Healthcare, manufacturing, and technology marketers spend a significant amount of time and brainpower (and not to mention budget) defining and documenting their brand positioning, identity, and product or solution messaging. At the top of the brand framework, there’s usually mission, vision, purpose, values, etc. and at the bottom is product or solution messaging that ladders up. This framework is supposed to be the north star to ensure internal and external communications align. While the typical brand framework gets the job done for an array of purposes, it doesn’t always deliver in building trust, resonating with and attracting future buyers.
At the same time, most brands understand the importance of thought leadership and brand building for demand creation, but they think of these strategies as just a set of channels, activities, and actions. They spend a bunch of time and money on content and brand awareness and don’t see it result in meaningful opportunities or results. This is the “how,” but they’re missing the “what”—the compelling, differentiated narrative tying everything together. Just going through the motions, playing the algorithms, and creating audience-focused content on trending topics doesn’t make someone a leader of thought and won’t break through to new audiences. It’s often just adding to the noise.
“60% of B2B buyers are willing to pay a premium to work with organizations that deliver valuable thought leadership”
LinkedIn-Edelman 2024 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study
The problem with brand positioning and product messaging for thought leadership and demand creation
Brand positioning and product messaging are too inward-facing and focused on the company—its achievements, its features and benefits, and its people. There’s a time and a place for that messaging but not when trying to build trust and credibility and break through the noise to resonate with new audiences. Your potential future buyer isn’t looking for your mission, purpose, values, or even your products. They seek unique perspectives on the industry issues they’re facing and a clear articulation of their complex problems. This messaging can’t be about you; it has to be about your audience, their pain points, and adding value.
What type of messaging works for thought leadership and demand creation?
You can call it a thought leadership narrative or platform, value story, or a content strategy—use whatever label works within the dynamics of your organization. But the key to performance is messaging that sits at the intersection of these three things:
- The problem you can uniquely solve in the market
- The pain points and biggest challenges your target audiences and buyers are facing
- And the broader industry conversation
In an increasingly noisy world oversaturated with information, you differentiate from the competition and build trust by clearly articulating your audience’s problem and speaking to their pain points with a unique point of view—over and over again.
“When someone can articulate your problem, you believe that person must have the solution.”
Play Bigger by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, and Kevin Maney
Consistency is key. Creating internal alignment around how you speak to certain issues and challenges gives marketing and customer-facing teams a roadmap to anchor to. When your team is aligned around this clear narrative, it creates consistency in how you show up in the market, and that’s where trust compounds. When you deliver the same message across earned, owned, paid, and social media channels, and at every touchpoint from brand awareness to sales meetings, your future buyers start to believe you have the answers and solutions to their problems.
Core elements of thought leadership and demand creation messaging:
| A clear problem/solution narrative | What’s the big problem in our industry? What is our unique or bold point of view on how to solve it beyond products and services? |
| Themes and angles | What are the main themes within the problem that we can own and be the authority on? What will differentiate us in the market, be newsworthy, and add value to conversations already happening? What is our POV on each theme? What are the angles we will pull through within each theme? |
| Proof points | What proof points, examples, customer success stories, data, and testimonials will bring this to life and give audiences reasons to believe we’re the authority on this problem? |
Additional elements you may need:
| Differentiated values | Tailoring problem/solution narrative to specifically differentiate among competitors in the category |
| Segmentation | Tailoring the problem/solution narrative to specific markets, audiences, or buyer personas |
Where do you begin? Start small. It doesn’t need to be a big, drawn-out project. Begin by talking to your customers or at least your customer-facing subject matter experts (SMEs). Identify the big industry questions that no one is answering. Take a look at your competitors and conversations happening in the market. And start to build and test messaging from there.
Stay tuned for an upcoming Health Marketing Collective podcast episode, in which Sara Payne and I discuss how we build this messaging and combat common obstacles during the process for clients at Inprela.
