Content marketing is a well-established discipline for generating inbound leads through keyword targeting and other methods. And since you're reading this on MarketingProfs, you probably don't need me to tell you what content marketing does and what it's good for.

But what about thought leadership?

To some, the term sets off an instant buzzword alarm. Others assume thought leadership and content marketing are the same thing, which isn't the case—although the two can be used together to good effect.

In this article, I'd like to provide a little bit of clarity about these two powerful forms of marketing, including how they're alike and how they're different.

Content marketing offers value in return for business

Content marketing works in large part by creating a transmission of value from the content publisher to the reader.

Content marketers need to ensure they have valuable information to convey to their readership. Over time, providing that value—while also positioning yourself as its obvious supplier—is a clever means of creating a relationship with the reader.

There are a few things to note about that relationship, and I'm highlighting them to draw distinctions between content marketing and thought leadership:

• The "commodity" being exchanged in content marketing is valuable information. Searchers want to find solutions to their problems. Content marketers learn what users are searching for and develop content that provides answers to their readership. Ultimately, searchers may choose the content marketer's company as their supplier.
• The content marketer-reader relationship is typically top-down. As content marketers, we're writing to a target buying audience, but that doesn't mean it's a one-way street. Good content is backed up by strong community management, and there should be dialogue. But, ultimately, the architecture of the relationship is vertical rather than horizontal.

Thought leadership offers insights in return for introductions

Executing thought leadership requires identifying a target audience and learning about its needs. That's because thought leadership often requires exchanging insights for business introductions.

What's the difference between that and what we've just discussed about content marketing?

Setting, for one. Thought leadership's natural home is in large B2B marketing. Many organizations in that space have dedicated thought leadership managers. Those organizations don't necessarily need to build up reputations, but having something original to say about an issue can be a useful way of distinguishing themselves in a crowded vendor landscape. That's particularly the case when the organization is trying to bring a new solution to market or disrupt some established practice in the industry.

Content marketing is used in both B2B and B2C selling contexts, but it is more appropriate than thought leadership in a B2C setting. It might, for instance, provide lots of useful information about how to get started with a home-improvement problem, but it's unlikely that the information being conveyed is cutting-edge research. More likely, it's an informative guide about how to tackle a problem.

Needless to say, content marketing should be original, informative, and engaging. But there's a difference between providing information that is useful and conveying insights that are original or have not been written about before. The first is content marketing. The latter could be thought leadership.

In thought leadership, introductions are more valuable than near-term gains

Thought leadership tends to be less about selling than even content marketing. In fact, the selling target could be well off in the distance, and thought leadership's immediate intended purpose might be solely to kickstart a relationship.

Large B2B selling processes are not renowned for moving at lightning speed. Moreover, many large contracts are awarded through the issuing of requests for proposals (RFPs) and governed by rigid procurement guidelines. Sometimes, adherence to them is legally mandated.

Trade media outlets, which often carry thought leadership, are important conduits of information for both sides of that process. Unlike blogs, the outlets are offsite placement locations—and remaining nonpromotional is often a style guide requirement.

In the context of long sale cycles, and in specialized fields, getting on a potential buyer's radar might be more valuable than selling them something tomorrow. It's for that reason that thought leadership is often employed in the B2B context primarily for its ability to create introductions.

The extent to which C-level executives carve time out of their busy schedules to read thought leadership content is surprising: 48% of decision-makers spent more than one hour per week consuming thought leadership material, according to the latest edition of the Edelman/LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study. A solid 17% spend four hours a week reading it!

The good news, for those who wish to establish themselves as industry thought leaders, is that there's a receptive market for that type of content. The bad news is that a cookie-cutter approach to all content simply isn't going to cut it.

Content marketing is fundamentally different from thought leadership