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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In the startup world, marketing is not just lead generation. This Houston expert explains. Photo via Getty Images

Startup marketing: How Houston founders should approach their strategy

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Until recently, the concept of marketing within the startup sphere was often equated solely with lead-generation. It's not entirely inaccurate to say that "marketing is lead-generation," as revenue generation is undeniably the end goal of marketing efforts.

However, what tends to be overlooked by founders is the intricate path to achieving revenue generation and how marketing can pave the way. I firmly believe that a similar paradigm exists in the realm of B2C marketing.

Distinguishing "Marketing" from "marketing"

I'd like to start by establishing a distinction between Marketing and marketing. This distinction might not be perfect, but it encapsulates how I conceptualize these concepts. When I refer to Marketing with a capital "M," I'm alluding to the overarching strategies that companies employ to drive revenue through marketing and advertising activities. This is the domain of the chief marketing Officer. The role of a CMO entails overseeing marketing and advertising efforts to ensure their alignment and efficiency in achieving the company's broader strategic goals.

Given this concept, where should a startup begin when figuring out their marketing strategy?

The role of brand

There is a common tendency amongst startups to create a product, establish a name, and swiftly attempt to enter the market. While the initial step for a startup involves achieving product-market fit, I advocate that once this milestone is reached, startups should pause to invest time in crafting their brand identity. Branding serves as the facet of a company that sets it apart and defines itself. This encompasses articulating a vision, mission, and values. Founders have the opportunity to shape their company's voice, articulate how they add value to customers, and delineate the organizational culture they aspire to foster. This phase is pivotal because it establishes the foundational elements that necessitate internal alignment for efficient scalability.

Once the brand is established, it can be handed over to a skilled marketer to start driving revenue growth. However the path to revenue growth goes straight through brand awareness.

Distinguishing marketing from advertising

This distinction can be perplexing, as the activities described here largely fall under the Marketing umbrella. However, I find it beneficial to differentiate between marketing and advertising within the broader context of Marketing strategy. Marketing revolves around cultivating brand awareness. Marketing is about building brand awareness. In marketing campaigns the wording can be about the company and its team. While I don’t recommend the old visuals of people in a boardroom having meetings, it’s ok to talk about the people and goals of the company in marketing campaigns. What does your brand represent? What is your product? What do you do? Who are your people? What are your values? It’s ok to share all of these things, and depending on the channel a company is marketing on, their marketing person will be well equipped to display this.

Advertising has a different tone and purpose. When advertising a company is talking to their customer, and offering the customer a solution to their pain and problem. This is a company’s what. I assume that a company that has made it this far offers a solution that is a cure, and not a nice-to-have.

Most advertising campaigns follow a simple formula, “are you suffering from X?” with a clear answer of “our company can solve that with Y”. If the answer to the pain question is yes, there is a good probability that the person will click on the ad they are seeing. That probability improves when the advertising campaign is layered on top of a well executed brand awareness campaign.

The significance of brand awareness

Although I'm not a psychologist, I do recognize the potency of the subconscious mind. This isn't about psychological manipulation, but rather an acknowledgment that the subconscious retains more than the conscious mind is capable of. Unlocking this potential might be challenging for individuals, but for marketers, the process is comparatively more accessible. Present information to an individual, and as long as they see it, their subconscious mind will register and retain it. This underscores the importance of brand awareness in revenue generation. By exposing a target audience to the company’s messaging through brand awareness campaigns, enhances the likelihood of engagement.

This fundamentally reshapes how companies connect with their ICP.

The nuance of timing

When an individual encounters advertising, a part of their brain will recognize the brand and might even associate it positively. This underscores the criticality of brand awareness, as it allows companies to focus on their target audience and continuously engage them until they are ready to make a purchase. Determining the precise moment when a customer is ready to buy is nearly impossible. However, this moment invariably arises, usually propelled by a pain point. When that decisive moment arrives, the goal is for the company’s brand to be the first that comes to their mind or that they see. This necessitates an ongoing investment in brand awareness campaigns.

So what does this mean in the context of startups?

A capital-efficient marketing approach

A key component of any Marketing strategy is capital efficiency. Founders must familiarize themselves with crucial metrics, such as:

  1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): What is the expense of acquiring each customer?
  2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV or LTV): What is the anticipated revenue generated from engaging this customer?

