Thought Leadership Insights, Episode 1

In this first episode of Thought Leadership Insights, FT Longitude Research co-founders Rob Mitchell and James Watson, together with managing director Gareth Lofthouse, share the firm’s thought leadership predictions for the year ahead. They highlight six key trends from the company’s recently published 12 Predictions for 2017 that will impact the evolution of thought leadership this year, and identify key lessons and strategies to help B2B marketers adapt to these changing priorities.

Read all 12 predictions, including tips on emerging trends in research tools, editorial techniques and tactics for audience engagement, here.

Topics covered

00:00 Introduction
00:30 Rob’s thought leadership predictions
01:30 What is omni-channel thought leadership?
02:30 Are companies doing this?
03:30 Designing content for different channels
05:30 The issue of activation
08:30 Dealing with time pressures
09:30 Gareth’s thought leadership predictions
12:00 Measuring thought leadership’s success
14:00 Using intelligent content to drive sales
15:45 James’s thought leadership predictions
16:30 What is structured journalism?
18:45 Multi-media incorporation
20:15 Tackling content promotion challenges
21:45 Emerging technologies for B2B marketers

Or read the full transcript here.

Listen to our other podcasts:

Episode 2: The power of thought leadership

Episode 3: Interview with Alison Tattersall from Barclays

Podcast transcript

Fergal Byrne (Host): Welcome to the FT Longitude Research podcast, Thought Leadership Insights, with senior figures from the firm together with leading marketing executives, explore key trends shaping the evolution of thought leadership and marketing. I’m your host, Fergal Byrne.

In this first episode of thought leadership insights, FT Longitude Research co-founders Rob Mitchell and James Watson, together with managing director Gareth Lofthouse share the firm’s thought leadership predictions for the year ahead. Welcome to the podcast, Rob.

Rob Mitchell: Thank you, Fergal.

FB: What’s the background here for the predictions?

RM: The background to these predictions is something we try and do every year, and it’s to ask the team that we’ve got here at FT Longitude what they see as the key trends in thought leadership, and what they see as the key changes that they expect to see over the next 12 months. We ask them to look at the whole range of different aspects of thought leadership from thought leadership strategy, to how research gets done, through to how content and research gets activated or launched to its intended audience.

FB: What predictions are you going to talk about today, Rob?

RM: I’m going to talk about two predictions. One is this idea of omni-channel thought leadership, which is a term that’s perhaps more familiar from the world of retail than it is from thought leadership. It’s an interesting concept that I’d like to share some thoughts about. The second is this idea of ideas needing better activation. We’re very used to seeing great insights coming from thought leadership. This is the idea that marketers need to focus more on how they take those ideas to market.

FB: Right, that’s very interesting. Omni-channel, I guess we’ve heard it and seen it in implemented retail and financial services. What is it at heart, omni-channel, what’s the idea here?

RM: Well I think the idea is about offering consumers or your audience a seamless experience regardless of how they engage with your marketing. If you think about it in retail context it’s the idea that you may browse for something you want to purchase in a shop, and then you go and research it online, and then you maybe buy it on a mobile channel once you’ve compared prices across different retailers. I think when it comes to thought leadership, you can apply a similar line of thinking.

Until fairly recently, thought leadership was delivered across a fairly small number of channels. You’d be perhaps pushing out your content to an audience via email, or leaving a physical copy or report on your client’s desk, or maybe pulling them in through web advertising. But, as it is with retail, the world has become much more complex. Your audiences is now used to moving between different channels and formats pretty promiscuously.

FB: Where are companies with this at the moment?

RM: I think it’s still relatively early days, and I’m not sure there are many B2B companies that are offering a truly seamless omni-channel experience when it comes to thought leadership. I do think it’s the direction that things are moving. Following the way that we’ve seen this in retail as you pointed out, in financial services as well, marketers need to think about how their audiences consume content, and recognise that they’re pretty agnostic when it comes to channels, when it comes to devices, and when it comes to formats. They expect to be able to move from one to the other and have a seamless experience.

But what I would say is I think for many companies at the moment, that experience is not very seamless. You may visit or look at some content online, and then go to another part of the website and find that the branding is a bit different, the messaging is a bit different. So it isn’t very seamless at the moment. I think most B2B organisations will probably recognise that and there’s some way to go. But I think this is something we’ll see more of in the next two or three years.

FB: Right, that’s interesting. I can see the delivery aspect of it. What about when it comes to planning and design? Is there certain kinds of content that’s more appropriate for certain media, for certain channels, and is that important to think about that at the earlier stages?

RM: Absolutely. I think that omni-channel is also about the content strategy, so it’s about having a seamless consistent message across all of your content. This is something that I think many became as they’re starting to think about perhaps again, they’re not quite there yet. So, in other words, when you’re thinking about thought leadership, when you’re thinking about your content, you need to think about the message you want to get across to that audience. Then you need to make sure that message is delivered in a seamless way across all the various formats and channels that you’re using from a marketing standpoint.

FB: Right. Then when it comes to delivery, can you talk a little bit about that side of it? Does this mean that you need to have more IT people involved or does the process change? Have you any thoughts on that, Rob?

RM: I think the first stage of the process is to work out where your audience is hanging out. So where are they consuming your content? I think very often companies don’t know enough about that. They don’t do enough research on what are the kind of ways in which their audiences consume content. Are they accessing it via social media? Are they accessing it via events, or email marketing, or web-search? There’s various ways in which they could be doing it.

I think once you know that, then you can start thinking about how you build the content across the various channels that are most widely used by your audience. That gives you this idea of prioritisation because you need to focus on the channels and formats that are most relevant to your audience. Omni-channel doesn’t mean that you have to do absolutely everything across all channels, because that would be probably far too complex and far too expensive, quite frankly, so you need to prioritise and ensure that the audience you’re trying to reach is getting the delivery, and is getting the content, and the channels that are most suitable to them.

FB: You talked also about a second prediction. You talked about this question of activation and this seems to be a burning issue I think for many content marketers. What’s the second prediction, Rob, that you’d like to discuss?

RM: I think going back a couple of years, many B2B marketers would invest a large proportion of their budgets on the research and the content and perhaps not enough on the activation. What we’re seeing is a little bit of a re...