How to Build Brand Awareness Using Thought Leadership

Defining a Brand

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes one seller's product or service from those of other sellers.

As a smaller business (not a global entity), you do not yet have the luxury of having a familiar brand. The way in which an established, global brand markets its products/services is different to how smaller businesses need to generate awareness and gain trust with prospects.

If we cannot rely upon familiarity, brand recognition and brand loyalty, then what can small business owners do to build this awareness from within our prospect pool?

Instant Brand Awareness

There is one way to instantly stand out and show that your brand has a distinct identity. you will have to show that you have a vast knowledge of the industry and that you understand common issues bing faced by the target audience.

Furthermore, you will have to demonstrate that you understand what needs to be done to resolve those issues.

In Context

After gathering the necessary data from your target audiences and laying the groundwork for your lead generation programme, you may demonstrate a component of the instant brand by creating clearly defined difference statements for use in sales emails and telemarketing messages (learn more about lead generation here).

This will yield sales-qualified leads with those prospects that were happy to review their incumbent solution now. But what about those prospects where the timing is not right, how do you maintain and further build the brand with your marketing qualified leads?

Thought Leadership

A Thought Leader is an individual or firm ascribed to the quality of ‘Thought leadership’. Thought leadership is influencing a narrative by understanding what needs to be done.

Unlike a global entity, you need to prioritise positioning yourself so that people appreciate and relate to your way of thinking, rather than your logo.

By doing this, as your marketing qualified leads make their way through their own personal sales cycle, they will be looking for solutions for their own pain points. They will start to realise that you are a brand that can help with these pain spots because of your knowledge and insight.

Demonstrate Understanding Alongside Knowledge

There is no "one size fits all" method for doing this; instead, there are a variety of ways to show your prospects that you understand what needs to be done as opposed to simply having knowledge of the issue.

Much of it will depend on a combination of who you are speaking to, the complexity of the message(s) to be delivered, as well as the resources that you have available to you and the best channels to deliver the messaging.

Content to demonstrate understanding can include:

• Blog Articles
• Social Media Tiles
• White Papers
• Case Studies
• Video Content
• Infographics

For advice on how to enhance your lead generating strategy, read this article.

Using Thought Leadership to nurture your Marketing

Once you’ve started creating your thought leadership content, you will need to consider how you are going to get your content in front of your target audience. The first thing that you are going to need is somewhere to host this content, typically a blog, or resources centre on your website.

You can now begin sharing your content, typically on social media channels & through email marketing although relevant ranked content will also help improve your organic presence on search engines and the relevance of any paid advertising you conduct.

As with any content, a strategy should be put in place so that you can continue to engage your target audience with fresh interesting and relevant content to them, not just sales messaging bestowing your own virtues.

At The Lead Gen Specialists, we work with many small business owners not only in providing telemarketing services but also in developing content within your marketing strategy in order to help you guide prospects through the sales funnel, nurturing those all-important Marketing Qualified Leads until such point that they become sales-ready. To discuss this further, contact us on 03330 400 045 or email enquiries@leadgenspecilaists.co.uk today!