How to pick thought leadership metrics that matter

What’s the best way to track the return on investment from thought leadership? Get a group of marketers together, and you will soon find out that this is something they struggle with.

Our sense of the problem was confirmed when we took a straw poll of senior marketers to gauge their views. An astonishing 98 per cent of respondents found measuring thought leadership difficult, while 82 per cent reported being unhappy with their current approach.

Marketers have dozens of measurement tools at their disposal and dozens of metrics they can track. But data isn’t the same as insight, and just because we can measure something doesn’t mean we should.

But the need to produce answers seems to force many marketers to fall back on intermediate engagement metrics such as click-through rates, shares, retweets, downloads and bounce rates. And while these have some use, they don’t tell us much about our campaigns’ wider impact.

So which metrics should you pick for more meaningful insights? And how can you cut down on KPIs to measure what matters?

To know your gains, know your goals

It might seem obvious, but before you can start to measure thought leadership ROI you need to know what success will look like: what do you want your thought leadership to achieve? This should be the first step of any programme, because it will shape your whole approach to research, content and channels.

In the real world, many companies don’t set precise thought leadership goals. They might say they want to generate new leads or increase revenue, but these goals aren’t specific enough. Without clear business objectives, it’s tough to create an effective programme — and it’s almost impossible to measure its impact.

In our experience, thought leadership programmes fall into three categories of business objectives, and you need different KPIs to measure their success. Here’s our marketer’s guide to measuring the metrics that matter for each type of objective.

Objective 1: Raise your brand awareness

What does your campaign need to do?

These campaigns should strengthen existing associations between your brand and a chosen topic, increase your share of voice in the market and prime the audience for future commercial conversations.

Which KPIs should you measure?

To understand the full impact of these campaigns, you’ll need to track media coverage of your insights, including social mentions and expert references. Then there are the impacts on the brand: awareness, recognition, recall and perception. Finally, you’ll want to measure touchpoints with customers or prospects, and collect any feedback.

Objective 2: Reposition your brand

What does your campaign need to do?

A repositioning campaign should create new associations between your brand and your chosen topic. It can shift perceptions so the audience thinks differently about your brand, or it might attract a new audience who until now haven’t been interested in you.

Which KPIs should you measure?

Here, you’re looking for data around changes of perception, changes in brand attributes and association, and an increase in brand preference.

Objective 3: Generate and support your commercial conversations

What does your campaign need to do?

Commercially focused campaigns can get your content in front of your clients and prospects, instilling a sense of urgency so they’re motivated to consider engaging the brand in a commercial conversation — in other words, generating leads. The campaign can also provide tools for commercial teams to begin fruitful conversations and support the sales process. Finally, it can provide stimulating content for your existing clients during long sales cycles.

Which KPIs should you measure?

Indicators of success for this type of thought leadership include increases in marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, conversion rates, attributed revenue and overall revenue, and the speed of conversion. You might also be able to track increases in advocacy.

Once you start matching your measurement metrics to your wider business objectives, it gets easier to track progress, improve performance and demonstrate ROI. But be selective: measure what matters to prove the real value of your thought leadership.