That memorable conversation led to a relationship B2B Marketing Strategy that lasted until we met again at this ReCatch Guerrilla Coffee Chat . Today, we will hear about thought leadership and community marketing from Joshua, who successfully led global communities and marketing strategies at two unicorn companies, Evernote and Asana.
order
B2B Marketing Strategy 1: B2B Marketing Without Thought Leadership Is Impossible.
*Thought Leadership: Sharing ideas and B2B Marketing Strategy strategies in areas related to products/services, influencing the overall market flow, and building expertise and trust based on this.
Why Thought Leadership Can Generate Sales
Hawn: Joshua, you said something like that two years ago. The most important thing in B2B SaaS marketing is thought leadership. Since B2B according to your needs SaaS is a device that changes people’s work flow, I understood that in order to make that change, you have to have thought leadership and continue to speak out. But I’m curious about how ‘thought leadership’ can lead to sales in B2B marketing. How did you approach it at Asana?
You remember that saying? Asana sets only four main content topics per year. One of the most representative ones was ‘Future of Work’. While many B2B companies organize their marketing messages around product features or B2B Marketing Strategy performance, we focused on leading the larger discourse of ‘Future of Work’ .
Hawn: So many of the contents published by Asana are derived from just four topics. What kind of content was created for those topics?
The formats were varied—white papers, webinars, blogs, podcasts—but the most important thing was a consistent message. Thought leadership isn’t just about saying, “We love your product.” It’s about defining the problems your customers face and showing them how to solve them. The trust you build naturally leads to sales, because customers want problem solvers.
Hawn: I think thought leadership can be a differentiator from competitors.
That’s right. That’s what differentiates B2B Marketing Strategy you marketing list from your competitors and what makes potential customers trust you. When everyone else is just talking about product specs, companies that present the essence of the problem and the direction for solving it are naturally recognized as leaders.
Without teamwork, there is no thought leadership.
Hawn: The ‘consistent message’ you mentioned seems to be the most important, but also the most difficult. It’s important for not only marketing, but all customer-facing teams to deliver a consistent message. I’m curious about Joshua’s thoughts.
There is one prerequisite for successful thought leadership: becoming a “one team.” No matter how good the content the marketing team creates, if the sales or CX teams reach out to customers with different messages, consistency will be lost.
We integrated our business teams around content . All of our customer-facing teams, including marketing, sales, and CX, worked together to select content topics. Each team chose topics they could actually use and developed content to match. More importantly, we conducted thorough content training for all team leaders.