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Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market: Two - audience

Guest post by: Craig Badings

Article Overview: This is the second in a series of six articles on how to take your thought leadership campaign to market

Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market: Two - audience

In the first of this series on how to take your leadership campaign']);"> thought leadership campaign to market I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this. I have covered the first, Make it a strategic business imperative and now I will cover the second, know your audience

The four remaining will be covered in subsequent articles, they are:

1. Share openly
2. Cultivate the media
3. Write and speak about your campaign
4. Pump up your content online

Action 2: Know your audiences

Knowing your audience intimately should be a prerequisite for any brand campaign, let alone a thought leadership campaign.

To know your audiences means to understand their needs and to understand how you can add value to their lives. The best thought leadership ideas mainly come from the desire to enrich the quality of the target audiences’ lives.

Once a company puts itself in the shoes of its target audiences, it is better able to identify their needs and how it can influence what that audience should think, feel and do with its services or products.

How do you get to know your audience? If your marketing department hasn’t already done so, you research them: where they live, what they consume, what micro and macro issues impact their lives, what their dreams and aspirations are, what their perceptions are of your brand and what values they associate with your brand.

Thought leadership means engaging with your audience

Where possible you also talk directly with them through focus groups or online. You could live with them or go on site visits with a community leader. Combine this with customer visits with the sales team; picking up the phone and speaking to them; hosting coffee chats or customer lunches; and using that wonderful two-way, online communications tool called a blog to facilitate dialogue.

Depending on your business and the nature of the product or service you sell, it is up to you to pick which forms of communication are best suited to your customer group.

The point is you should be listening to what they have to say in order to understand the issues important in their lives as well as the factors impacting their purchasing decisions. This combined with a number of other factors such as your areas of specialty, pockets of intellectual property you may already have and others, should inform the direction you take with your thought leadership campaign.

The more you understand about your audience the more able you are to form a relationship based on trust and mutual understanding.

Remember their point of view is all about them not you. You don’t have to agree with why an audience feels or acts they way they do you merely have to understand it and know how to provide information that addresses this.

Related Articles
  The secret questions of successful thought leaders
  Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market: Three – share
  How to take your thought leadership campaign to market: One – strategic business imperative
  Thought leadership's magic cube
  Three key challenges facing thought leadership
  The nine fundamentals to thought leadership
  Thought leadership is a culture not a tactic
  Does content curation have a role in thought leadership?
  Thought leadership blueprint and tips for 2011
  Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market: Four - media
  Thought leadership gems from someone who really stands out
  The impact of thought leadership on your employees
  How can failure and thought leadership go hand in hand?
  How to fill your pipeline pre- and post-sale? Thought leadership is the answer
  Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market: Six - online
  David Ogilvy's greatest tip for thought leaders
  Does product, sales or market leadership equal thought leadership?
  Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market: Five – write and speak
  Personal Branding: Build Your Credibility
  Getting and keeping your key demographic’s attention

Article Tags: aspirations, best thought, brand campaign, business imperative, critical actions, focus groups, hasn, issues impact, knowing your audience, leadership campaign, leadership ideas, li class, li li, macro issues, marketing department, ol style, perceptions, prerequisite, target audiences, thought leadership



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