Does your firm need to reach the top levels within your target clients, if it’s to sell its services successfully?

It could be that your firm does large, long-term projects with budgets that can only be signed off at the highest level. Or, it’s all about helping to create strategic change, and that’s a top-level decision.

As I’ve found out in building my own business, reaching an organization’s top tier can be frustrating.

Is your firm seeking to become the dominant player in a particular market niche? Perhaps that includes designing spaces to host performances, creating retail environments that provide experiences unmatched by online shopping, or helping the mining sector walk more lightly on the planet.

One of the challenges of thought leadership marketing is around the amount of time it takes. Many marketing professionals have pointed this out to me – it’s not like creating an ad with a few words of text. It demands time from the marketing team, but more challenging – it demands time from the firm’s senior members, who are already too busy with client work, mentoring, supervising the work of juniors, and project management.