In the beginning, creating a new GTM funnel out of nothing seems like an insurmountable challenge. The incumbents and larger startups have everything — more revenues, more customers, more employees, more money, more data.

A new startup has nothing — except… potentially thought leadership.

By becoming the thought leader with reinforcement from their passionate early customers, we have seen several startups supercharge their GTM funnel and become successful companies. The chart below illustrates this GTM strategy:

But, isn’t thought leadership too hard?

There are many articles on thought leadership and content marketing. Some view thought leadership as a type of content marketing.

The conventional wisdom is that thought leadership is too hard, takes too much time and has no immediate ROI. Below is an example post:

7 Reasons Why Becoming a Thought Leader is So Damn Hard

Nearly every founder and executive wants their company and their team to be viewed as industry thought leaders. The…

www.hack-pr.com

Another marketing expert, Karen Singer, notes: “As more B2B companies embrace content marketing, they are discovering that it’s easy to get lost in a cacophony of content noise. They know they need to rise above it with ‘thought leadership,’ but that risks turning into a cliche without any meaning. What is thought leadership content supposed to look like anyway? And just how many leading thoughts can a brand reasonably expect to produce?

When done well, thought leadership content is distinctive, authoritative and provocative, providing insights and exploring new terrain. It’s the kind of information people in your industry are eager to consume — and to share. Done consistently, it is an excellent way to achieve strategic objectives.

That is a tall order.”

After reading these articles (and writing some blogs myself), I realize that thought leadership clearly takes a huge investment and has unclear returns. Given all that, the critical question to any thought leadership strategy becomes:

what topic should and could an early startup be a thought leader in?

Thought Leadership Opportunity for Early Startups: Be a thought leader in what?

Despite all the challenges of becoming a thought leader, every early startup has a natural thought leadership opportunity in the intersection of the company’s vision, the passionate early customers’ vision and the New Way. (Note: investing in thought leadership outside this intersection probably has low returns.)

I call this type of thought leadership: “Attack Thought Leadership” because the participants feel like REVOLUTIONARIES attacking conventional wisdoms with the new way.

In the early days Marketo gave tee shirts to employees and customers with the image of Che Guevara, a famous Cuban Marxist revolutionary, to reinforce the company message: Join the Revenue Revolution and help build the “Marketing Nation.” Marketo’s mission was how marketers can earn respect at the revenue table with the C-suite.

Marketo expounded on that mission: “Luckily, today’s CMOs have technology on their side. The right marketing automation platform, combined with smart organizational and process alignment, makes it possible to connect the dots between that promotional email you sent last month, that webinar you hosted last year, and the revenue your CEO sees this week or can expect to see next quarter…. Download our ebook to learn more about: Lead-to-Revenue Management.” Marketo website.

The New Way vs Old Way

Most startups enter the market to seize upon a major disruption.

That disruption means that there is a new way to do things, and an old way. Udayan Banerjee visualizes the path to adopting the new way with the Hype Cycle used by Gartner and Technology Adoption Lifecycle popularized by Rogers and Moore.

After having several conversations with early startup CEO’s, I learned that it is not easy deciding to become a thought leader of the new way. To be effective, thought leaders must be ideologically pure and authentic. This creates controversy and risks alienating the customers believing in the old way (who are the vast majority of the market). What CEO wants to give up 95% of the market still working on the old way? I think the new way market is larger than 5%, because it is not only the customers implementing the new way, but also the customers aspiring for the new way. [note: I just picked 95% and 5% for this example]

The natural human tendency is to hedge. But, hedging greatly dilutes any chance for thought leadership. Hedging just leaves the thought leadership opportunity for the next early startup.

Incumbency limitations

All the strengths of the incumbent or larger startup (more revenues, more customers, … more business) restricts their ability to be the thought leader of the new way. They need to avoid alienating their legacy business. They need to reconcile with all their prior marketing messages, especially since many customers have purchased product based on the old marketing messages.

In contrast to the incumbents, early startups have minimal legacy to protect and thus can be ideologically pure, authentic and provocative. They can attack conventional wisdoms.

Vision and passion of the founders, early employees and early customers

After overcoming the fear of alienating most of the potential market (obviously not a trivial fear), the early startup can become the thought leader of the new way by leveraging the vision and passion of the founders, early employees and early customers.

Founders left their secure jobs to found the company because of their passion in the vision (ie, the emergence of the new way and the decline of the old way). They also have deep domain knowledge. So, they are natural thought leaders for the new way.

The early employees joined the startup because of their passion in the founders’ vision. So, they too are natural thought leaders for the new way.

