Houston expert shares how to implement thought leadership into your B2B marketing

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What is thought leadership and how can it help you achieve your marketing goals? This Houston expert explains. Photo via Getty Images

Did you know that 52 percent of decision-makers and 54 percent of C-level executives spend an hour or more per week reading thought leadership content? This is according to a recent Edelman and LinkedIn survey on thought leadership.

I often counsel my clients about the role of thought leadership in B2B marketing. Thought leadership remains a strategic approach that can set a company apart, establish credibility and a strong brand voice and position it as a trusted expert in its industry. But what exactly is thought leadership, and how can it support a B2B marketing strategy?

Why a thought leadership strategy matters

Thought leadership marks a commitment to provide value through insights beyond mere selling. It involves producing content and ideas that address the company's target audience's most pressing challenges and questions. This content helps position the company as a service partner, go-to resource and industry advisor.

Builds credibility and trust: Trust remains vital in a B2B context where longer sales cycles and purchasing decisions undergo scrutiny. Thought leadership lets a company demonstrate its expertise, solution-based thinking and value meaningfully to decision-makers. According to industry data, an estimated 75 percent of decision-makers say an organization's thought leadership content is more trustworthy for assessing its capabilities and competencies than its marketing and product sheets.

Differentiates from competitors: By sharing insights, a company can differentiate itself in a crowded market. Thought leadership helps companies stand out by proving their deep understanding of the customer's challenges and needs and the solutions available for more efficient and cost-effective operations.

Enhances brand awareness: Regular publication of insightful content, whether through blogs, webinars or white papers, can increase brand visibility and keep the company top of mind for customers and potential customers.

Supports sales efforts: Well-crafted thought leadership content can powerfully warm up leads. It provides sales teams with material that resonates with prospective customers' pain points and aspirations. According to the Edelman report, nine in 10 decision-makers and C-suite executives said that they are moderately or very likely to be receptive to sales or marketing outreach from a company that consistently produces high-quality thought leadership.

How to implement a thought leadership strategy

Identify key insights and topics: Start by understanding the questions and challenges the target audience faces. Use this insight to create content that addresses these issues, offers solutions or provides novel perspectives. Include strong research and data, and offer case studies or practical steps. Depending on where the audience spends its time, consider publishing on LinkedIn, industry blogs, podcasts or webinars.

Remember that consistency is key: Thought leadership isn't a one-and-done approach. Build an ongoing and consistent content program. Keeping to a schedule helps maintain audience engagement and reinforces the organization's position as an industry leader.

Measure and adapt: Like any marketing strategy, measuring the effectiveness of your thought leadership efforts remains critical. Setting clear objectives provides the foundation for defining success and measuring outcomes effectively. Metrics could include media coverage, website traffic, social media engagement and business development leads. Additionally, sales impact can be measured by actions such as first-time discovery calls and sales-qualified leads.

Thought leadership proves an invaluable strategy for B2B marketing. It aims to assert the expertise of a company and build meaningful connections with its audience. A business can establish a strong, credible brand that attracts and retains customers by providing valuable insights and solving real-world customer challenges through high-quality content.

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Melanie Taplett provides communications and public relations services to the energy, manufacturing, technology, engineering and construction industries. Contact her at mtaplett@taplycom.com.

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How you can use your data to improve your marketing efforts. Photo via Getty Images

Houston expert breaks down how B2B companies should leverage data for growth

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When focusing on revenue growth in business to business companies, analyzing data to develop and optimize strategies is one of the biggest factors in sales and marketing success. However, the process of evaluating B2B data differs significantly from that of B2C, or business to consumer. B2C analysis is often straightforward, focusing on consumer behavior and e-commerce transactions.

Unlike B2C, where customers can make a quick purchase decision with a simple click, the B2B customer journey involves multiple touchpoints and extensive research. B2B buyers will most likely discover a company through an ad or a referral, then navigate through websites, interact with salespeople, and explore different resources before finally making a purchasing decision, often with a committee giving input.

