capturing current thinking on content marketing … · content marketing including thought...

CAPTURING CURRENT THINKING ON CONTENT MARKETING AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

02 Preface

05 Executive Summary

06 Opinion: What’s wrong with thought leadership and how to fix it

ANALYSIS

08 - The big trend in industry spend

09 - The main aims of the game

10 - Who and what is being targeted, where?

12 - Delivering content, effectively

13 - What makes the strategy a success?

14 - The key challenges

15 Conclusion

16 Appendix

20 Partnering with Euromoney Institutional Investor Thought Leadership

CONTENTS

01

Capturing current thinking on content marketing and thought leadership is an in-depth look at some of the main trends and challenges primarily faced by B2B marketing executives. The report was commissioned and compiled by Euromoney Institutional Investor Thought Leadership and draws on the results of a global survey of financial and non-financial companies and experts.

PREFACE

In total, 207 responses were received mostly from senior marketers of companies across industries and geographies with annual revenues of less than $250 million to over $40 billion. The vast majority of companies surveyed were based in the Americas and Europe, with the remainder in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Generally the companies had substantial international operations. In terms of industry sector, the highest proportion of respondents came from financial services (banks, insurance companies and asset managers)

with other industry sectors including law and professional services, industrial manufacturing, commodities and energy, real estate, technology and telecoms well represented too. Over 70% of respondents were senior marketing executives, with just over 10% working in sales and business development and most of the rest in corporate communications. Some 58% are directly involved in B2B marketing, with 42% involved in a mix of B2B and B2C marketing. The global survey was conducted by our own in-house survey team in 2015.

02

The trend is clear and growing: content marketing and thought leadership has swiftly become one of the most important business-to-business marketing strategies used by companies to connect and engage with their target markets.

Over the next few years that importance will surely grow, potentially tripling the $100 billion that is estimated to be spent on content marketing and thought leadership this year alone by companies throughout the world.

Yet for all the interest, growth and successes in this area, challenges are emerging too.

From generating ideas that should underpin insightful, actionable content, to its distribution and the value it ultimately delivers, content marketing and thought leadership in particular is seemingly not working as well as it should for many companies.

That much is clear from the responses of over 200 senior marketing, sales and communications executives who took part in our global survey, which was designed to capture the corporate sector’s current thinking on content marketing and identify the main challenges faced by companies investing in and pursuing this strategy.

These executives come from companies of all sizes, across industries and geographies, providing a diverse and comprehensive spread of views and insights on content marketing and thought leadership.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYCAPTURING CURRENT THINKING ON CONTENT MARKETING AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

$100 billion is estimated to be spent on content marketing and thought leadership this year alone by companies throughout the world.

03

#1Content marketing including thought leadership is now clearly the growth area attracting most investment, with some 80% of respondents stating they will increase or significantly increase spend over the next three years

#2However, 43% of respondents said their current content marketing strategy had only met expectations to-date. About a quarter said their strategy failed to meet expectations and the same again said they didn’t know whether it had worked or not

#3Most companies are using content marketing and thought leadership to increase brand awareness, followed by improving brand perception and generating new sales leads

#4An intelligent, forward-looking idea is deemed the most important ingredient for successful thought leadership, followed by innovative delivery channels and access to the right audience

#5Executives are obtaining soft metrics (article or report downloads, mentions in the press, social media traction) to gauge success when they want the harder more needed metrics of genuine sales leads and sales

#6Social media, blogs and opinion articles, small roundtables and seminars are the most effective delivery channels, but white papers are still important

#7Companies are seeking deeper audience penetration, focusing on director level executives, heads of business and managers as much as C-suite executives

#8North America and Europe are the markets companies are mostly seeking to engage specific audiences, and especially decision makers in large financial institutions

#9Key challenges include accessing the right audience, poor visibility on the distribution of completed content, as well as unengaging content and a lack of new ideas

#10Over half of respondents agree or strongly agree that their content is not interesting enough to engage with their target audience

OUR TOP TEN FINDINGS

04

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP AND HOW TO FIX IT

It may be bold to say but few developments if any since either the dawn of the internet or the inexorable rise of digital technologies have excited marketing executives as much as business-to-business content marketing and thought leadership specifically.