Surprisingly, I found that the early customers are as passionate as the founders and early employees of that vision too. Otherwise, they would have made the safe decision to buy from a more established vendor or incumbent and just have gone with the old way. So, they too are natural thought leaders for the new way.

Harnessing that collective passion and vision is a tremendous asset for an early startup — something lacking in the incumbents and larger startups.

Every early startup should become a Thought Leader of the New Way by leveraging the passion and vision of their founders, early employees and early customers.

Build GTM Funnel based on Attack Thought Leadership

Attack Thought Leadership becomes the foundation of the early startup’s GTM funnel, as shown below:

Establish Thought Leadership in the New Way

The company first needs to explain its full position on the New Way. This is normally done through the company’s website, blog or ebook. For example, Engagio benefited greatly from the cofounder’s (Jon Miller’s) book, The Clear & Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing. In the early days of Marketo, Phil Fernandez, Marketo cofounder and CEO, wrote a book called the Revenue Disruption: Game-Changing Sales and Marketing Strategies to Accelerate Growth.

Second, that position needs to be amplified by the passionate early customers.

All this is very focused content marketing and a huge investment.

Attack Thought Leadership drives Lead Generation

This strategy leverages all the interest in the new way.

As customers seek to learn about the new way, the company’s thought leadership content on the new way should drive more qualified inbound leads. I like Ray Carroll’s quote: “Thought Leadership from people that have done it before is the ultimate company brochure for bigger companies to start to get to know you.” Ray has seen the power of thought leadership at Marketo and Engagio.

The standard lead generation techniques should be optimized for the company’s thought leadership of the new way. For example, influencers, when discussing the controversy between the old way and new way, will reference the company as key advocate of the new way. Events (joint webinars, conferences and tradeshows) also want to discuss this controversy and want the “expert” on the new way. Attack thought leadership makes the company that expert. All these activities generate more inbound leads who believe in the new way.

Also, more controversy between in the new way and the old way is good. It just increases awareness.

All this just reinforces the company’s thought leadership position as the expert in the new way.

Attack Thought Leadership drives Lead Nurturing

Education (especially easy self-learning) is a very powerful lead nurturing technique.

To satisfy the customers desire to educate themselves of the new way, thought leaders should generate the one or two pieces of go-to content that serves as the intellectual foundation of the new way. It is very difficult for a customer to create that foundation from reading 20 blog posts and testimonials. Of course, the 20 blog posts and testimonials can be very effective as an addition to the intellectual foundation.

Ray Carroll observed: “Thought leadership gets you into the buyer’s subconscious without having to ‘sell.’ Thought leadership is the ultimate ‘give to get’ Since you’ve ‘given’ free (and mostly neutral) advice on how to help the buyer, you’re paying it forward and the buyer will look at you differently during the sales process.”

Thought leadership simplifies customer qualification. One requirement is do they believe in the new way? If not, it doesn’t make sense to invest a lot of sales time with that potential customer. Please note that “believe in the new way” is not the same as “implementing the new way.” The former focuses on the customer’s aspirational goals.

Find a Wow to emphasize the power of the new way. This could be a key customer insight from one of the passionate early customers. This will also reinforce the company’s position as the thought leader of the new way.

Another key lead nurturing tool (the trial) should illustrate the power of the new way over the old way.

Attack Thought Leadership drives Closing

Thought leadership can help reframe the customer’s decision criteria from just comparing features to deciding first on the new way vs old way.

One startup CEO mentioned that a potential customer gave him a list of 20 priority one requirements. He soon realized that his competitor could address more of the requirements, since the requirements were based on the old way. At the customer meeting, the CEO explained the choice between the new way versus old way. The customer decided to be part of the new way and redefined his priority one requirements accordingly. The CEO then closed the deal, since his product was architected for the new way, while the competitor was architected for the old way. Attack Thought Leadership elevated the conversation above a feature battle.

Customers, believing in the new way, want to implement the new way successfully. They know that requires more than just the product. That requires real advice from the thought leaders of the new way (whether from the company or its passionate early customers). More specifically, they want to join the user group of the passionate early customers who are leading the new way.

Summary

Basically, attack thought leadership separates the early startup from the pack.

GTM is very difficult if you are in the pack with all the other competitors — who are bigger and more established. Inside the pack, each customer conversation revolves around features, functions, benefits, personal relationships and politics. These conversations are then repeated with every customer. Every customer conversation feels like hand-to-hand combat and is human-intensive. Then, after all the hard work to get a tough customer win, the board complains about the poor GTM productivity metrics.

Attack thought leadership does more than just improve GTM. Attack Thought Leadership drives fundraising, recruiting and exits too.

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