Thought Leadership Marketing

Content Marketing in a Down Economy

jimpennypacker — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:06:01 +0000

We’ve all come to realize how difficult it is to market our products and services in today’s economy. Marketing budgets have been dramatically cut. Prospects are taking longer to buy. Buyers are buying less. That said, I have some recommendations for you to start the new year with a bang. Develop a post-recession content marketing strategy [...]

Positioning and Thought Leadership Marketing

jimpennypacker — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:42:08 +0000

I was rereading a marketing classic, Positioning, by Al Ries and Jack Trout, and was impressed by how well their message still holds up (I guess that’s why it’s called a classic). It’s particularly relevant to those trying to practice thought leadership marketing. Positioning is the process marketers use to try to create an image or [...]

e-Books: 10 Tips for Marketers

jimpennypacker — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:22:16 +0000

There are two general types of e-books, each with its own purpose. The first is the e-book that was originally a printed book that has been converted to an e-book (see ebooks.com for thousands of examples). These books are usually 100-400 pages long, almost all words, with minimal design — you know, a book. They [...]

Thought Leadership Marketing Defined

jimpennypacker — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:48:16 +0000

Most folks I meet say to me, “Well, I think I have an idea of what thought leadership marketing is, but I’m not sure, so tell me.” It’s a concept that’s referred to in a lot of business writing, today, but not often talked about in depth. It certainly doesn’t come up as part of [...]

Reference Guide to Thought Leadership Marketing

jimpennypacker — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:19:39 +0000

Thought leadership is a fairly new concept, said to be first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of Strategy & Business (wikipedia). Thought leadership marketing — intentionally applying the practice of thought leadership to build a personal or organizational brand — is an even more recent phenomenon. But the concept has a cadre of advocates [...]

Listening and Engaging

jimpennypacker — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:30:38 +0000

Last week’s Philadelphia Interactive Marketing Association meeting featured a panel* of highly experienced marketers talking about the value of social media and what they’ve been doing in their organizations. Most of the conversation was geared towards B2C markets and focused on customer service, but a lot of what was said is applicable to thought leadership [...]

Thought Leadership Branding: Where Do You Stand?

jimpennypacker — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:27:59 +0000

Where do you see your organization on the thought leadership brand pyramid ? We’ve put together a tool for informally assessing your thought leadership branding. The first step in knowing what thought leadership marketing you need to do to improve your brand is to know where you stand today. The goal, of course, is to [...]

Exploring Thought Leadership

jpennypacker — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:19:45 +0000

We love to ask questions here at Dance. They help us to think clearly about issues, to explore alternatives, to do better work. Our first two downloads from our website are lists of questions that we think will help you in planning your thought leadership marketing or publishing programs: 40 questions you need to answer to [...]

Welcome to Thought Leadership Marketing

jpennypacker — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:09:36 +0000

Welcome to our Thought Leadership Marketing blog. I’m Jim Pennypacker, CEO of Dance Communications, and we will explore ways to position yourself or your organization as a thought leader in your market. We’ll discuss what it means to think about your market, how to think about it, and then how to communicate your thinking to [...]