How to Become a Thought Leader For Your Agency and Examples of Agency Thought Leaders
The goal of thought leadership is a little different than the typical strategies you utilize to market your agency. With thought leadership, you are marketing yourself as an expert to draw brands into your agency.
With so many options, your target audience is seeking out an agency they trust. When they’re doing their research, are you (the agency owner) showing up in search results? When they visit your website, do you have easy-to-find examples of your thought leadership?
Credibility builds trust, and trust builds new clients. And it all starts with thought leadership.
The modern-day brand seeking out an agency cares more about a cutting-edge approach and demonstrations of an agency’s expertise in their niche than price. Owning a niche for your agency and sharing your unique perspective on the industries you target is the first step to demonstrating your expertise and becoming a thought leader.
To become a thought leader in your agency’s niche, there are a few things you can start doing today, and I’ll cover everything you need to know in this guide.
Why Thought Leadership Matters
With so many ways you can get the attention of brands, brands are becoming blind to traditional advertising and want to find an agency that authentically can scale them.
Through thought leadership, you can sprinkle bits of your expertise throughout the buyer’s journey. After a potential client sees your name and work a few times, they are way more likely to become a client.
Thought leadership also retains your current clients. Dripping out thought leadership in a marketing automation campaign can give your current brands a sense of loyalty to your agency.
Defining Your Niche
Don’t try to be a broad thought leader when it comes to topics you post about in general. It would be too overwhelming.
Instead, choose which industry or industries you are strongest in and leverage those. You may get fewer eyeballs on you by embracing a niche, but you’ll get the attention of the RIGHT brands who are likely to convert to clients. To make my point, I can use myself as an example. Instead of a broad B2B agency, my agency owns the “agency for agencies” niche.
If you’re not wanting to embrace an industry niche, you can embrace a strategy. For example, I’m well-known for influencer marketing even though I do other stuff, and I land a lot of my clients just because they know my name when it comes to influencer marketing. Or check out how this agency owns the video niche.
The point is, you do need a niche to be impactful, but you have options.
10 Hand-Picked Thought Leaders to Inspire You
Following the right thought leaders will help you with your own thought leadership journey. Here are some agency thought leaders that I love and you should add to your LinkedIn network and glean inspiration from.
Ronica Cleary is a great PR thought leader to follow. She posts about crisis management and media placement. Follow her on LinkedIn here.
Megan Driscoll is an agency owner in New York and posts a lot about healthcare, dermatology, and prestige beauty. Follow her on LinkedIn here.
Casey Benedict owns a top-notch influencer marketing agency and is a thought leader when it comes to all things influencer marketing. Follow her on LinkedIn here.
John Cook is the co-founder and managing partner of an agency that focuses on financial services, cryptocurrencies, and technology. Follow him on LinkedIn here.
Joey Hodges is the CEO of a marketing and communications agency and he’s also an early-stage startup investor. Follow him on LinkedIn here.
Genna Goldberg Rosenberg is another agency CEO to follow. I follow her because she posts a lot about social responsibility. Follow her on LinkedIn here.
Pilaar Terry specializes in entertainment PR and marketing. She posts a lot about corporate PR communications and brand strategy. Follow her on LinkedIn here.
Bill Byrne is great at getting media for his clients and offers a lot of strategies for other folks in the agency industry. Follow him on LinkedIn here.
Michelle Mekky owns her own agency and is a great example of a fantastic storyteller, which to be honest, we can all tell better stories. Follow her on LinkedIn here.
Courtney Sprtizer is the CEO of an awesome agency and really supports female founders and entrepreneurship. Follow her on LinkedIn here.
7 Actionable Ways to Convey Thought Leadership
If you’re ready to improve your thought leadership strategy, I’ve highlighted the main tactics that I implement for the agencies I work with.
Actively post on all social media channels. You should be running channels for both your own image and your agency’s image. Use strategic hashtags, follow other thought leaders, and post about things you create or advice you have.
Leverage thought leadership content that you create in your email marketing so that you’re giving your audience actionable advice as opposed to a sales pitch.
Guest post on publications that your target audience follows. Identify publications, reach out to them with examples of posts you’ve created in the past, and ask if you can contribute. Once approved, write your article, and promote it. If you feel like you’re not a strong enough writer, one of the things that The Campfire Circle helps agencies with is content creation and ghostwriting.
Host a webinar. You’ve embraced your niche and have a lot to say, so run a webinar or two to demonstrate thought leadership. You just need a basic idea of what topic will resonate with your audience, build a landing page, choose a webinar hosting platform, promote your webinar, and knock it out of the park on the date it goes live.
Join HARO, a PR platform that connects journalists and experts. They email queries out 3 times per day, in the form of story requests or tips from publishers. The queries are categorized so depepending on your niche, you can scan through them and weigh in with excellent quotes when the queries have to do with your own goals. It’s quick to respond to a query and there are good publications via HARO.
Identify podcast that your target brands listen to. Reach out to the host and ask if they need any upcoming guests or experts for an episode. It never hurts to ask and you may be surprised at how many podcasts will want to interview you. The key is to emphasize you want to provide thought leadership, not promote your agency.
Leverage social proof. Collect testimonials from happy clients and use them on your website, in paid social, in email marketing, etc. Your clients want to see that other brands in their shoes got value out of your agency, so put your testimonials front and center.
Conclusion: Next Steps For Your Thought Leadership Journey
At the end of the day, identify what you have to say and how you can say it in a unique way. Your future agency clients want your expertise, you just have to convey it.
I outlined thought leaders to follow and learn from as well as actionable next steps for you to become a thought leader for your agency sooner than later.
If you feel like you don’t have the time to promote yourself and position yourself as a thought leader, I have been doing thought leadership for agencies for over a decade, and you can book a free consultation call with me here.
Is there a thought leader that you follow that you think could help other agency owners? I’d love for you to drop their LinkedIn link in the comments below!