While it's acceptable to commence with assumptions, any shifts in these assumptions warrant corresponding adjustments in a Marketing budget.

In the initial stages of a company’s lifecycle, a significant portion of sales might stem from direct, personalized selling efforts. This entails founders engaging in activities like providing software demos for enterprise sales or conducting face-to-face interactions within the target market. However, as revenue grows, capital is raised, and founders transition from selling to leading, this selling strategy should be phased out. This also marks the moment for founders to begin contemplating their Marketing budgets.

A starting point for figuring out your Marketing budget can be based on a CAC to LTV ratio of 1:3, where CAC is a third of your LTV. Once you have determined your CAC to LTV ratio, you need to determine what your revenue goal is, and then set your marketing budget based on that. Finally, you need to divide your Marketing budget between marketing and advertising activities. Depending on the stage the company is at, the division should be around 60% for marketing and 40% for advertising to start. This is to enable brand awareness to work its magic to build an audience for retargeting.

If you’re unsure about how to proceed, we can talk.

In the upcoming months, I intend to delve deeper into several topics:

  1. Founder-Led Storytelling
  2. The Imperative of Building Brand Awareness
  3. Delineating the Distinctions Between Marketing and Advertising and How They Synergize
  4. The Necessity of Outbound Email Marketing
  5. The Power of Marketing Email Automation in Nurturing Your Endeavors
  6. Embarking by Selling Your "What"

I hope these insights contribute value to the founder journey.

Should you have any questions I can help with, please don't hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn.

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Yosef Levenstein is the chief marketing officer and venture partner at Golden Section Ventures.

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2 leading Texas universities rank among world’s best for entrepreneurs

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The Lone Star State’s two biggest universities—the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University—rank among the world’s best schools for entrepreneurs.

PitchBook’s annual list of the world’s top 100 universities for entrepreneurs takes into account both undergraduate and graduate programs. PitchBook analyzed more than 222,000 startup founders whose startups are VC-backed.

UT’s “unique” advantage

UT Austin landed at No. 10 on the list, down from No. 8 last year. PitchBook identified 1,002 UT-alumni founders at 948 startups. Collectively, those startups have raised $34.7 billion, according to PitchBook.

Among the 948 UT Austin-affiliated startups, these five have raised the most capital:

  • No. 1 Tucson, Arizona-based World View, $2.8 billion
  • No. 2 Austin-based Apptronik, $966 million
  • No. 3 Mountain View, California-based Lightmatter, $821 million
  • No. 4 Austin-based Function Health, $807 million
  • No. 5. San Francisco-based Niantic, $779 million

“The unique UT Austin advantage is the alignment between the university and the city,” Foundra.ai says. “Unlike schools where the campus ecosystem and the local startup scene are disconnected, Austin’s startup community actively recruits UT students and alumni, and UT programs actively send students into the local ecosystem.”

Texas A&M’s “living laboratory”

UT Austin’s biggest in-state rival, Texas A&M, appeared at No. 79 on the list, down from No. 76 last year. PitchBook tallied 317 A&M-alumni founders at 295 startups. Collectively, those startups have raised $9.8 billion, according to PitchBook.

Among the 317 A&M-affiliated startups, these five have raised the most capital:

  • No. 1 Austin-based RigUp, $817 million
  • No. 2 Austin-based ICON, $543 million
  • No. 3 Scottsdale, Arizona-based HomeLight, $413 million
  • No. 4 Everett, Washington-based Zap Energy, $326 million
  • No. 5 San Diego-based Splice Therapeutics, $320 million

A cornerstone of Texas A&M’s entrepreneurship offerings is the Center for Applied Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Mays School of Business. The business school says the center “helps students explore, test, build, buy, and transform businesses in real markets.”

“Grounded in Texas as a living laboratory and guided by the Aggie core values, the center advances applied learning through industry engagement, AI-enabled experimentation, and collaboration across Mays and Texas A&M,” the business school says.

The most “exceptional” schools on PitchBook’s list

In announcing its rankings, PitchBook said: “Great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere, but some universities have a truly exceptional track record of attracting and producing future founders.”

