AI can help you create thought leadership content. But first you need to know what makes you different.
AI can generate a pile of content exceptionally quickly. But the speed of AI-generated thought leadership won't help consultants get better business results if they’re not clear on what’s special about how they think, what they know, and their process.
Have something worth saying
Consultants often think their content isn’t generating leads or converting website visitors into inquiries because they can’t create it quickly enough. They’re disappointed in themselves because they can’t find the time or the self-discipline to post frequently on social media or their blog.
AI thought leadership might seem like the perfect solution because it can be written at the speed of light. But consultants are unlikely to get better results simply by generating more content more quickly. There could be any number of reasons content isn’t working that have nothing to do with volume or posting frequency.
To get results from thought leadership content, you need to have something worth saying and to say it in a way that speaks to your clients and tells them what they need to know to feel more comfortable hiring you. It’s all about building authority and trust.
You need to position what you do as the solution to your clients’ problems. To answer clients’ questions and address the hesitations that prevent them hiring you. To demonstrate your unique perspective, expertise, and experience. To show how you think or do things differently from your competitors — what’s special about your expertise, experience, or process. To make it clear to a skeptical lead what value you can actually provide. In short, you need to create content that helps your readers move closer to working with you.
In this piece, I’ll talk about a recent example of a business owner I spoke with, who was frustrated with her marketing efforts.
Frustrated by marketing that doesn’t work
She’d tried social media, blogging, and Facebook ads. She’d experimented with getting ChatGPT to create Instagram posts. Her website got some traffic, but it wasn’t translating into people getting in touch. Nothing seemed to be generating leads.
At first glance, it looked like a content problem. She felt that she lacked discipline and wasn’t posting frequently enough on social media and felt bad for abandoning her blog months before. But she also didn’t want to waste time doing stuff that wasn’t going to benefit her business, and creating content hadn’t had a great track record so far.
After talking with her for an hour, I realized the frequency of her content wasn’t the fundamental problem. The problem was nothing AI’s speed could help with.
When I asked her why customers chose her business over competitors, she didn't really know. But I gradually discovered that her business has a real competitive advantage, a genuinely valuable unique selling proposition that was far more than a neat marketing slogan.
A unique selling proposition (USP), sometimes called a unique value proposition (UVP), is what makes your brand or business special and different. It’s why customers choose you rather than your competitors.
But she wasn't talking about her USP. Not on her website, not on her social media, not in her blog posts.
She's a home builder, and her USP is radical transparency. She gives potential clients fully itemized spreadsheets showing exactly how much everything costs, and where the prices might change throughout the course of a project. Clients receive regular updates with every supplier invoice attached, and clear visibility into whether they're tracking over or under budget. She adds no markup on supplier invoices — just a clear, stated percentage fee on the overall cost.
In an industry where cost overruns and unpleasant surprises are common, and where potential customers are legitimately scared of getting ripped off and stuck with shoddy or unfinished work, that's an important difference.
Honesty and transparency are non-negotiable values for my client, but she hadn’t recognized their marketing potential. She didn’t think of them as her remarkable Unique Selling Proposition that she could make use of in her marketing content. Her USP was hiding in plain sight because it just felt normal to her. She’s not alone in this. Plenty of business owners and consultants have a hard time seeing what makes them special.
But once she recognized what made her business different, she had the beginnings of some genuinely useful content.
She could write about why home-building projects typically go over budget, how clients can protect themselves from unexpected costs, what to look for in a builder's pricing estimates, or why she believes clients should have access to every supplier invoice.
Each of those topics would help her prospective clients understand something important about building a home. But they'd also demonstrate her approach, her values, and why those differences matter to her clients.
That's the kind of content that can help a prospective client move closer to hiring you.
Not because you're telling them how wonderful you are, but because you're showing them how you think, how you work, and why that matters to the results they want.
What makes you special?
AI’s not much help to you if you can’t answer questions like this:
What do you do differently from other consultants?
What do you believe that others in your field get wrong?
Why are you particularly well-suited to serve a specific market?
What have you learned from experience that your clients don’t know?
How does your process lead to the outcomes your clients want?
What experience do you have that shows you get results?
What do clients value about working with you?
Sure, AI can create a month’s worth of generic blog posts and social media captions in a few minutes. But AI can't help you tell potential customers what’s special about you if you haven't figured that out yourself, and then told AI all about your expertise, experience, and insight.
If you have a vague, fuzzy message, AI will help you spread it. But if you have a unique, crystal clear message, AI can help you spread that instead.
So, do you know your USP? What makes your business special and different from your competitors? Once you know this, creating effective content becomes easier. You’ll have a better idea what customer problems to address and which questions to answer. Your USP can give you ideas for which objections you need to overcome and which customer stories to tell.
When you’ve got your Unique Selling Proposition (also called a Unique Value Proposition) figured out, and you have clarity on some other aspects of your business too, AI becomes more useful. It can help you communicate your unique message, rather than pulling something generic out of thin air.
But do consultants really need to differentiate themselves?
