Ever wish you could sell more of whatever you offer, but without feeling like a leper set loose at the community swimming pool?
If you operate a business of any size, you already know the importance of generating leads to keep the cash flowing in. And of course the more leads you have, the more sales.
This article will give you a high-level glimpse of one low-pressure, high-impact way to generate more leads — the white paper.
Part marketing piece, part educational report, white papers provide a chance to establish your company as an industry authority, along with reaping a slew of other benefits.
White Papers make powerful tools for:
- Lead generation
- Establishing thought leadership
- Brand building
- Special promotions
- Building goodwill of customers and potential customers
- Effective soft-selling
- Viral marketing
- Marketing kit collateral
- Lead qualification and self-filtering
- Re-purposing internal knowledge into premium content
Why Do Potential Customers Read White Papers?
People read white papers because they’re seeking valuable information. Research shows that people who download these types of in-depth reports are typically early in the buying and decision process before making a significant purchase. Examples might be a chief information officer considering an enterprise customer relationship management system; or a human resources director looking to hire vendors for a large customer-service training program.
What’s the Business Model for White Papers?
White papers can be distributed as printed documents — as they used to widely be in the past. But these days, they’re more often given to readers in the widely compatible Adobe PDF format. Making yours a PDF means it can run on the greatest number of computing platforms, and it increases the chance of the paper “going viral,” and giving your company priceless exposure.
White papers are often sometimes called “Special Reports,” or less charitably, “bait pieces.” Companies often require the reader to provide their name, a valid email address, and perhaps more information, before sending the person the requested information. This can be an incredibly effective way of building an email list and database of prospective customers for future offerings.
Are these marketing and educational pieces an effective return on investment (which can be $2,000 to $10,000 or more)? Let’s put it this way: It depends. Your results will depend on many factors, including the quality of your writing and design, how well you market it, and whether the subject of the white paper itself resonates with your target reader.
How Should I Go About Creating a White Paper?
Crafting a white paper that delivers on each of the benefits mentioned in the list above takes talent and know-how, but it’s not computational fluid dynamics (unless that’s the topic of the paper). In fact empathy may be a more important quality to start off with than technical acumen. For instance, you’ll want to begin with a specific, ideal, individual in mind as your reader, before you even sit down to write the first word.
Then you’ll want to make sure the premise of the paper addresses his or her daily reality — what makes his job a nightmare? What would make it a dream? How can the paper engagingly address the problem until the very end, where your solution emerges as the obvious antidote — without the report ever reading like a sales-ey brochure?
Keep in mind that these lengthy “super-articles” aren’t meant to be a direct sales tool — though they can be. Just as a coffee date is merely the opening move toward establishing a long-term relationship, the free and valuable information in a white paper also lays for you the groundwork of trust and validation.
White paper writing is a form unto itself, given the length of the medium (3-10 pages). Special considerations come into play with the tone, organization, and amount of technical sophistication with these documents. And oh yeah, even though they’re called “white,” the genre lends itself to creatively appropriate graphical and layout treatment. You can find writers online who are skilled in this genre, and some firms will provide end-to-end white paper creation, including information gathering, writing, graphics and layout.
Consider these documents as a way to show potential customers the great value you’ll bring to any future relationship. If done well, they can showcase your firm’s knowledge and leadership in your space — making you the obvious choice when and if it comes time for the reader to buy.