Thoughts on Thought Leadership--Insights on Creating Demand for Professional Services

Thoughts on Thought Leadership is a compendium of 13 articles published since 1998 by The Bloom Group LLC, a consulting and marketing firm that has established itself as the thought leader on thought leadership marketing. Over its 148 pages, Bloom Group principals Robert Buday, Bernie Thiel, Susan Buddenbaum and Tim Parker write about how professional services firms can accelerate profitable growth by mastering the emerging discipline of thought leadership. Their articles are organized in three sections:

Marketing and Marketing Strategy: Why focus is crucial to the growth of professional firms; how a leading law firm (Squire, Sanders & Dempsey) is becoming a thought leader in its domains; an interview with growth strategy guru Dr. Michael Treacy; and a discussion with two leaders of an association for leading IT services firms (the IT Services Marketing Association).

Developing Thought Leadership: The seven hallmarks of thought leadership; how to conduct case study research (the core tool in developing leading insights); the results of The Bloom Group s groundbreaking 2006 study on thought leadership; and a revealing interview with experience economy experts Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore on how they ve become recognized as thought leaders.

Marketing Thought Leadership: How to get marketing and business development staffs in synch on thought leadership campaigns; taking a portfolio approach to intellectual capital development (to determine which ideas to focus on); how to design websites that position professional firms as thought leaders; making a business book pay off; and how to ensure that the writings of a professional firm connect with its audience.

The authors explain how professional firms can develop their insights by sharing client experiences internally; conducting groundbreaking research on companies that have addressed the problems at hand; and commissioning studies. They then explain how to take those insights to market by publicizing research studies, publishing articles in leading management journals, writing bestselling books, and delivering compelling conference speeches and sometimes entire seminars. In this way, thought leadership marketing allows professional firms to provide samples of their expertise to prospective clients-their equivalent of the grocery store product samples that food companies hand out to boost sales.

The book's articles have been written to help professional services firms quickly get up to speed on thought leadership marketing and on the same page about how to proceed-i.e., how to make their firms thought leaders in their domains. Thoughts on Thought Leadership helps managing partners, practice leaders, and heads of marketing, business development and new-service development to understand their unique roles in establishing their firms as thought leaders.

Robert Buday is president of The Bloom Group LLC, based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Bernie Thiel and Susan Buddenbaum are founding partners of Alterra Group, based in Cleveland, Ohio.