5 Big Trends In Marketing Automation 2010: #3 Community Leadership
We continue our series of posts about the biggest trends in Marketing Automation for 2010 with a trend that may sound contrarian. Read on, and please let me know what you think.
Trend 3. Community Leadership Trumps Thought Leadership
Thought leadership, content marketing, and the “buyer-driven sales process” were all huge topics within the broad category of marketing in 2009. Buyers have been doing more research online for a number of years, but Twitter and other Social Media means those buyers are educating themselves well above the funnel, much further away from the core marketing property – the website. It makes sense then that content marketing, a concept as old as marketing itself, has become a hot topic again in 2009. The channels for dispensing content and demand for content through those channels have exploded! Ardath Albee wrote in a recent blog post (The Rule of 5 for B2B Content Development):
“Lead nurturing, inbound pull, social networks, blogs and other eMarketing activities are all fueled by content. Lots of it. That puts a lot of pressure on limited marketing resources to churn out not only volume, but quality content that delivers a consistent storyline to a variety of target markets and customers.”
This is where the idea of Thought Leadership comes in. There’s no question that the concepts of Thought Leadership are necessary to meet the needs of the masses of buyers floating from cloud to cloud having conversations, learning, and looking for solutions. Publish or perish is no longer just the mantra of academia, it’s a key aspect of a company’s marketing strategy. So, we all need to provide expertise and advice in the form of quality content so that we’re seen as thought leaders and that trend will clearly continue, right?
Go Farther with Community Leadership
Not exactly. Yes, we need to keep publishing, but, more importantly, we need to engage in conversations. Without listening, “conversations” are simply monologues. Too many of the new “Marketer as Thought Leader” are constantly engaging in monologues, flooding the marketing channels with chest thumping proclamations of why they should be heard, why their solution is best, and why you, dear buyer, should give up your contact information to learn more! That is clearly not what the term is supposed to mean, but it’s what’s happened with the proliferation of Thought Leaders.
When we already know that sellers are no longer in control and can’t “pitch” their way to a sale, how could this approach possibly survive past 2009?
Thought Leader marketers who evolve in 2010 will morph into Community Leaders who engage and provide relevant, helpful content designed not as a monologue-as-lead-generation tactic, but as resources designed to solve problems for community members. The Community Leader is the community member’s ally. S/he is always open, listening, engaging, learning, and providing assistance.
The kicker?
The key difference between Community Leadership and Thought Leadership is that this approach means that help and relevant content is provided freely and without strings so that any member of the community – whether or not ever a “prospect” to become a customer – comes away with actionable information and insight into how to solve their problems. It’s leadership that’s vendor agnostic and broader than a piece designed to capture leads.
This is a tough change for many Thought Leader marketers, and it’s not to say there isn’t a time and place for “registration required” content. It simply must move into a natural place in the relationship with a buyer who’s ready to engage at that level (another reason to map content to buying stages. A big chunk of your content needs to be not only relevant, but free to those not ready to engage at a deeper level).
Clearly, there are a number of Thought Leaders who act as Community Leaders already. The problem is, when everyone is publishing to prove their Thought Leadership chops, it dilutes the whole term. This is why I think 2010 will see this trend. Is it fair to say Thought Leadership has become polluted in the rush to publish content to designed to satisfy the buyer’s need to self-educate “above-the-funnel” and that we need a refinement like Community Leadership? Obviously, I think so, but what do you think?
In case you missed it, here’s a link to the previous Big Trends in Marketing Automation:
- Trend 1 for 2010: Inbound Marketing meets Marketing Automation.
- Trend 2 for 2010: Measure All the Way to Revenue.