Brand differentiation is considered fundamental to marketing. But does the same principle apply when you're selling consulting services? In his book, The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients, David A. Fields says,
“Differentiation doesn’t matter in consulting. Results matter… Clients aren’t looking for an approach that’s different. They’re looking for one that works.”
and
“Differentiation, the bedrock of every classic marketing plan, has no place in consulting… Differentiation is not what sells consulting business.”
What’s his reason for believing this? “When a consumer approaches the supermarket shelf, she believes the products will fulfill on their basic promise.” So product marketers try to win over the consumer by showing how their product is different/better than the others it’s competing with.
In contrast, “When a decision maker on a project approaches a consulting firm, however, she does not believe most firms will fulfill on their basic promise.” They’ve had bad experiences with consultants in the past when projects failed or when expensive reports were never implemented. As a result, “buyers of consulting services aren’t looking for different; they’re looking for a solution they can rely on.”
In contrast, Michael Zipurksy at Consulting Success says:
“Your unique selling proposition is the foundation everything else is built on. It answers the question every prospective client is silently asking: why you, specifically, over every other consultant who does something similar?” Personal Branding for Consultants
He goes on to say:
“What do you do, or how do you do it, that others don’t? A proprietary framework, a specific methodology, a unique point of view on the problem, or an unconventional approach to solving it. This is what creates genuine differentiation rather than claimed differentiation.” Personal Branding for Consultants
It seems that these two authorities in the consulting space disagree on the value of differentiation, with Fields saying it doesn’t matter and Zipursky saying it absolutely does.
I think the key to reconciling these positions is that, in consulting, difference for the sake of difference isn't particularly useful.
What matters is whether a difference gives a prospective client more confidence that you can solve their particular problem.
Having a trademarked name for your process isn't necessarily going to do that. But explaining why your process works, what you've learned from using it, and how it addresses problems your clients have encountered before might.
Your particular industry experience could matter enormously to a client who's tired of explaining the basics to other consultants. Your unusual approach might appeal to someone who's tried conventional solutions without success. Your background might help you understand a problem that other consultants routinely overlook.
This kind of differentiation matters because it gives a prospective client a specific reason to believe you're a good fit for them.
And this is where thought leadership is useful. You don't have to wait until a discovery call to explain your approach, demonstrate your expertise, or address the concerns that might prevent someone from hiring you. Your content can start doing that work much earlier.
Generic messaging — which AI can quickly produce — doesn’t differentiate you from your competitors, so it can’t help you stand out from them.
But communicating what makes you special and different from your competitors can help you get real business results, so long as you explain why what makes you special and different makes you more likely to get real business results for your clients. Your USP needs to be grounded in building your prospective clients’ trust.
How to uncover your Unique Selling Proposition
The expertise and differentiators you take for granted may be precisely what prospective clients need to hear about before they're willing to hire you. AI can help communicate those things, but you need to uncover them first.
So, before you ask AI to help you create more content, it’s essential to get clear on your USP. You can start by asking yourself:
Why do your best clients choose you?
What do they praise most often in their reviews and comments?
What do you do differently from your competitors that helps you get better results?
What would clients lose if they switched to someone else?
What do your competitors do that you think is wrong or mistaken?
Those questions are variations on the same theme and if you can't answer them, that's probably where you need to start work.
If you're struggling to identify what makes your consulting business different, try asking three recent happy customers why they chose you. Their answers may reveal strengths you're overlooking.
Of course, communicating what makes you different is only one of the jobs your thought leadership content should do. It can also answer the questions prospective clients have about working with you, address their concerns, explain your process, and demonstrate how you approach the problems they need solved.
Identifying what makes your expertise valuable is an important starting point for your thought leadership strategy. Once you understand what prospective clients need to know about you, you can identify the article topics that will demonstrate your expertise, explain your approach and help them feel more confident about hiring you.
You can create articles that give prospective clients reasons to feel confident about hiring you.
And that's something AI can't do simply by generating more content, faster. You need to uncover the valuable thinking first. Then you can use AI to help turn it into content that does a useful job for your business.
Need help uncovering the ideas your prospective clients need to hear?
My Signature Thought Leadership Collection service helps you identify and develop the articles that demonstrate your expertise, answer prospective clients' questions, and give them reasons to feel confident about working with you.
Learn more about the Signature Thought Leadership Collection.
P.S.
My process for this blog post: I asked ChatGPT for three ideas for a blog post, given what I do in my business, the customers I serve, and so on. It gave me three and I liked this one. I wrote the first draft in Word. Then I gave ChatGPT the draft and also a transcript of a call with the client mentioned in this post, and asked it to summarize the relevant part of the transcript for me to add to my draft, which it did. I added it in (checking the original transcript for accuracy) and then went through two rounds of feedback with ChatGPT. I took some of its advice, and ignored the rest. After that, I shared the draft with my writing group and got feedback from five other writers, some of which I incorporated, some of which I didn’t. A few weeks later, I took the article down from my website to update it, because I changed my offer. I rewrote parts of it, deleted whole sections, wrote new sections. I got feedback from ChatGPT, including on SEO keywords, and incorporated most of it.