Optimizing Thought Leadership Programs
By: Mathew Greenwald
10/1/2024
Thought leadership research studies are widely used by asset managers, distribution companies, and insurance companies. The belief in the value of these studies is strong. My firm recently conducted a survey of executives in retirement companies and asked them about expected use of eight marketing tools. Seven in ten said they expected their use of thought leadership research to grow over the next three years, more than for any other marketing tool or process.
Despite this widespread use, it is my firm’s observation that thought leadership programs often do not achieve their potential benefit. To be most effective, thought leadership initiatives should achieve three basic objectives:
- Impact an audience that is important to the company.
- Study a topic that is both important and challenging to the target audience. The study should be on a topic that the target market wants to address more effectively.
- Provide information and insights that help the audience achieve their objectives.
There is one obvious reason for the need to provide information that helps the target audience meet its objectives: financial professionals, consumers, and other possible targets of thought leadership want to do better on key endeavors and will value those who provide information and insights that help them do that. The days of providing information that is simply “nice-to-know” are long gone.
Unfortunately, I have seen thought leadership efforts that do not appear to have been designed to meet these objectives, but designed only to produce information that is interesting or get press attention. My main concern is that studies conducted for this purpose do not provide the value that can be achieved by the same level of expenditure as a more effectively designed and executed study.
To get the highest potential impact, three key steps are needed.
- Impact an audience that is important to the company.
First, it is important to identify a target audience for the thought leadership effort that will provide maximum value to the company. Sometimes the target can be very narrow, such as a particular distribution channel that a company wants to penetrate: Pure RIAs, for example. Sometimes the target can be broader, such as financial professionals from all channels who have clients in the company’s target market: for example, financial professionals with clients who are retired. It is important that the target for the thought leadership effort not be too broad, however. The target can be a segment of consumers, but thought leadership programs aimed at all consumers tend to be too broad and generalized in the value they provide.
A segment of financial professionals is often the target of a thought leadership program because that is where the benefit to the financial services company is most direct. Information from an effective thought leadership program can help wholesalers and others get access to financial professionals and give them a value add that will enhance the relationship between the financial professional and the wholesaler or the company. It can help company representatives get invitations to make presentations to a financial professional’s clients. It can enhance the image of a company. It can motivate a financial professional to share publications of research findings with their clients thereby producing value for the financial professional and end consumer.
- Study a topic that is both important and challenging to the target audience.
The second step, as stated, is to choose a subject that goes beyond being simply interesting. It should be on a complex issue the target audience is, to at least a certain extent, struggling with. Examples include how financial professionals can best formulate relationships with their clients’ adult children, how they should establish asset level goals for retirees, or how consumers should formulate goals for their retirement years.
- Provide information and insights that help the audience achieve their objectives.
The third step is, in our opinion, the most differentiating. There are many studies, maybe most particularly in the retirement area, that provide information which is interesting but simply do not provide new insights that help the target audience better meet their objectives. One example is the many studies that indicate that many are not saving enough for retirement. These studies are often interesting, but they would be a lot more effective if they helped financial advisors better motivate or guide their clients or helped develop new tools to help individuals better assess how much they should save to meet, or set, lifestyle goals in retirement.
Understanding Your Target Audience for Thought Leadership
A good thought leadership study will go beyond producing interesting information: it will help the target audience better meet their goals. Financial professionals, pre-retirees, and retirees, for example, face a number of challenges. A good thought leadership study will help them address one of those challenges.
Designing research that produces this benefit requires a deep understanding of:
- the issue being confronted, such as retirement planning
- how the issue is now being addressed and areas in which improvements should be made
- the target audience’s satisfaction with current approaches and their interest in new ideas
With these understandings, thought leadership programs can be constructed that provide very significant value.