While still young, this new form of creating and distributing content is galvanising marketers for good reason, providing them with an attractive solution to perhaps their greatest challenge in this fragmented media world – successfully engaging with and influencing the main decision makers in their core target markets.

05

That’s not easy to do. But when done well thought leadership can and does indeed offer marketers a particularly powerful way to position their brand and messaging in-front of the people and companies they want to engage, interact and ultimately do business with.

This is why $100 billion is expected to be spent on thought leadership globally by companies of all sizes and industries this year, potentially tripling to $300 billion over the next few years, supporting the thesis it will soon be the dominant form of marketing, if it isn’t already.

And yet, just as thought leadership is in the ascendancy, challenges are emerging too.

Indeed, our global survey of over 200 senior marketers of companies across industries says as much, and more. In fact, of their views, most striking is that even though close to 80% said spend on thought leadership will increase or increase significantly in the next three years, just over 40% said that their thought leadership strategy had only met expectations to-date.

More worrying still is that roughly a quarter of respondents said that they didn’t know whether or not their strategy had worked at all, while the same again said their strategy had fallen short of their expectations and only 9% said that it had exceeded their expectations.

TROUBLE SHOOTING So what’s seemingly gone wrong with thought leadership?

First, there is clearly confusion about what thought leadership is. It does mean different things to different people and institutions. But at its simplest it is this: creating fresh, insightful and actionable content that answers some of the biggest questions on the minds of the people or companies your company does or wants to engage and do business with.

At its core, thought leadership then is ultimately designed to sustain existing and generate new business, sales that should come from a conversation provoked by insightful content.

The trouble is that in the clamour among companies to be seen as thought leaders in their industry, fresh and actionable insight has become increasingly rare as companies are drawn instead into pumping out old or existing insight, just repackaged.

That’s mainly why over 50% of respondents to our survey said that they agree or strongly agree that “their content isn’t

interesting enough to engage with their audience” while some 35% of respondents said they agree or strongly agree that “they don’t really know what content their audience is interested in”.

The result of these twin cardinal sins is that those important conversations your company hoped to provoke are unlikely to happen, if at all.

Second, it is clear from our survey marketers don’t really know what the most effective channel for delivering their thought leadership content is. Respondents said social media (18%), blogs and opinion articles (18%), and small roundtable events and seminars (14%), are the top three most effective channels for delivery, with white papers and large industry events close behind. Each channel will be effective and some more so than others but what this seems to suggest is that there is a lack of real focus on one or two channels, with companies instead trying to use all the channels they can, which can be counterproductive.

Third, in gauging success marketers are only receiving soft metrics to gauge the success of their thought leadership and not the hard sales leads and actual sales that are needed.

Indeed, the value of business won should really be the most important marker of whether or not thought leadership has worked. But then close to 80% of respondents said that positive key client comments are important or very important, with some 67% stating the same for the value of business won, narrowly ahead of the number of article or report downloads.

Positive client comments are important and especially if and when they can be converted into new or maintaining existing business. But the bottom line is that while it may be nice to have positive comments, good download rates, mentions in the press and tweets and re-tweets of the content, all of those metrics combined must, on some level, lead to sales leads and sales.

$100 billion is expected to be spent on

thought leadership globally by companies of all sizes and industries this year.

35% of respondents said

“they don’t really know what content their

audience is interested in”.

06

That’s not to say that using thought leadership to increase brand awareness

and improve the perception of a brand are not important objectives too. They are. But what’s

seemingly forgotten, or ignored, is that these aims should be connected to and therefore help facilitate the

company’s primary business objectives and sales goals.

SOLUTION SOLVING So what needs to be done to fix thought leadership?At its simplest, much more thought really needs to go into thought leadership. And the starting point for that is having a clearer understanding of your company’s business, objectives and the people and companies it is most interested in.

