you sell can fix what they’re struggling with.

 

We got to meet them. We got to meet them about that problem. I love your example because, like, that’s always felt like yucky. But it’s now more than ever, as Edelman’s research shows, as our research shows, that if there was ever a time that you should be helping and not selling and being helpful to your audience, it is now Onward.

 

And, you know, brands are getting slammed for selling and not being helpful now. It’s so obvious. It’s so painfully obvious, you know? And then you have brands like Zappos, which are famous for their customer service, and now you can call their customer service and ask anything about anything. They’re like the library brands and the old days, the reference librarians that you could call up and find out, like when was the Magna Carta signed or whatever, and they’d go look it up.

 

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The ROI of Thought Leadership: Deliver The Best Solution for The Problem

 

Well, that’s what Zappos is doing with their customer service team. You can literally they will help you find a grocery store that’s open in your town. They will connect. I mean, they are being relentlessly helpful. And it’s a great example of a brand that just said, you know, we’re not going to push shoes on people right now because people are scared and we’re going to harness the power that we have in our organization and the expertise that we have to deliver something that is truly and fundamentally helpful.

 

And that’s who people are paying attention to now. Absolutely. And in the amount it’ll be interesting. And I’m sure at some point there’ll be studies on this. But the economic value of all of that goodwill, goodwill. That’s right, I think it will be tremendous. Yeah. And you can’t buy it. No. You got to make it this has been so awesome.

 

I am so very grateful, for you being generous with your smarts, as you always are. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to talk. Oh, my gosh, it is just a delight and a pleasure to have you here. 

 

So before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice, any other insights that you think we missed and that should be shared. And then please tell Onward Nation the best way to connect with you. 

 

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The ROI of Thought Leadership: How to Connect with Susan

 

Well, I think there’s a lot of information. It’s a little bit like a fire, as you know. Well, we asked a lot in this study. So I think the first thing to do is go through it and then the second thing I would encourage people is just try starting with the segments and imagining a marketing strategy and a content strategy that builds out of that instead of the other way around.

 

Instead of saying how, how can we? How’s our current marketing strategy aligning with this group or that group? Try the exercise of starting with what you know about that group, and all of the great data that came out of this study, and see what happens if you build a strategy up, and I think you’ll find things you didn’t expect to consider, and you’ll also see things that maybe don’t make so much sense for this particular group, might make more sense for other segments.

 

So definitely I would encourage that. And those conversations are always fun to have. So contacting me [email protected], Audience Audit on the web. and always happy to answer questions that people have about this. And of course, any other questions that come along as you go through this and you’re working with your clients on this stuff.

 

Happy to have those conversations. Maybe, maybe come back. We’ll do some webinars and some stuff like that. That sounds awesome. I will absolutely take you up on that offer and on, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to Susan’s words of wisdom. And I sure hope that you do. The key is to take everything that she so smartly distill down for you to take that into, apply it, and accelerate your results because of it.

 

And Susan, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am grateful, my friend, that again, you said yes to come back for an encore and generously shared your expertise, insights and wisdom as you always do, and help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, Susan. Great pleasure as always, Stephen. 

 

This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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