Autonet builds a top-of-funnel engine with thought leadership
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Autonet builds a top-of-funnel engine with thought leadership
11 PR hits
1 million
"These posts were good awareness but the real value was the content for campaigns."
Minato Sato
The Revenue Marketer
Autonet builds a top-of-funnel engine with thought leadership
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Minato asked Inverta to review all their product spec sheets, talk to customers, and generate ideas for how to pitch articles to industry publications and Tier 1 media. Our team built that entire program, which started with selecting three “thought leaders” who are still publishing on their own to this day.
The trouble with thought leadership is it requires leadership
People have always listened to people, but influence has never been so centered around individuals as it is now because of all the AI-generated content. Readers—especially buyers of influence—want to know who they should follow and trust. And it’s people, not companies. For that reason, we thought that Minato’s team would have the best luck building a few of its experts into public thought leaders.
That said, too many companies make the mistake of picking their leadership voices based on title. But not everyone has the interest or capacity to write and speak publicly. And when someone isn’t interested, they tend to fall off. We’ve seen this plenty of times. That’s why Brian Schmid, Inverta Client Partner and AI Practice Lead, designed a program to identify hand-raisers who were already interested in putting their ideas out there.
“It was essential that people be interested on their own, for us to include them in the program,” says Brian. “It’d keep them interested and contributing, and help us get through that early awkward period where it seems hard and they haven’t felt the payoff yet.”
Brian laid out a program to:
- Identify publications—industry sites, podcasts, and newspapers.
- Identify internal hand-raisers already writing for themselves.
- Craft editorial guidelines and themes for each leader.
- Run an interview series to capture material.
- Implement an approval and editing process.
- Systematize a handoff to their PR firm.
“We looked at some of their key business leaders, identified who had the reputation and clout in the industry, but also who was passionate about topics that the market cares about, and was positioned to sell into that topic in some way,” says Brian. “It’s a Venn diagram of those things.”
Three people stepped forward, and one was only convinced after Brian walked through the program in-depth and assured her that she’d have editing support to get going.
Brian sat with each leader to identify the key themes and laid out a plan for each for the next three months, with a posting cadence and content plan.
“The documents we created were initially just pitches that PR could circulate with the various sites and podcasts to test interest,” said Brian. “Meanwhile, we had those leaders posting on their own to LinkedIn three times per week.”
The LinkedIn posting helped each leader come to understand their own narrative better, and built a body of material that strengthened the PR pitches. Once they’d had a few articles published, pitching grew easier. As they started to gain momentum, their colleagues took note and started engaging more avidly on LinkedIn—a rising tide of interest. Eventually, podcast invitations started to come in unsolicited.
Inverta peeled away—but the program is going strong
It’s now been two years and all three thought leaders are still active. The program took hold and it’s generated plenty of top-of-funnel content for their marketing to repurpose in awareness campaigns.
“I think what made this work was that the quality was actually quite high,” says Brian. “They were new and invested and really gave those initial posts their all.” It took a little coaxing and coaching. But once all three started to see the reactions—first from colleagues, then the market—the motion became habit.
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Minato asked Inverta to review all their product spec sheets, talk to customers, and generate ideas for how to pitch articles to industry publications and Tier 1 media. Our team built that entire program, which started with selecting three “thought leaders” who are still publishing on their own to this day.
The trouble with thought leadership is it requires leadership
People have always listened to people, but influence has never been so centered around individuals as it is now because of all the AI-generated content. Readers—especially buyers of influence—want to know who they should follow and trust. And it’s people, not companies. For that reason, we thought that Minato’s team would have the best luck building a few of its experts into public thought leaders.
That said, too many companies make the mistake of picking their leadership voices based on title. But not everyone has the interest or capacity to write and speak publicly. And when someone isn’t interested, they tend to fall off. We’ve seen this plenty of times. That’s why Brian Schmid, Inverta Client Partner and AI Practice Lead, designed a program to identify hand-raisers who were already interested in putting their ideas out there.
“It was essential that people be interested on their own, for us to include them in the program,” says Brian. “It’d keep them interested and contributing, and help us get through that early awkward period where it seems hard and they haven’t felt the payoff yet.”
Brian laid out a program to:
- Identify publications—industry sites, podcasts, and newspapers.
- Identify internal hand-raisers already writing for themselves.
