Being Unique: The Third Standard of High-Quality Thought Leadership Content
According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), content marketing’s effectiveness is on the rise. And one of the key factors behind this rise, respondents say, is that they’re producing better-quality content.
The primacy of quality content is something Alterra Group has preached for years. In our work with myriad consulting firms and other B2B companies, we’ve seen time and again that the quality of thought leadership content determines whether that content flops or flourishes in the marketplace.
What defines quality content? While quality can be somewhat subjective, we’ve identified certain standards—seven of them—by which companies can evaluate their thought leadership content (see figure). As we discussed in a previous white paper, by adhering to these standards companies can ensure their white papers, research studies, articles, books, and the like effectively position them as voices of authority in their respective markets; demonstrate their ability to solve clients’ or customers’ most pressing business problems; and—most importantly—generate demand for their offerings.
In this third in a series of blogs exploring each of these standards in more detail, we take a deeper look at the third one: uniqueness.
Being Unique: Saying something different from what others are saying in a substantive way
Imagine this scenario: A consultant wants to develop a white paper to support some part of his firm’s business. He’s convinced the topic he’s chosen is new and different—something the firm’s competitors have yet to talk about in any substantive way. Yet, a quick Google search reveals a number of articles and papers that have already been published on the same topic. If the firm plows ahead with the consultant’s idea anyway, it only would be contributing to a conversation that was started and is being advanced by other companies—and, thus, fail to add any new insights that would get it noticed by target executives.
The preceding reinforces an important truism of thought leadership: To truly stand out, thought leadership content must communicate a unique point of view or otherwise break new ground. Unique content makes a company memorable and generates significant executive interest. Companies that don’t ensure they’re communicating a unique idea, approach, or way of thinking about a business problem end up missing a golden opportunity to differentiate themselves from the pack.
Being unique means raising an issue—either a specific business problem or a solution to a problem—that few are talking about. It also can mean addressing a topic that others are as well, but in a way that sheds new light on the nature of the problem or solution. A new “label” applied to a previously stated problem or solution, a new case study on an existing issue, or new statistics underscoring an oft-discussed challenge do not make content unique.
Take, for example, the buzzword du jour: “digital.” Companies of all types—consulting firms, tech companies, banks, retailers, manufacturers—are all talking about how “digital is changing everything” and every company must be “digital.” This certainly makes the task tougher for executives reading this content to sort through it all to figure out which firm has the best perspective on and approach to digitalizing a company’s business. That’s why it’s even more critical for a company to say something truly different about this particular topic.
How can a company do that? The place to start is to get a good handle on what’s out there. That means conducting a comprehensive secondary research exercise to gather all you can that your competitors have published—white papers, books, research reports, articles—on the topic you’re considering. In the “BI days”—Before Internet—this was no simple task. But today, thanks to the web, it’s pretty easy to, in just an hour or two, build a representative cache of relevant publications from the companies that matter to you. So there’s no excuse for a company not to know what its competitors are saying.
Once you know how an issue has already been covered, you can then find the white space—the overlooked aspects or angles where you can stake your claim. This means analyzing the publications you’ve collected and synthesizing the key messages being communicated by each. Summarizing what you’ve found in a simple table can help you see the angles to avoid and where there are opportunities to say something new.
A key to being unique is basing your point of view on something that none of your competitors have access to. This could involve studying your client projects for insights—getting feedback from both your own people as well as your clients who were involved. Client work is a goldmine of unique insights because it’s your own work—no other firm has access to the same data and experiences.
Conducting your own proprietary research—a comprehensive survey or deep qualitative executive interviews—is another way to uncover new aspects of a business problem and its solution. By using research to probe the aspects of a topic your white space analysis revealed, you’ll be much more likely to generate data that can fuel a truly unique point of view.
Benchmark data is a third source of unique insights. This is particularly true for companies that manage certain aspects of their clients’ businesses for them—i.e., outsourcers. Take, for example, a firm that runs the procurement processes for dozens or more big companies. By aggregating the data those processes generate across all of its clients, and tracking that data over time, the firm can gain a deep understanding of the keys to superior procurement performance that no other firm can match.
At a time when executives are bombarded with content, much of it covering similar ground, being unique is critical to standing out from the crowd. So invest the time and money to make sure your white paper or article brings something substantially new to the conversation. Doing so will go a long way toward differentiating your company and ensuring it comes across as a thought leader, rather than follower.