Because a B2B customer journey through the sales pipeline is more indirect, these businesses need to take a more nuanced approach to acquiring and making sense of data.

The expectations of B2B vs. B2C

It can be tempting to use the same methods of analysis between B2C and B2B data. However, B2B decision-making requires more consideration. Decisions involving enterprise software or other significant business products or services investments are very different from a typical consumer purchase.

B2C marketing emphasizes metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, and immediate sales. In contrast, B2B marketing success also includes metrics like lead quality, customer lifetime value, and ROI. Understanding the differences helps prevent unrealistic expectations and misinterpretations of data.

Data differences with B2B

While B2C data analysis often revolves around website analytics and foot traffic in brick and mortar stores, B2B data analysis involves multiple sources. Referrals play a vital role in B2B, as buyers often seek recommendations from industry peers or companies similar to theirs.

Data segmentation in B2B focuses more on job title and job function rather than demographic data. Targeting different audiences within the same company based on their roles — and highlighting specific aspects of products or services that resonate with those different decision-makers — can significantly impact a purchase decision.

The B2B sales cycle is longer because purchases typically involve the input of a salesperson to help buyers with education and comparison. This allows for teams to implement account-based marketing and provides for more engagement which increases the chances of moving prospects down the sales funnel.

Enhancing data capture in B2B analysis

Many middle-market companies rely heavily on individual knowledge and experience rather than formal data management systems. As the sales and marketing landscape has evolved to be more digital, so must business. Sales professionals can leave and a company must retain the knowledge of the buyers and potential buyers. CRM systems not only collect data, they also provide the history of customer relationships.

Businesses need to capture data at all the various touchpoints, including lead generation, prospect qualification, customer interactions, and order fulfillment. Regular analysis will help with accuracy. The key is to derive actionable insights from the data.

B2B data integration challenges

Integrating various data sources in B2B data analysis used to be much more difficult. With the advent of business intelligence software such as Tableau and Power BI, data analysis is much more accessible with a less significant investment. Businesses do need access to resources to effectively use the tools.

CRM and ERP systems store a wealth of data, including contact details, interactions, and purchase history. Marketing automation platforms capture additional information from website forms, social media, and email campaigns. Because of these multiple sources, connecting data points and cleansing the data is a necessary step in the process.

When analyzing B2B data for account based marketing (ABM) purposes, there are some unique considerations to keep in mind. Industries like healthcare and financial services, for instance, have specific regulations that dictate how a business can use customer data.

Leveraging B2B data analysis for growth

B2B data analysis is the foundation for any sales and marketing strategy. Collecting and using data from multiple sources allows revenue teams to uncover gaps, trends, and opportunities for continued growth.

Acknowledging what’s different about B2B data and tracking all of the customer journey touchpoints is important as a business identifies a target market, develops an ideal customer profile, and monitors their competitors. Insights from data also single out gaps in the sales pipeline, use predictive analytics for demand forecasting, and optimize pricing strategies.

This comprehensive approach gives B2B companies the tools they need to make informed decisions, accelerate their sales and marketing efforts, and achieve long-term growth in a competitive market.

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Libby Covington is a Partner with Craig Group, a technology-enabled sales and marketing advisory firm specializing in revenue growth for middle-market, private-equity-backed portfolio companies.

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Intel Corp. and Rice University sign research access agreement

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Rice University’s Office of Technology Transfer has signed a subscription agreement with California-based Intel Corp., giving the global company access to Rice’s research portfolio and the opportunity to license select patented innovations.

“By partnering with Intel, we are creating opportunities for our research to make a tangible impact in the technology sector,” Patricia Stepp, assistant vice president for technology transfer, said in a news release.

Intel will pay Rice an annual subscription fee to secure the option to evaluate specified Rice-patented technologies, according to the agreement. If Intel chooses to exercise its option rights, it can obtain a license for each selected technology at a fee.