That clarity should come from asking the right questions at the outset, such as:

• What is the specific challenge in your business that thought leadership could help address?

• Is it a specific challenge for your company or industry-wide?

• Who specifically are you trying to sell to, where and what do they need?

• What role would this potentially play in the company’s sales cycle?

• What are the company’s objectives and how will you measure success across the stages?

From there it’s then about what story your company wants to try and tell? What thought leadership on the topic is already out there and what is your company going to say that’s fresh and insightful? What’s more, what data or information is needed to support this, and how will it be gathered?

Surveys, polls and interviews are the typical tools to gather insight, and while there may be some degree of survey fatigue out there, a good survey, done well, with results that support the story you want to tell, can be particularly powerful.

Indeed, the results should not only highlight the problem, how companies are thinking about it and what they’re doing about it. The results should also inform your company’s point of view and specifically the recommendations it is making.

How you package this actionable insight – whether in white papers, briefing papers, infographics, blogs, videos, live events or other forms – is important but arguably more so today is how you extend and enrich this insight over time. And in particular, how you enable your target audience to interact with it, to customise it and help them benchmark themselves against their industry peers.

Thought leadership is not about an idea that you package and then just send on to your targeted audience and job done, forget about it. The most successful thought leadership is underpinned by a more comprehensive longer-term strategy that is geared to deliver a more immersive experience to your audience, and a clearer and more commercially valuable outcome to your company.

It’s a process that is both complex and iterative. It starts with an idea that resonates with your target audience and is supported by the insight you gather. It’s then packaged and distributed back to your audience for their feedback; feedback that can then be used to qualify leads and enrich the original insight.

This enriched insight will help you shape and inform future thought leadership at the same time as support the full-deployment of your current programme across multiple channels. From there, promoting and amplifying the content should lead to greater interest from beyond your core target audience, which in turn needs to be measured and tracked through their engagement, digital or otherwise, and connected to sales people that should cluster and qualify leads.

The process doesn’t stop there either. Good thought leadership should always be something that you can continue to build on, so not just a one-off but ideally a series that enables you to keep delivering insight, allowing you to track and show the results and how they’ve possibly changed over time.

This describes a process that forms a more comprehensive way of delivering actionable insights in this day and age, one that enables your audience to interact and customise the content and benchmark with their peers. What’s more, it’s a content programme that is digitally enabled and tracked from beginning to end, producing qualified leads that can in turn be followed up by sales and hopefully help deliver a clearer return on investment that all companies demand.

This is what may be called the next generation of thought leadership. And it could well be the golden solution that marketers are looking for.

Thought leadership is not about an idea that you package and then just send on to your targeted audience and job done, forget about it. The most successful thought leadership is underpinned by a more comprehensive longer-term strategy that is geared to deliver a more immersive experience to your audience, and a clearer and more commercially valuable outcome to your company.

07

Asked in what areas investment is expected to increase or decrease over the next three years, respondents said clearly and emphatically that content marketing and thought leadership is the preferred marketing strategy to invest in. Indeed some 80% of respondents said they expect to increase or significantly increase spend in this area, notably ahead of investing in the other high-growth areas of online and digital advertising and search engine marketing.

“It’s the future” says a senior marketing executive of a European bank. “People are fed up of the hard sell and having products rammed down their throats. Stories and content build trust. They are becoming the gateway to articulating the brand.”

That’s not to say that other more traditional marketing strategies such as print advertising and sponsorship of conferences have fallen out of favour completely – far from it. But it does show that companies are increasingly embracing a more diverse range of sponsored programmes than ever before to connect with target markets and persuade decision makers.

Indeed, while clearly the hot area for investment, the most successful content marketing and thought leadership programmes will in fact blend a range of active (meetings and live events) and passive (print) promotional channels to engage, inform and motivate target markets.

What’s particularly interesting though, is that irrespective of the size of company, the industry or in what market it is based, content marketing and thought leadership is where most marketing spend is going. This shows that it is no longer to be seen as the domain of blue-chip companies based in advanced economies. Its appeal has gone global.

