The key to effective marketing is differentiated content

If you think ‘thought leadership’ sounds like a phrase invented by overconfident management consultants, you’d be right. But, you’d be wrong to dismiss it: thought leadership has become a buzzword in the legal sector too.

Even a cursory scan of the activities of top law firms turns up a host of publications aimed at impressing would-be clients and keeping existing ones. Clifford Chance has a whole webpage of thought leadership, ranging from global risk to growing economies. Norton Rose Fulbright keeps up a steady stream of updates from different geographies, as do Linklaters, Allen & Overy and many others. Baker & McKenzie’s website even looks like Deloitte’s and its report on third-party supply chain risk would give any Big Four firm a decent run for its money.

Large proportions of marketing budgets are clearly going towards ‘content marketing’. But, how can you make sure it is good and has an impact?

Quality content

Let’s start with quality. Although what readers like, and don’t like, will always be a subjective choice, there are some basic lessons law firms can learn from consultants (who’ve been writing this stuff for longer).

The first is about differentiation: legal counsel, like executives in every function, are bombarded with information these days, so saying something new and saying it relatively quickly (attention spans are short) is essential.

Most professionals writing thought leadership don’t read what their competitors have done; they’re also pushed for time and will delegate the research to junior people if at all possible. The result is that much thought ‘leadership’ is really thought ‘followship’; the worst simply state the obvious.

A second aspect to quality is appeal: not just whether you can get someone to read a piece in the first place (hint: snappy titles help), but whether a piece has been written in such a way that people will remember it.

Credibility is hugely important: sharing and analysing hard data is crucial if you want someone to forward your piece to a colleague (86 per cent of executives say they do this, but only if they think the material is relevant and robust).

Finally, most readers want to know what they should do – but too much thought leadership tells people what to think, not how to act.

Get all these bits – new thinking, appeal, credibility and call to action – right and you won’t go far wrong.

Measuring impact

But, does that mean thought leadership is having an impact? The problem is that impact is hard to measure – far harder than quality, in fact. It’s something the consulting industry hasn’t cracked, even though it has a decade of experience behind it.

Trying to join up the dots internally to find out how much work has been won on the back of a publication doesn’t work. The partners who wrote or sponsored a given piece have an incentive to claim more success than they may deserve.

Moreover, some firms claim to publish thought leadership because it enhances their brand, a nebulous outcome that’s even harder to quantify. Technology offers some alternatives: firms can and do track the number of downloads a publication has, but are the right people downloading it?

Again, the consulting industry’s experience may be helpful. Three
quarters of senior business people
say that thought leadership is the most effective way of marketing to them.
That’s more than direct mail and other traditional marketing ploys and on a
par with personal contact.

Indeed, the most effective way of getting your thought leadership to your prospects and clients is to deliver it to them, either in person or via email. Nothing communicates client care better than a simple statement along the lines of “we’ve published this enormous report, which I know you don’t have time to read. But, if you turn to page 23, you’ll find some data on the point we were talking about last month”.

Thirty per cent of executives say that they take thought leadership into account when they’re shortlisting consulting firms for a piece of work. A similar proportion say that thought leadership has a significant impact on their opinions about a firm.

But, here’s the killer statistic: 16 per cent of executives¹ say they’ve bought work from a consulting firm as a direct result of reading their thought leadership. That’s a far higher number than most people think.

While we may not be able to measure the impact of an individual publication, there’s no doubt that thought leadership is far more than a buzzword.

Fiona Czerniawska is a leading commentator on the consulting industry (www.sourceforconsulting.com). She gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Rachel Ainsworth to this article.