B2B tech PR: 5 secrets to strengthen thought leadership
Thought leadership is all about tapping into your brand’s experiences, expertise and market insights to create content that impacts peoples’ understandings of relevant topics. Doing this well helps you show off your brand’s authority while subtly demonstrating why audiences should consider your products or services - i.e. you’re the expert in a matter and your support could be helpful to them.
However, given the density of the tech market, the length of the sales process, as well as the complexities of certain tech, there are rules that must be followed to create effective thought leadership for tech in B2B spaces. Here’s how to get started.
5 ways to strengthen your tech’s thought leadership:
1. Leave out the sales
Thought leadership for any product - B2B or B2C, tech or not - should always leave out attempts to sell it.
Though thought leadership is part of the marketing process, it’s a subtle approach, shaping positive associations around your brand without pushing products. Attempts to sell in places where they shouldn’t be - in blogs, articles, news releases etc. - often sit awkwardly.
Think about the buyer’s intentions when they come across this content: their aim is to learn - not to buy. This is especially important in B2B markets and even more so with tech when buyers require far more in-depth knowledge of a subject before purchasing a product. We can’t say it enough, the purpose of your thought leadership insights should be to educate, not to sell.
The aim is for sales to come more naturally as your content provides enough compelling insights to urge audiences to engage with your business.
2. Don’t talk about your tech
This might sound counterintuitive, but don’t talk about your tech in thought leadership content. No matter how incredible your tech is, it’s likely that in such a dense market, the ins and outs of your product won’t be attention-grabbing enough to stand out on their own - you need something more intriguing.
Instead, tech thought leadership should attempt to engage with the human experience - elaborating on the potential to improve an element of your target audience’s life. Explain current market issues or the dangers businesses are facing without the right solutions while also giving actionable guidance.
In fact, not overtly emphasising your tech in content is especially important when it comes to thought leadership in the news media. Our research found that only 2.5% of HR articles have an angle that focuses on tech - so elaborating on the human experience at work is essential to gain interest generally and media coverage in particular.
3. Consider each stage of the buyer journey
According to Gartner, 77% of B2B buyers state that their latest purchase was incredibly complex and difficult.
With a longer buying journey, fluctuating markets, uncertain budgets as well as decision making that comes from an increasing number of internal audiences, your thought leadership content must be relevant to each stage of the buying process as well as each group.
This means providing thought leadership that ticks several boxes: helping buyers to identify problems and answer questions they may have about them, understand the best solutions that fit their needs and recognise benefits and the value of fixing key issues.
4. Utilise original expertise
It’s no secret that the B2B tech market is incredibly crowded. So for genuine thought leadership that differentiates your brand from the next and sways the subject narrative, you must put an original spin on your content.
This may seem tricky at first - often, buyers have the same problems and ask the same questions, so it may not seem possible to create unique content on topics that are discussed time and time again. Yet this is where you should use your own experiences, your own findings and your own research to add something fresh and unique to the conversation.
5. Use the right language
Though you shouldn’t talk solely about your own tech within your thought leadership content, there remain related concepts - technical issues faced by target audiences or benefits of certain types of technology, for example - that should still be expanded upon and that often require a certain level of technical understanding to be truly appreciated.
However, to create thought leadership that’s capable of compelling audiences, aim to make technical concepts engaging for all - even for those with non-technical knowledge.
For those creating thought leadership content, it requires more than honed knowledge about your technology. Translating complicated topics into real, human conversations will help content to shine. More than ever, it’s not just tech experts who are making decisions about B2B technology investments - so bringing others into the conversation can support not only their needs but yours too.
For further support boosting your PR and communications strategy, get in touch. We’ve been helping HR and workplace related brands for over 25 years and we’d love to share our expertise with you too.