THE BIG TREND IN INDUSTRY SPEND

9%

38%

43%

54%

57%

62%

64%

78%

Print advertising

Sponsorship of conferences/meetings

Direct marketing

Public relations

Search engine marketing

Digital advertising

Online advertising

Content marketing

Source: Euromoney Institutional Investor Thought Leadership

“It’s the future. People are fed up of the hard sell and having products rammed down their throats.

Stories and content build trust. They are becoming the gateway to articulating the brand.”

OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS DO YOU THINK YOUR COMPANY WILL INCREASE OR DECREASE SPEND IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS? Percentage of respondents who will increase/significantly increase spend

08

43%

51%

53%

53%

60%

67%

78%

Generate media coverage

Retain existing clients

Influence key stakeholders

Build new product and/or service awareness

Generate new sales leads

Improve perception of the brand

Increase awareness of the brand

There are a number of important objectives for companies using content marketing and thought leadership but retaining existing business and generating new leads should be the primary goals that, in time, deliver the type of success that justifies a companies’ total spend.

It is surprising then that most respondents said that increasing brand awareness and improving the perception of their brand are their top two objectives, followed by generating new sales leads in third. Retaining existing client business is seen as even less important.

This is not to say that increasing brand awareness and improving perception are not important objectives. They are. But what’s seemingly forgotten or indeed ignored is that these objectives need to support and help facilitate the company’s primary sales/business goal.

What the survey therefore shows is that many companies seem unclear on why they are using content marketing and thought leadership. And if they’re not clear on that then the chances are their content marketing strategy is highly likely to struggle from the very beginning

THE MAIN AIMS OF THE GAME


WHY DOES YOUR COMPANY USE CONTENT MARKETING INCLUDING THOUGHT LEADERSHIP?

09

The C-suite has historically been viewed as the critical target audience and while that focus does remain, B2B and B2C companies are increasingly seeking to go deeper into the rank and file of organizations, borne out by out by our survey.

Indeed, it shows that senior vice presidents, vice presidents and director level executives are today the main audience targets, followed by heads of departments then C-suite executives.

While the most important decision makers, the C-suite is often the most time poor. So greater traction can often better be achieved by targeting those executives – on the next level or two down in the management hierarchy – who may be just as time poor but they do tend to be more accessible and often provide the business case for investment to the C-suite anyway.

What’s more, companies are also targeting a broader range of business functions with their content marketing and thought leadership, with the top five areas comprising general management, strategy, sales and business development, marketing, and finance. This highlights that companies are trying to hit as many decision makers as possible within an institution.

Asked what type of institutions respondents are looking to influence and where, most said large financial institutions (banks, asset managers and insurers), followed by large domestic companies and large multinational companies. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and high net worth individuals are also on respondents’ radars but it’s the larger companies that remain the core target, and financial institutions especially. That’s largely because communicating to and aligning your brand with financial institution stakeholders is critical.

Geographically, most respondents said they are looking to engage a specific audience in North America, with Western and Northern European markets high on their priority list too. What’s interesting though, is the growing importance of high growth markets in regions such as south east Asia and east Asia, and how that dynamic will continue to unfold.

WHO AND WHAT IS BEING TARGETED, WHERE?

10

18% Regional Manager

26% Manager

37% C-suite level

39% Head of Department

42% SVP/VP/Director

21% Regional Manager

25% Manager

34% C-suite level


37% SVP/VP/Director

5% Regional Manager

10% Manager

11% C-suite level


18% SVP/VP/Director

27% East Asia

29% Southeast Asia

32% Northern Europe

39% Western Europe

47% North America

20% Central Asia

23% Middle East

24% Central and Eastern Europe

26% Southern Europe

26% Latin America

11% North Africa

12% Sub-S. Africa

17% Central America

20% South Asia





WHAT LEVEL OF EXECUTIVE ARE YOU LOOKING TO INFLUENCE VIA THOUGHT LEADERSHIP?

