Thought Leadership as a Business Development Tool

Thought leadership is the art of positioning your company as a leader in its niche through best-in-class expertise and insight. Thought leadership can have  remarkable ROI – potentially higher than any other online or offline marketing activity – because it changes your company’s brand perception, giving your clients the impression that your business is the best in its niche. From the perspective of business development it means that businesses with a strong thought leadership presence generate more sales leads and their clients are willing to pay higher prices. Also it is not a secret that in an increasingly hyper-competitive environment, business development is often the most critical factor determining the success of the business.

“Thought leadership doesn’t mean a big name from a big school, it means you provide the best and deepest answers to your clients’ biggest questions in the formats your audience likes to consume them.” – Michael Brenner

The role of recruiters as a thought leaders now is to provide a valuable insight, strategic advice and actionable planning for their clients and for their candidates. One of the best ways of facilitating thought leadership within recruitment industry is to use the right data.

“The right data can help manage the expectations of hiring managers” – Tony Restell

Vacancy data when aggregated can help recruiters recognize hot spots of activity so they can better understand which clients are growing faster and which should be prioritised for head hunting; what areas their clients are focusing on, so to improve business planning.

By gathering up-to-date information on vacancies Vacancysoft accumulates data which can also serve as an early-warning tool for bottlenecks and mismatches on the labour market.

Our data on vacancies and hiring sheds light on trends in occupational demand and skills requirements. This knowledge can be used by recruiters as a thought leadership tool and has already been proved to be very helpful in front of clients – by providing market intelligence and insight helping them developing best hiring strategy, and for candidates – building a trustful relationship with candidates by providing them insights about what skills or training they might need in order to meet their career goals.

Vacancysoft solutions also provide information about who potential clients are, where they are, what they want, what skills they value etc. Thought leaders in the industry already benefit from Market Intelligence solutions Vacancysoft provides, as it enables them to be better informed on market trends so they can improve their business planning.

In my next blog I will be discussing what a recruitment firm that wants to be a thought leadership in its niche should do.

Author: Larysa Chaplin
Director of Marketing & Innovation