Remember the popular ad slogan, “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen”? This clever campaign not only captured the country’s imagination, it made people immediately identify the firm as a leader in the financial world.

As a marketer, one of our jobs is to make sure our company’s message rises above the rest. While creating a buzz is great for brand recognition, in today’s 24/7 digital age of short-attention spans your message can quickly become yesterday’s news with the simple click of the refresh button.

Rather than focusing on how often your company’s products are seen or heard across the Internet, developing a lead nurturing program that positions your brand and executive team as thought leaders will provide dividends well beyond new sales wins. A lead nurturing program that successfully turns your executive team’s reputations from talking heads to thought leaders and trusted industry resources will develop stronger relationships with your prospects, customers and other industry leaders and create new business opportunities.

I recently read an interesting blog, “Thought Leadership to Market Your Company and Products,” that covered some of the key points marketers should focus on to better position their company within their respective space, including:

Create a trusted brand: Of course, it all starts with the product, itself, and the team behind it. In order to sell anything, the company has to have a proven, reliable solution that understands and solves your customers’ problems. This is the top priority as the product will create the brand people can trust. Once this has been established, using your clients to endorse your product speaks volumes above anything you can ever say about yourself or your product.

Become a knowledgeable advisor and go-to resource of information: As you push more and more information to your customers, you need to balance the information about your company and products with educational materials on industry news and trends on what others are experiencing and how they are solving similar problems. With more Internet-savvy buyers conducting research prior to a purchase, you need to provide educational materials that helps streamline their buying process and establishes your company as a trusted resource for information. Once you’ve become a go-to resource for usable information, prospects will be turning to you for the answers.

Keep your customers best interest at heart: Finally, when it’s all said and done, the customer always comes first. Understanding your customers’ needs and putting their best interest first positions your brand as one that truly cares about their customers’ needs. Remember that buyers don’t like to be pushed into decisions. They prefer to make decisions on their own, based on their knowledge and research. They choose products of companies they trust and feel they have the customers’ best interest at heart. In the long run, the result isn’t a few one-time sales to make your quarterly numbers, but an ongoing relationship with the ever-changing industry and more satisfied customers.

Most marketing campaigns are designed to drive short-term sales. While this helps increase overall sales revenue, building trust and thought leadership within your industry not only brings in sales, but establishes something often immeasurable by metrics alone — true leadership within your industry.