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Thought leadership is widely acknowledged to be more credible than marketing collateral.
According to the Edelman-LinkedIn 2024 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, thought leadership can educate and influence: 75 percent of decision-makers and C-suite executives say a piece of thought leadership has led them to research a product or service they were not previously considering.
These findings are reinforced by Dentsu’s 2024 B2B Superpowers Index. Amid uncertainty, Dentsu reveals B2B buyers now prioritise trust and expertise.
Since 2022, when Dentsu first released what has become an annual study, ‘being seen as an active thought leader in my category’ has risen from the 20th to the third most important decision driver.
Dentsu attributes the rapid rise in the importance of thought leadership to buyers seeking integrity, making it ‘easy to convince my colleagues of the brand’s credentials’.
Yet, Dentsu’s 2024 Index shows only one-quarter (26 percent) of B2B buyers give brands high marks for their thought leadership, down from 31 percent in 2022.
Edelman’s research echoes this finding. Just 15 percent of decision-maker respondents to the Edelman-LinkedIn study rated the overall quality of the thought leadership they read as very good or excellent.
Generative artificial intelligence is partly to blame
AI has aided a surge in the quantity of thought leadership content. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2024 B2B Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends, 27 percent of B2B marketers are creating more thought leadership content. Three-quarters of marketers (72 percent) are using generative tools. Beyond brainstorming headlines and keywords, nearly half (45 percent) of B2B marketers use generative AI to write.
Cynically, that figure could be much higher as few professional communicators are likely to admit they delegated the writing to a computer program.
Of course, ChatGPT is not solely to blame. High-quality thought leadership takes effort and investment and B2B marketers repeatedly cite a lack of resources as their top situational challenge.
Unfortunately, the consequences of producing low-quality thought leadership are more serious than poor engagement.
Low-quality thought leadership can even drive clients away. The Edelman-LinkedIn research found:
- 70 percent of C-suite executives said a piece of thought leadership had occasionally led them to question whether they should continue working with an existing supplier
- 51 percent said the piece of thought leadership had them realise other suppliers were smarter or more visionary
- 54 percent said the piece of thought leadership had them realise other suppliers had a better understanding of the challenges their organisation was facing
- 25 percent said a competitor’s more thought-provoking content led them to end or significantly reduce their relationship with a current supplier/provider
High-quality thought leadership is a way for B2B brands to distinguish themselves from their competitors – building awareness and interest in their products and services. Producing low-quality thought leadership is arguably worse than producing none at all.
Jacqueline (Jaci) Burns is the founder and chief marketing officer of Market Expertise, a business-to-business (B2B) agency that specialises in services and intangible products.
Also, read why B2B marketers are struggling to create the right content.