WHAT BUSINESS FUNCTIONS ARE YOU LOOKING TO INFLUENCE VIA THOUGHT LEADERSHIP?

44%

23% High net worth individuals

30% SMEs

34% Large MNCs

39% Large domestic companies

Financial institutions (banks, asset/fund managers, insurers)

16% Policy makers

18% General consumers

WHAT TYPES OF ORGANISATION/INDIVIDUAL ARE YOU LOOKING TO INFLUENCE VIA THOUGHT LEADERSHIP?

IN WHICH GEOGRAPHIC AREAS ARE YOU LOOKING TO ENGAGE A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE IN VIA THOUGHT LEADERSHIP?

11

The meteoric rise of social media in recent years has in turn brought about a revolution in how content is marketed, a development borne out in the survey with most respondents stating that social media, blogs and opinion articles are the most effective delivery channels.

“We are now seeing the benefits of using social media to promote our thought leadership and are summarising lengthy papers in infographics, which we are finding has more traction,” says a senior marketing executive of a European telecoms company.

What this shows is that companies are using lighter more interactive and measureable social media channels to engage with and connect to their target markets, and that trend will undoubtedly keep growing. However, white papers still have an important place in their armoury – often lending a content programme intellectual weight and gravitas – and they do remain one of the most effective ways to deliver insightful content.

Indeed, taken together, it’s clear that companies today prefer using a diverse array of channels from social media, blogs and opinion articles, to small roundtables, seminars and white papers to get in-front of and engage with their target markets. Other channels such as video, infographics and webinars may not yet have gained as much traction. But they will.

“The challenge today is engaging millennials,” says a senior marketing executive of a large US-based asset manager. “Their preferred method of collecting information changes so rapidly it is difficult to construct a programme that retains validity for any length of time.”

DELIVERING CONTENT, EFFECTIVELY


WHICH CHANNEL DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS OF DELIVERING CONTENT MARKETING (INCLUDING THOUGHT LEADERSHIP)?

Blogs & opinion articles

Social media

Small roundtables & seminars

White paper

Large industry events

Infographics

Other

Video

Surveys

Webinars

Microsites

18%

18%

15%

12%

8%

8%

6%

6%

4%

3%

2%

“The challenge today is engaging millennials. Their preferred method of collecting information changes

so rapidly it is difficult to construct a programme that retains validity for any length of time.”

12

At the core of any content programme lies an idea and for most respondents an intelligent, forward-thinking idea is the key ingredient for success. This is followed by accessing a specific audience and using innovative ways to deliver content.

What’s interesting though, is that while most respondents know that the quality of the idea is important, a third of respondents said their content is not interesting enough to engage with their target audience. This shows that although companies know what they need in an idea, many are actually struggling to uncover or just generate a genuinely fresh and interesting idea that will resonate with their target audience.

That helps explain why less than half of respondents said their thought leadership strategy had only met expectations to-date. More worrying is that about a quarter of respondents said that they didn’t know if their strategy had worked at all, while the same again said their strategy had fallen short of their expectations and only 9% said it had exceeded them.

Gauging the success of a content marketing and thought leadership campaign is of course difficult and one of the main problems is that companies are only really receiving soft metrics and not the hard sales leads, which are needed.

Indeed, the value of business won should really be the most important marker of whether or not thought leadership has worked. And yet close to 90% of respondents said that positive key client comments are important and very important, with some 75% of respondents stating the same for the value of business won, just ahead of the number of article or downloads.

Positive client comments are of course important and especially if and when they can be converted into new or maintaining existing business. But the bottom line is that while it may be nice to have positive client comments, good download rates, mentions in the press and tweets and re-tweets of the content, all of those metrics combined should lead to sales leads.

WHAT MAKES THE STRATEGY A SUCCESS?


WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT IN MAKING SUCCESSFUL THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTENT?

