Creating thought leadership pieces that tangibly boost pipeline

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In the lead up to some of his appearances at Product Marketing World's Summits, BlueCat Networks' Product Marketing Manager, Mark Mikhail, got stuck in answering all your questions on creating thought leadership pieces that tangibly boost pipeline.

Got questions? Get answers! Check out the next in our line up of Ask Me Anythings here.

Q. What kind of thought leadership pieces do you produce at BlueCat? And how much involvement do you as a PMM have in the creation process?
A. BlueCat has found success in eBooks. We are producing our first internal annual report coming out shortly, while also working with external analysts for co-branded external reports. In prior roles at companies, such as IBM, we developed many white-papers, eBooks, and reports, etc.

As a PMM, I am involved in the following ways:

Conducting and supporting analyst briefings and inquiries
Info gathering using market research and tools from Gartner, IDC, etc.
Validating trends with focus/user groups and communities
SaaS product data mining with BlueCat Analysts and Product Managers
Working with agencies and content teams on report design
Supporting storytelling and writing alongside our BlueCat SMEs
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Q. Thought leadership pieces obviously require a lot more time and resource than the other more run of the mill marketing pieces, how often do you execute these?
A. Great question, and you're right, especially when managing different-sized resources in enterprise and mid-market companies. I don't approach thought leadership as a quota that needs to be met. I want to execute thought leadership when there is something valuable to share with prospects and customers.

Trended proprietary data can allow for a thought leadership refresh annually.
Certain industry transformations, ways of working, or incidents can also trigger an opportunity to produce thought leadership ad-hock.
External reports by analysts that come out every 1-5 years provide an execution possibility.
Q. I've never really done any thought leadership pieces. As a first-timer, what would your best practices be and is there anything I should maybe avoid? Also, how do you go about identifying what to center your thought leadership piece around?
A. There are several ways to approach this.

You could approach talking about the benefits of a product, service, or methodology in depth.
You can approach from the problem-solution point of view, which takes the reader by the hand through the solution to a common industry problem.
Depending on what data you have available, present a summary of useful data points and info about the state of a role, field, or industry.
The #1 thing I would avoid is taking on thought leadership on your own. Find sponsors internally, external report sponsorship opportunities, or within your circle of influence.

A best practice is leveraging internal and external crowdsourcing through surveys and forums to validate topics, customer problems, and assumptions.

Maintain customer-centricity. You can center thought leadership around industry macro-problems and transition into helping customers solve their micro-problems.