Thought Leadership That Actually Works: 6 Tips to Get It Right

Stop pitching and start leading. Thought leadership is about earning trust, sparking conversation and staying ahead of the curve. Here’s how.

Some people separate thought leadership from content marketing. But as someone who’s been in the content game for over 15 years, let me set the record straight: Thought leadership is content marketing. Or at least, it can be.

Sure, you’ve got your case studies — great sales tools for showing off the benefits of working with you. And your educational content — useful, sometimes brand-forward, sometimes not. But thought leadership? That’s something else entirely.

Don’t complicate matters. Carve out a separate slice of your content marketing budget devoted to it. Because when done right, thought leadership builds your reputation, shapes the industry conversation and, yes, eventually leads to sales.

So how do you actually do it right? Here are six tips for marketers who want to pursue true thought leadership.

 

1. Leave your brand out of it (seriously).

This is going to be hard for CMOs and marketing directors to hear: When you’re creating thought leadership content, forget about your brand. Resist the temptation to weasel in a mention of your offerings. And don’t you dare slap a CTA on the bottom of the page.

Why? Because, as counterintuitive as it may seem, the less promotional your content is, the more credibility it builds — and that credibility pays off. In fact, according to the 2025 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, 73% of target decision-makers say thought leadership is a better basis for assessing a company’s capabilities than traditional marketing materials or product sheets.

In other words: Ditch the pitch.

Thought leadership works on a delay. It builds trust and authority over time — the kind that gets you invited into decision-making conversations. Push your brand too hard, too soon, and you risk sabotaging that trust before it ever forms.

 

2. Don’t be boring. Be bold.

If your POV sounds like everyone else’s, you’re not leading anything. You’re just echoing.

Thought leadership isn’t the time to play it safe. This is the space to be provocative, to challenge assumptions, to say the thing your competitors are too scared (or too slow) to say.

Strong opinions not only spark engagement — they make you memorable. Which is kind of the whole point. Plus, in a sea of AI-generated or AI-influenced sameness, search engines are rewarding hot takes.

 

3. Lead the conversation — don’t chase it.

A lot of content is reactive. That’s fine for social media or newsjacking. But thought leadership needs to look ahead.

You have to know your audience’s current pain points — and what’s coming next. What trends will shape their world? What blind spots are they not thinking about yet?

That’s where the real value is: helping people see around the corner — before they even know there’s a curve.

 

4. Become obsessed with data (even if it’s not yours).

Original research is fantastic. If you’ve got the time and budget to do a proprietary study, you just might get media outlets citing your stats and have other brands covering your analysis.

But third-party data is another option (see what I did with that study up there?). It actually shows you’re informed and objective enough to acknowledge sources beyond your own internal SMEs.

Too many marketers hesitate to cite external research. But guess what? It boosts trust. And trust, as we know, is currency in the thought leadership economy.

 

5. ROI isn’t fuzzy anymore. Measure it.

Here’s the elephant in the room: Much of the pushback against thought leadership boils down to ROI.

But that excuse doesn’t hold up anymore. We have the tools. We have the data. We can measure it.

Cindy Anderson and Anthony Marshall, leaders at IBM’s Institute for Business Value, conducted rigorous research involving over 4,000 C-level executives. Their findings? Thought leadership delivers an average ROI of 156% — yes, you read that right. And they say they were being conservative. Needless to say, that’s much higher than typical marketing campaigns.

And dammit, I know I said not to be promotional, but this is worth it, so hear me out:
The need for measurement is why we created the MX Thought Leadership Index. It’s a way to benchmark your efforts across five core pillars:

• Authority
• Expertise and Foresight
• Trust
• Visibility
• Content Leadership

We audit content, pull industry metrics and survey decision-makers in your space. Each pillar gets scored, then rolled into a single score from 0 to 100. It gives you a clear view of how your thought leadership stacks up against your competitors — and where (and how) to improve.

 

6. Assume your audience is already listening to someone smarter.

When it comes to thought leadership, you’re not just going up against companies that sell what you sell. You’re competing with everyone talking about the topics your audience cares about.

That includes the heavyweights — Gartner, McKinsey, Forrester, PwC — and the enterprise giants with teams of strategists and designers behind every insight report. It also includes ambitious challengers going after the same clients you are.

When decision-makers look for answers, they’re not filtering by company size or budget. They’re looking for foresight, vision and trust. If you want to lead the conversation in your industry, you have to earn your seat at the same table as the names people already trust.