45%

63%

68%

76%

89%

Exceeded expectations

Met expectations

Fallen short of expectations

Don’t know

9%

43%

25%

23%

An intelligent, forward-looking idea at the core of the project

Access to a specific audience

Innovative ways of delivering content (e.g. video)

Other

45%

25%

24%

6%

Tweets and re-tweets

Mentions in press

Article /report downloads

The value of new business won as a direct result

Positive comments from key clients

TO WHAT DEGREE HAS YOUR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY WORKED TO-DATE?

45%

63%

68%

76%

89%


Met expectations


Don’t know

9%

43%

25%

23%




Other

45%

25%

24%

6%


Mentions in press




ON A SCALE OF 1-5 (5 BEING VERY IMPORTANT) RATE THE FOLLOWING METRICS ON GAUGING WHETHER A CAMPAIGN HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL.Percentage of respondents who assigned 4 and 5 to each metric

45%

63%

68%

76%

89%


Met expectations


Don’t know

9%

43%

25%

23%




Other

45%

25%

24%

6%


Mentions in press




13

20% Poorly presented content

34% Lack of new ideas

35% Unengaging content

43% Poor visibility/dissemination of completed content

44% Access to the right audience

Asked what particular challenges respondents have faced in their thought leadership marketing strategy, most said accessing the right audience followed closely by poor visibility/dissemination of the completed content and third, unengaging content.

“Everyone is trying to get this right,” says one marketing executive of a European financial services firm. “It will become more and more difficult to stand out among these very saturated channels.”

The audience is one of the most important elements in content marketing and thought leadership because if companies don’t know who specifically they are trying to reach and what’s uppermost on their mind, their campaign will struggle from the outset.

The most successful campaigns however, are created with a specific audience in mind and deliver content that is highly relevant and interesting to them wherever they are in the world and across a number of different channels. Those two elements combined cannot guarantee audience engagement, but it will increase the likelihood of engagement tenfold.

THE KEY CHALLENGES


WHAT PARTICULAR CHALLENGES HAVE YOU FACED IN YOUR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP MARKETING STRATEGY?

“Everyone is trying to get this right. It will become more and

more difficult to stand out among these very

saturated channels.”

14

CONCLUSIONClearly interest and investment in content marketing and thought leadership is booming and over the next few years that is expected to continue.

Indeed companies of all sizes, across industries, and geographies are using content marketing strategies to engage and connect with target markets, and in ever more sophisticated ways.

They are targeting decision makers in the rank and file of organizations, no longer just the C-suite executives, and across business areas from general management to human resources.

They are increasingly using social media, blogs and opinion articles, together with small roundtables and seminars to deliver their content and engage with audiences. White paper reports remain an important channel too, but companies are moving with the times and increasingly using lighter more interactive and measureable social media channels to engage

with and connect to their target markets, and that trend will undoubtedly keep growing.

However, for all the interest, investment and success that content marketing and thought leadership has delivered, many companies are facing challenges.

That includes everything from understanding the primary objective of using content marketing and thought leadership, to actually creating insightful content, accessing and connecting it to the right target audience, and delivering clear return on investment.

These challenges show that while the use of content marketing and thought leadership has grown rapidly in recent years, the market is still evolving and a lot more can be achieved.

What is for sure though is that content marketing is the future.

15

APPENDIXDEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF RESPONDENTSThe survey was conducted in July 2015 and in total 207 executives from companies across geographies and industry sectors responded.

73%

11%

6%

5% 4% 1%

Marketing

Sales/business development

Other

Corporate communications

Corporate strategy

PR

//1. What is your role/function within your company?

11% 1%

1%

4%

6%

11%

12%

11%

43%

>$40 billion

$30 billion to $40 billion





$500m to $1 billion

$250m to $500m

<$250m

//3. Roughly what is the size of your company’s annual sales/revenues?

58%

42%

B2B

Both B2B and B2C

//2. Which of the following types of marketing are you involved in?

16

BREAKDOWN OF RESPONSES TO EACH OF THE SURVEY QUESTIONS

//1. What is the most important ingredient in making successful thought leadership content?

45%

25%

24%

6%

An intelligent, forward-looking idea at the core of the project Access to a specific audience Innovative ways of delivering content (e.g. video) Other

//3. Why does your company use content marketing (including thought leadership)?