The most exceptional universities, based on PitchBook’s criteria, are:

  • No. 1 University of California, Berkeley
  • No. 2 Stanford University
  • No. 3 Harvard University
  • No. 4 Cornell University
  • No. 5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Planned KBR spinoff scores $1B NOAA deal for extreme weather forecasting

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Amid a major spinoff, Houston-based KBR's Mission Technology Solutions business has been awarded a five-year contract for up to $1.1 billion from NOAA’s National Weather Service to help predict and combat extreme weather conditions.

Under the follow-on Commercial Data Program National Mesonet Program (CDP NMP) contract, KBR will provide weather and observational data from commercial stations, university and research campuses, and other non-federal providers nationwide. The information collected will assist in predicting severe temperatures and high-impact weather conditions like extreme storms.

"This award underscores KBR's proven track record of delivering vital data that strengthens national forecasting capabilities," Todd May, KBR’s senior vice president of Mission Technology Solutions, said in a news release.

According to a separate release from NOAA, the contract expands upon KBR's existing relationship with the agency. KBR will work with about 70 private industry partners on services such as data recording, collection, aggregation and processing, and will lead the CDP NMP's "network of networks."

“NOAA gathers environmental information from a wide variety of sources, and a growing list of private industry partners have joined our agency to collect this vital data,” Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, said in the release. “This agreement streamlines the process that turns raw data into the gold-standard forecasts that Americans depend on.”

KBR will utilize its Speed to Mission ImpactSM technology for the project to supply data from across regions, measurement types, and system configurations. Both KBR and NOAA say the expanded data collection contract will help the agency create more accurate and timely forecasts, particularly for severe weather and extreme events, while also creating a path for new weather-observation technologies.

KBR has supported the CDP NMP for more than 9 years. The program will be managed in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"We're driving expanded integration of commercial sensor and data sources into this platform and are honored to know our work helps forecasters give their communities earlier warnings and more time to prepare for dangerous weather,” May added in a release.

KBR’s Mission Technology Solutions business will be rebranded as Trinzic after its planned spin-off, the company announced last month. The spin-off is expected to close in January 2027.

Trinzic will work as an independent, publicly traded company focused on technology and engineering services for the space and national security sector. KBR will remain a separate publicly traded company that will focus on sustainable technology and services to support the energy transition.

This is the salary required to live comfortably in Texas in 2026

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A new national report looking at the income it takes to live comfortably in each of the 50 states has revealed Texans need to earn slightly less now than a year ago.

SmartAsset analyzed what a single individual, as well as family of four, must earn to cover minimum basic needs adjusted using the 50/30/20 budgeting rule. The resulting estimate represents the annual, pre-tax income needed to live comfortably in every U.S. state.

A single, full-time worker needs to make $90,563 to live comfortably in the Lone Star State, the report found, which is down a meager 0.2 percent from last year ($90,771).

Under the 50/30/20 budgeting strategy, that means a single Texas earner would have $45,282 to spend on necessities like housing and utilities, $27,169 for discretionary spending, and $18,113 for emergencies or retirement savings.

Texas ranked 34th nationally in SmartAsset's list of states with the highest income needed for a single adult to live "in sustainable comfort" in 2026. Only five other states — Tennessee, Maryland, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Mississippi — saw a decline in the income needed to live comfortably this year.

For a family of four to live comfortably in Texas, income requirements change significantly, according to the findings. To support a two-child household, a family needs $203,424 in combined total household income to be considered financially stable. This is down slightly from 2025, when SmartAsset reported a family of four in needed $204,922 to live comfortably in Texas.

This is a comfortable lifestyle for a family of four in Texas, according to the report:

  • $101,712 dedicated to necessities and living expenses
  • $61,027 dedicated to discretionary spending
  • $40,685 dedicated to emergencies, savings, or debt repaymen

According to the report, a family of four now needs to make at least $200,000 to live comfortably in 40 U.S. states, a figure that is far out of reach for many American families.

"As housing, grocery, transportation and other essential costs pressure household budgets, earning a six-figure salary no longer guarantees financial comfort in much of the U.S.," the report said. "A single adult now needs at least $80,000 a year to live comfortably in every state, while the threshold exceeds $100,000 in nearly half of states. For a family of four, the income needed to live comfortably is as much as $329,000."

Still, earning the minimum income to live comfortably in Texas doesn't guarantee financial stability in the Lone Star State's major cities. Earlier this year, SmartAsset determined single residents in Houston need to make about $90,000 to qualify as financially stable, while families of four need around $205,000.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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