Rice has been a hub for innovation and technology with initiatives like the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, an accelerator focused on expediting the translation of the university’s health and medical technology; RBL LLC, a biotech venture studio in the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park dedicated to commercializing lifesaving medical technologies from the Launch Pad; and Rice Nexus, an AI-focused "innovation factory" at the Ion.

The university has also inked partnerships with other tech giants in recent months. Rice's OpenStax, a provider of affordable instructional technologies and one of the world’s largest publishers of open educational resources, partnered with Microsoft this summer. Google Public Sector has also teamed up with Rice to launch the Rice AI Venture Accelerator, or RAVA.

“This agreement exemplifies Rice University’s dedication to fostering innovation and accelerating the commercialization of groundbreaking research,” Stepp added in the news release.

Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

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A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”

Texas among 5 hardest working states and more innovation news to know

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Editor's note: As we look back at the top Houston innovation news for the first half of September, reports show that Texas is one of the hardest working states, while local startup activity has slowed down. Plus, exciting medical innovation advancements. Here are the most-read InnovationMap stories from September 1-14.

1. Texas is the 4th hardest working state in America, report finds

Texas is home to some of the hardest workers. Photo via Getty Images

It's no secret that Texans are hardworking people. To align with the recent Labor Day holiday, a new WalletHub study asserts that the Lone Star State is one of the five most hardworking states in America for 2025. The report ranked Texas the fourth most hardworking state this year, indicating that its residents are working harder than ever after the state fell into seventh place in 2024. Continue reading.

2. UH receives $1M grant to advance research on rare pediatric disorder

The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation has granted $1.1M to the University of Houston to support research on Usher Syndrome. Photo courtesy University of Houston.

The University of Houston has received a two-year, $1.1 million gift from the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation to advance research on a rare genetic disorder that can lead to both deafness and blindness in children, known as Usher Syndrome. The current grant will support the research of UH biomedical engineering professors Muna Naash and Muayyad Al-Ubaidi, who work in the Laboratory for Retinal Molecular and Cellular Biology and Gene Therapy in the Cullen College of Engineering. Continue reading.

3. Houston's surge in new startups cools since pandemic peak, study shows

Startup applications in Houston have dipped since their 2021 peak, even as national entrepreneurship hits record highs, according to a new report from The Kaplan Group. Photo via Getty Images.

Startup activity in the Houston metro area has dipped since its pandemic peak, according to a new study. Dating back to 2005, the volume of applications to form new businesses in the Houston area hit its highest level in 2021 (151,804). Since then, though, the application volume has fallen, according to the study, conducted by business debt collection agency The Kaplan Group. Continue reading.

4. TMC lands $3M grant to launch cancer device accelerator

Recent funding from CPRIT will help launch the new Accelerator for Cancer Medical Devices. Photo via TMC

A new business accelerator at Houston’s Texas Medical Center has received a nearly $3 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The CPRIT grant, awarded to the Texas Medical Center Foundation, will help launch the Accelerator for Cancer Medical Devices. The accelerator will support emerging innovators in developing prototypes for cancer-related medical devices and advancing them from prototype to clinical trials. Continue reading.

5. 10 Houston billionaires make Forbes' list of richest Americans in 2025

Pictured: Nancy and Richard Kinder, the richest Houstonian, according to the Forbes 400. Photo by Michelle Watson/Catchlight Group

America's wealthiest billionaires are $1.2 trillion richer in 2025, bringing their collective worth to a staggering $6.6 trillion. And Houston's own Richard Kinder has become the richest billionaire in the city, according to the new Forbes 400. The Kinder Morgan chairman is the 11th richest Texas resident and ranks as the 108th richest American. Kinder also dethroned Tilman Fertitta to claim the title as the wealthiest Houstonian. The annual Forbes 400 list is a definitive ranking of the wealthiest Americans, using interviews, financial data, and documentation provided by billionaires and their companies. Continue reading.

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