The term thought leadership comes up often, but it may be confusing to some.
Despite the phrase sounding like corporate jargon, it does exactly what it says in the tin: positions your brand and its people as experts in their industry by sharing innovative and authoritative content that showcases real expertise.
As a strategy itself, it’s really common. In fact, research shows up to 96% of marketing and comms professionals create thought leadership content, but not many see impactful results.
A good thought leadership programme consists of three things at its heart: a position or opinion worth holding, someone willing to hold it, and an audience that needs or wants to hear it.
So what actually is it?
It’s an opinion that a brand or individual holds about their specific sector, pitched to a firm’s key target media (i.e. the news outlets, podcasts, influencer profiles, and other media popular in their industry) with the aim of securing coverage.
The key to your thought leadership programme cutting through the noise is to produce what readers want: ideas that challenge their assumptions, fresh insight, and a human tone.
It’s not content marketing – though it can be published on your own website as well – and it’s entirely different from a press release, which announces company news.
That’s why it’s called earned media. It’s coverage that someone else chose to publish or share because it’s interesting or useful, rather than something you published or paid for.
And by a journalist choosing to share your insight, they’ve given you credibility – much more than you could achieve through your owned channels.
A good test for if something is worthy of a thought leadership programme is if you put your competitor’s name to the opinion, article, or insight and it remains unchanged. If yes, it’s not original, it’s just the same thing everyone else is saying and therefore hardly leading in the thought department.
Why it works on buyers
In a 2025 Edelman study, researchers found that hidden decision-makers – the people in procurement, finance, legal and operations who influence purchases – have very limited or no interaction with sales teams. That means the people who shortlist your brand for products and services they need are not interacting with you at all, so earned media may be the only way to reach them. And 71% of those hidden buyers say thought leadership is more effective than marketing materials at demonstrating a vendor’s value.
The same study found that 79% of buyers are more likely to advocate for suppliers who consistently produce good thought leadership, with 64% trusting it over marketing materials.
Through a thought leadership programme, your brand has many touch points with your new prospective buyer before they even know they want your product or service, making it the name at the forefront of their mind when it comes to shortlisting suppliers.
Why it works on journalists
Journalists are under increasing pressure, with news teams shrinking and redundancies hitting many major outlets.
They want their lives made easier, not more difficult. In fact, a recent MuckRack study found 88% of journalists just delete anything not on their beat, and they most value access to industry experts and original data.
A well-developed thought leadership programme helps solve some of their problems – providing direct access to industry experts with fresh and innovative ideas, pitched in a complete package with everything they need to move forward at pace.
What a thought leadership programme looks like in practice
To begin with, after interviewing your key spokespeople and uncovering their expert knowledge, sector insight, and fresh opinions, we’d agree on several key themes they can credibly speak to.
Next, we carry out deep industry media research and discover what the key trends in the sector are and what readers really care about. We then identify where the overlap is between your key themes, and the wider media environment.
From this gap analysis, we develop a thought leadership programme rooted in strategy and with a range of media types.
This could be a mix of bylined articles (an article written by the spokesperson detailing their opinion), an expert comment (a quick 200ish word comment fired off to a journalist in response to a request they’ve put out, or a breaking news story), interviews, podcast appearances, speaking slots, and roundtable discussions.
It’s important to be regular and consistent, focusing on a few quality placements each month rather than a spray and pray approach.
The same content will feed into and align with the owned channels too, so there’s clarity of messaging across the board.
What it asks of you
Realistically, a thought leadership programme will require two to three hours per month from the spokesperson for interviews, sign-offs, briefings, and article reviews. They’ll also need to be available at short notice to put together any expert comments in response to breaking news.
The programme and the PR person do most of the work, but it can’t invent the opinions – it requires a true industry expert to be successful and it will only work if they genuinely have views they’re willing to stand by.
Often, the best spokesperson in the business isn’t the CEO, but the person working on the ground close to the product or service – someone who is innovative, deeply knowledgeable, and who can speak to how they solve customer problems.
How long does it take to work, and can you measure success
A consistent thought leadership programme can take roughly six to 12 months of activity before you see meaningful impact within the business.
The main goal will be to increase the number of leads, or to increase the percentage of leads converted, but in the meantime, we can monitor these metrics to gauge initial impact:
- Share of voice against named competitors – this is the amount of media activity your brand achieves compared to theirs
- Increase in organic traffic to your website, aligned with the dates coverage is secured
- Inbound journalist enquiries – journalists reach out directly to you as they now see you as an expert in your industry
- Visibility in AI answers – LLMs recognise you as a trusted and credible source for prompts related to your product or service
If you want to be known as an industry expert and gain more visibility in your sector, get started today and reap the compounding benefits this time next year.
Get in touch to find out more.