The 2025 Investment Bank Thought Leadership Benchmark

The definitive evaluation of Thought Leadership effectiveness. Designed for CMOs and Heads of Content seeking clarity on performance, competitive position and high- impact strategy improvements

The 2025 Investment Bank Thought Leadership Benchmark

The definitive evaluation of Thought Leadership effectiveness. Designed for CMOs and Heads of Content seeking clarity on performance, competitive position and high- impact strategy improvements

Benchmark Report

Uplevel your Thought Leadership Strategy with:

  • Competitor Benchmarking and Bank-Specific Audit
  • Actionable and Inspirational Best-in-Class Playbook
  • Audience insight into key IB Decision Makers
  • The latest IB marketing trends
GET THE TOP-LINE FINDINGS
Benchmark Report

Uplevel your Thought Leadership Strategy with:

  • Competitor Benchmarking and Bank-Specific Audit
  • Actionable and Inspirational Best-in-Class Playbook
  • Audience insight into key IB Decision Makers
  • The latest IB marketing trends
GET THE TOP-LINE FINDINGS

Report Highlights

Rankings:

  • Goldman Sachs scores top at 73%, but the best 4 mid-tier challengers
    outperform bulge-bracket incumbents. The leading boutique has 21% better
    performance than Top 3 IB.

Best practice:

  • Barclays Investment Bank ranks #1 for Cut-Through in social and RBCCM in Journey Optimization. GS scores top for Brand Consideration, but 60% of firms overlook a top 3 brand driver.

Investment Case:

  • 87% of C-suite say Thought Leadership had a direct impact on financial decisions, giving Thought Leadership a benchmark Return On Investment of 156%.

Market context:

  • As Non-Bank FIs take 16% IB market share and 3 boutiques contest top 10 M&A
    rankings; incumbents need to own the client with differentiated advisory Thought Leadership.
    With 89% of B2B marketers using GenAI, IB marketers need to achieve TL competitive stand-out. Yet only 2 IBs score >80% on any of the 5 key TL effectiveness pillars.

Client Insight:

  • While differentiated data is the preferred format top of the funnel, 66% of CxO
    value long-form reports versus video. IB podcasts are poorly optimized to meet CxO engagement preferences.’
Caspian Woods

REPORT AUTHOR:

Caspian Woods

  • 30+ years’ experience as founder and CEO of global FS marketing agency devising content strategy for 60+ financial brands.
  • Former Global Head of Financial Services Marketing for LinkedIn, editor of Chartered Banker magazine and co-author of World Fintech Report.
  • Founder ClientMap the dedicated Financial Thought Leadership strategy consultancy

Connect

Jennifer Grazel

“An unrivalled depth of insight and expertise in financial thought leadership”

Jennifer Grazel, FCS Marketing Leader of the Year, former global CMO RBC Capital Markets

The most comprehensive evaluation of Financial Thought Leadership.

How we rate:

Our comprehensive, proprietary evaluation methodology is derived from a triangulation of three key drivers:

  • Client-led: fed from our database of depth insights of key IB decision makers
  • Data-driven: backed by quant data on digital and social performance across reach, engagement and influence
  • Experience-validated: from 30+ years of devising, running and evaluating 1000+ Financial thought leadership campaigns

Who we rate:

Evaluates the effectiveness of 14 leading North American and Global Investment Banks and Boutiques.

What we rank:

We assess effectiveness of both the quality of insight and the reach, customer experience and marketing impact on brand and revenue opportunities.

This is broken into 5 pillars with 96 distinct evaluation points across the full client engagement journey

  1. Cut-Through and Discovery
  2. Authority and Value-Add
  3. Brand Consideration
  4. Journey Optimization
  5. Call to Action and Revenue
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