I was speaking last week at the London Law Expo and the title of my talk was "Driving Business growth with Expert-to-Expert Marketing".  Whilst doing my research in the run up to the event I came across a fascinating piece of research carried out by the Global Communications Marketing firm Edelman in conjunction with LinkedIn.  Well worth a read if you get 5 mins.

People have been trying to create insights, send out newsletters and demonstrate expertise for years but have often struggled to measure the impact of doing that - and without some sort of ROI it is very difficult to convince people it is a good idea.  

When done well, the report talks about the ability to drive actual business growth.  Indeed, with the advance of marketing automation and CRMs, companies can not just anecdotally see the business benefits but actually measure it very accurately.  Gavin Bradbury, previously SVP Global Marketing at NTT Security has been able to measure the impact of his team of experts creating regular digestible insights:

"We have more mobile engagement, our monthly LinkedIn followers have increased by 111% and we have directly generated leads (1 lead to every 8.6 posts) from our experts producing these insights"

Very importantly, Joe Kingsbury, U.S. managing director, B2B, at Edelman goes on to say that thought leadership is a "Double-Edged Sword" and that if it is not high quality, insightful and relevant it can have a negative impact on the business.  This is why I am such an advocate that the thought-leadership has to come from the heads of the true experts in the business. The people who live and breathe that subject matter, the people who are reading about and deciphering news in their industry every day and those who know what is actually relevant and indeed useful to their clients and prospects.