44%

52%

53%

53%

60%

67%

78%

Generate media coverage

Retain existing clients

Influence key stakeholders

Build new product and/or service awareness

Generate new sales leads

Improve perception of the brand

Increase awareness of the brand

//2. Over the next three years do you think your company will increase or decrease it’s spend in the following areas?

9%

38%

43%

54%

57%

62%

64%

78%

Print Advertising

Sponsorship of conferences/meetings

Direct marketing

Public relations

Search engine marketing

Digital advertising

Online advertising

Content marketing

Most respondents will increase spend on content marketing//4. Which channel do you think is the most effective means of delivering content marketing (including thought leadership)?

18%

18%

15% 12%

8%

8%

6%

6%

4% 3% 2%

Blogs and opinion articles Social media

Small roundtables and seminars White paper

Large industry events Infographics

Other Video

Surveys Webinars

Microsites

17

//5. What level of executive are you looking to influence via thought leadership?

18%

26%

37%

39%

41%

Regional Manager

Manager

C-suite level

Head of Department

SVP/VP/Director

//8. In which geographic regions are you looking to engage a specific audience via thought leadership?

47% North America

39% Western Europe

32% Northern Europe

29% Southeast Asia

27% East Asia

26% Latin America

26% Southern Europe

24% Central and Eastern Europe

23% Middle East

20% Central Asia

20% South Asia

17% Central America

12% Sub-Saharan Africa

11% North Africa

//6. What business functions are you looking to influence via thought leadership?

5%

10%

11%

16%

18%

21%

25%

34%

35%

37%

HR

Legal

Procurement

Research

Technology

Finance

Marketing

Sales/Business development

Strategy

General management

//7. What types of organisations are you looking to influence via thought leadership?

16%

18%

23%

30%

34%

39%

44%

Policy makers

General consumers

High net worth individuals

SMEs

Large MNCs

Large domestic companies

Financial institutions (banks, asset/fund managers, insurers)

18

//9. To what extent do you outsource the delivery of the following types of thought leadership content?

35%

40%

41%

45%

45%

50%

51%

53%

59%

67%

Microsites

Webinars

Social media

Whitepaper

Blogs and opinion articles

Inforgraphics

Small roundtables and seminars

Surveys

Large industry events

Video

//11. On a scale of 1-5 (5 being most important) rate the following metrics on gauging whether a thought leadership campaign has been successful or not

45%

63%

68%

76%

89%


Mentions in press




Percentage of respondents who assigned 4 and 5 to each metric

//10. To what degree has your thought leadership marketing strategy worked to-date?

Exceeded expectations Met expectations Fallen short of expectations Don’t know

9%

43%

25%

23%

//12. What particular challenges have you faced in your thought leadership marketing strategy?

20%

34%

35%

43%

44%

Poorly presented content

Lack of new ideas

Unengaging content

Poor visibility/dissemination of completed content

Access to the right audience

19

PARTNERING WITH EUROMONEY INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

As the owner of some of the world’s most respected business information brands across a variety of sectors, we are able to provide access to over five million decision-makers across the globe. Our Thought Leaders Network offers marketers a way to tap into the thoughts of their audience and our editorial expertise means that we can create content that resonates, illuminates and inspires. We are also able to disseminate that content effectively to specific audiences to complete the circle for marketers.

Best known for our expertise in the financial services sector, we also provide access to high-end audiences in the legal, telecoms, commodities and energy sectors through over 50 niche media brands that form Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC.

If you would like to find out how we can help you to engage with the people you need to reach, e-mail us at [email protected], call us on +44 (0) 20 7779 8100 or visit www.euromoneythoughtleadership.com.

Euromoney Institutional Investor Thought Leadership was founded in 2015 in response to an accelerating requirement from marketers for high quality content with which to engage their audience. Increasingly, astute marketers realise that by understanding the key concerns of their audience and taking part in the debate, they can build trust, profile and brand awareness.

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www.euromoneythoughtleadership.com [email protected]

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