Become a Thought Leader
While it’s not celebrity superstardom, thought leadership can breed credibility, authenticity, and influence within the insurance industry. Here's how to get started.
The phrase “thought leadership” is definitely corporate jargon. But underneath, it’s actually a marketing strategy to help define how you want to show up to your target audiences.
Does this sound like you?
- I want me and my organization to be seen as a leading authority in the insurance industry.
- I want my target audience to look to me as a go-to source for analysis and insights on developments happening within the industry.
- And I want our competitors to be envious that they didn’t do this first.
OK! Then you’re in the right place.
What is thought leadership?
Thought leadership combines big ideas, a clear perspective, and distinctive insights about a particular industry or topic to offer authentic value to an audience outside of a sales pitch. That’s the key: True thought leaders offer helpful, unique information without being self-promotional.
65% of buyers say thought leadership significantly changed their perception of a company for the better.
Thought leadership usually falls into five categories:
- Industry perspectives on news items, emerging trends, and future outlook;
- Personal narratives that show instead of tell;
- Organization-based insights related to your company’s vision and mission;
- Product breakthroughs centering on the benefits and features you offer to your customers;
- Data-derived guidance packed with thoughtful analysis and examination of owned or research sources.
And common outputs for thought leaders include:
- Articles, including op-eds, blog posts, and guest posts;
- Podcasts — being a guest or hosting your own;
- Presentations and webinars;
- Social engagement and community-building;
- Owned research like special reports, whitepapers, and case studies.
This is often passed through a sieve of your own personal perspective and experience, sometimes known as the earned secret. At its core, here’s what it means:
You did something in your past to solve a hard problem and learned something about the world that not a lot of other people know.
This is shorthand for having a unique point of view, experience, or resources on a topic that only you can share. Not a small ask, but one that you can accomplish.
What are the benefits of thought leadership for insurance marketing?
While top-of-funnel marketing casts a wide net, thought leadership can bring people back into the mix when it’s time to make a buying decision (and can be used for lead scoring in between). Why? Thought leadership builds trust by educating and assisting people without a quid pro quo. Readers and listeners can access expert insight without laying all their cards on the table.
54% of consumers purchased a new product or service from an organization that they had not previously considered buying thanks to thought leadership.
And as you get better at sharing your helpfulness with your audience, you’ll naturally increase organizational awareness and ultimately bring in more leads. That’s why this is an earned marketing strategy. Though thought leadership doesn’t take off overnight, it’s a marketing strategy that keeps on giving. And it can be a great addition to your inbound marketing efforts, too.
Building your thought leadership strategy for insurance marketing
Here’s where the real work starts. With a little investigating and a whole lot of reflection, you can create a stable of thought leadership topics to pull from.
83% of a typical business-to-business purchasing decision — researching solutions, ranking options and benchmarking pricing — happens before a buyer engages directly with a provider.
Define Your Voice & POV
Much like carving out your competitive edge, defining your voice will set you apart from the pack. There are a lot of insurance experts, but how can you position yourself as someone driving the industry forward? Consider what about your experience sets you apart from your peers. Maybe it’s your career path, maybe it’s a big milestone, or it could even be an experience that went wrong.
And in a similar vein, refine your perspective. Thought leadership doesn’t need to be contrarian or combative, but it can’t be bland. And it doesn’t have to be stuffy, either! You can be your human self.
Remember this: Thought leadership is, in essence, your opinion. By design, it won’t be for everyone. Coined purposeful provocation, you need to be OK with potentially ruffling a few feathers.
Discover the Questions
Pay attention to what your customers are asking you, what prospects want during sales meetings, and what commenters are saying on social media (and if they are on your social pages, please respond to them!).
For a low-lift way to discover questions and topics, try entering a search in google and see what populates in the auto-fill text. If you want to take it a step further, try free tools like Google Trends or Ahrefs keyword generator (which offers questions, too).
Keep an ear to the ground on what’s happening within the insurance — and adjacent — industries, too. Is there new legislation in your state? How will it impact people now, and down the road? Use the news to develop your own forecast grounded in your experience.
Differentiate Your Story
Brains love stories. We’re hardwired to — beginning, middle, and end with people, places, and things. It’s much easier to recall a story since it evokes an emotional response. By creating your thought leadership with a narrative thread, you can weave a tale of an idea, setback, bootstrapping, and success (or lesson learned). Entire groups of people have leveraged this type of thought leadership into full-blown careers (motivational keynote speakers, we’re looking at you).
Apply this lens to develop your answers to those questions above. Sometimes it’s adversity, sometimes it’s humor, sometimes it’s shock, and sometimes it’s awe. Or maybe all of them at once. But it has to be true. Otherwise, your push for building trust and authenticity with your audience will slide right off the rails.
64% of respondents claimed that they found a brand’s thought leadership content more trustworthy than its traditional marketing materials.
Don’t shy away from pulling in third-party sources and data to back up your perspective. This helps build trust, too.
If you’re having trouble figuring out where to start, try this.
Swap out those brackets with an experience true to you. And then see where it leads you. As you work your new thought leadership muscle, you’ll continue to reap the rewards long after you click publish.