- Craft editorial guidelines and themes for each leader.
- Run an interview series to capture material.
- Implement an approval and editing process.
- Systematize a handoff to their PR firm.
“We looked at some of their key business leaders, identified who had the reputation and clout in the industry, but also who was passionate about topics that the market cares about, and was positioned to sell into that topic in some way,” says Brian. “It’s a Venn diagram of those things.”
Three people stepped forward, and one was only convinced after Brian walked through the program in-depth and assured her that she’d have editing support to get going.
Brian sat with each leader to identify the key themes and laid out a plan for each for the next three months, with a posting cadence and content plan.
“The documents we created were initially just pitches that PR could circulate with the various sites and podcasts to test interest,” said Brian. “Meanwhile, we had those leaders posting on their own to LinkedIn three times per week.”
The LinkedIn posting helped each leader come to understand their own narrative better, and built a body of material that strengthened the PR pitches. Once they’d had a few articles published, pitching grew easier. As they started to gain momentum, their colleagues took note and started engaging more avidly on LinkedIn—a rising tide of interest. Eventually, podcast invitations started to come in unsolicited.
Inverta peeled away—but the program is going strong
It’s now been two years and all three thought leaders are still active. The program took hold and it’s generated plenty of top-of-funnel content for their marketing to repurpose in awareness campaigns.
“I think what made this work was that the quality was actually quite high,” says Brian. “They were new and invested and really gave those initial posts their all.” It took a little coaxing and coaching. But once all three started to see the reactions—first from colleagues, then the market—the motion became habit.
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Minato asked Inverta to review all their product spec sheets, talk to customers, and generate ideas for how to pitch articles to industry publications and Tier 1 media. Our team built that entire program, which started with selecting three “thought leaders” who are still publishing on their own to this day.
The trouble with thought leadership is it requires leadership
People have always listened to people, but influence has never been so centered around individuals as it is now because of all the AI-generated content. Readers—especially buyers of influence—want to know who they should follow and trust. And it’s people, not companies. For that reason, we thought that Minato’s team would have the best luck building a few of its experts into public thought leaders.
That said, too many companies make the mistake of picking their leadership voices based on title. But not everyone has the interest or capacity to write and speak publicly. And when someone isn’t interested, they tend to fall off. We’ve seen this plenty of times. That’s why Brian Schmid, Inverta Client Partner and AI Practice Lead, designed a program to identify hand-raisers who were already interested in putting their ideas out there.
“It was essential that people be interested on their own, for us to include them in the program,” says Brian. “It’d keep them interested and contributing, and help us get through that early awkward period where it seems hard and they haven’t felt the payoff yet.”
Brian laid out a program to:
- Identify publications—industry sites, podcasts, and newspapers.
- Identify internal hand-raisers already writing for themselves.
- Craft editorial guidelines and themes for each leader.
- Run an interview series to capture material.
- Implement an approval and editing process.
- Systematize a handoff to their PR firm.
“We looked at some of their key business leaders, identified who had the reputation and clout in the industry, but also who was passionate about topics that the market cares about, and was positioned to sell into that topic in some way,” says Brian. “It’s a Venn diagram of those things.”
Three people stepped forward, and one was only convinced after Brian walked through the program in-depth and assured her that she’d have editing support to get going.
Brian sat with each leader to identify the key themes and laid out a plan for each for the next three months, with a posting cadence and content plan.
“The documents we created were initially just pitches that PR could circulate with the various sites and podcasts to test interest,” said Brian. “Meanwhile, we had those leaders posting on their own to LinkedIn three times per week.”
The LinkedIn posting helped each leader come to understand their own narrative better, and built a body of material that strengthened the PR pitches. Once they’d had a few articles published, pitching grew easier. As they started to gain momentum, their colleagues took note and started engaging more avidly on LinkedIn—a rising tide of interest. Eventually, podcast invitations started to come in unsolicited.
Inverta peeled away—but the program is going strong
It’s now been two years and all three thought leaders are still active. The program took hold and it’s generated plenty of top-of-funnel content for their marketing to repurpose in awareness campaigns.
“I think what made this work was that the quality was actually quite high,” says Brian. “They were new and invested and really gave those initial posts their all.” It took a little coaxing and coaching. But once all three started to see the reactions—first from colleagues, then the market—the motion became habit.
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