Thought leadership and content marketing: Rivalry or romance?

A pop quiz.

You’re reading something educational and informative that presents an interesting perspective on timely issues and pretty clearly wants to sell you something. Which of the following is it?

1. A news article

2. Branded content

3. Thought leadership

4. Something else

OK—that was a trick question. The answer is: e. All of the above.

Many of us in the content world get awfully tripped up by—and obsessive about—labels. Perhaps it’s because many of us developing B2B content come from the objective world of journalism, but for a long time we’d die on the hill of swearing that “thought leadership” isn’t marketing and is, in fact, several cuts above … shudder … content marketing. But does the label really matter anyway?

Our objective should be to produce content that resonates deeply and creates the most insight and impact for our target audience. It should begin by seeking to understand what our audience truly needs and working backward from that North Star to determine what works best. Yet too many content efforts begin by defining the end product (“We need more thought leadership!”), which serves the needs of the company rather than the customer.

So what are the characteristics of true thought leadership? It’s content marketing—of course it is—even if its role in the customer journey is subtle. But just as traditional media content can run the gamut from straight news reports to puffy celebrity interviews that are clearly promoting a movie, so too can thought leadership when we apply that label to everything: interviews with CEOs, blog posts, surveys, long-form reports, and everything in between.

That’s why a lot of content published today as “thought leadership” really isn’t. That’s not a knock: Content can still be (and should be!) interesting and engaging and provide value, even if it’s not really thought leadership. The best approach is to ignore formats and channels and instead home in on three principal attributes that make thought leadership genuinely distinctive:

• Original insight. What separates thought leadership from other content is the extent to which it provides true insight—a new way of thinking about an issue or solving a problem. When this lens is applied, it’s easy to see why a lot of content fails to meet the bar. For example, surveys—increasingly a mainstay of “thought leadership”—are just informative content without the critical next step of explaining how results can and should be interpreted and how that should influence the user’s response.

• Strategic importance. Thought leadership is ultimately about selling stuff—obviously. But its real strategic role comes at the top of the marketing funnel, in its ability to sell an organization’s intellectual capital and convince users that smart people with good ideas and expertise can help them solve whatever problem bedevils them. Over time, the accumulation of that capital engenders trust and authority—which is why thought leadership plays an increasingly critical role in the content marketing tool kit.

• Quality. Quality. Quality. We’ve been banging this drum for a long time, but it’s increasingly important in a world where generative AI can create passable content in a flash. Developing true thought leadership is really hard. It takes time, effort, care—and a lot of resources.

Thanks to increasing user demands and the growing influence of marketing techniques, “thought leadership” has itself become an umbrella term for all sorts of B2B content. But true thought leadership plays a specific role in the content marketing universe. It builds reputations, deepens relationships, and ultimately helps drive revenue—and its value is increasing, thanks to its ability to deliver exponential impact in a world of commoditized content.