COMMENTS
Pete,
This is a good start, but there is a lot missing. We've written and write many, many white papers for very large brands and smaller companies --- consumer and business. I believe white papers are a critical part of any lead gen campaign.
I also teach a class at the white paper success summit. During the class, I teach a tactic called the white paper launch method, which is designed to launch white papers like products. We've used it to triple lead flow, double lead quality and generate nearly 6 figures in marketing reach from a single paper. The link is at the bottom, but here are some things we've learned (sorry for the rush...need to catch a plane):
1) Length is an issues - the #1 pet peeve of white paper readers is length. 6-10 pages is really the maximum that people will read before they put the paper down. (Source: Tech Target, Information Week, Google Research)
2) The #2 pet peeve is a white paper that is too focused on the vendor. So while you need to tie your company to the paper, the vast majority of the paper should be educational. If you have a good writer--not a copywriter who wants to write a white paper, but an experienced white paper writer--you can do this effectively and frame the argument in the the vision of your company's offerings. (Ibid.)
3) You have to know your ideal reader--both psychographics and demographics. This is a common mistake for agencies that and writers who don't write many papers. If you don't understand your ideal reader, you will fail at creating affinity with them and in using the language, sentence structure and verbiage that appeals to them more. For example: Marketers love short, easy sentence, whereas scientific types are fine with more complex structures.
4) Use interviews. You simply will not get the richness of the argument you are trying to capture through research alone. The debate between experts is priceless. If your writer doesn't insist on interviews and can demonstrate they are skilled at interviewing, run for the hills.
5) Professional editing - make sure you get the paper professionally edited. Having a couple people look at the paper, simply isn't enough. As a writer, your quality is in your language. By having a professional editor review the piece, you can shorten the paper, ensure clarity and nail any grammar that you may have missed.
6) Expect it to take time. In Mike Stelzner's survey of several hundred white paper writers, the typical paper--when execute properly--can take up to 40 hours to complete including interviews, research, writing, editing, etc.
7) Video. Your landing pages should have a video tour of the white paper so people have a good idea of what they are getting. This also benefits with SEO if you handle it properly.
8) Add share buttons in the paper and on the landing page. Spend some time to integrate Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn buttons into your paper and landing page. You'll benefit from the reach.
9) Do a news release. In order to quickly build inbound links for your paper and landing page, invest some money in a good SEO news release. PRweb is inexpensive, but Marketwire has more authority.
There are many more. Here are some useful links:
White paper
7 Tactics to Boosting White Paper Results. These are the tactics we teach in the class.
Blog article:
What to Look for in a Writer Blog article:
Three Reasons to Know Your Ideal Reader Enjoy the paper and the links. White papers are incredibly powerful and can be turned quickly by experienced white paper writers. We're here if you need us.
Ryan Malone
SmartBug Media Certifed Hubspot Partner
Very good points made by Mr Malone, which enriches the article a lot.
Something I run into a lot, when reading whitepapers is that in a lot of cases it a product brochure in disguise. Briefly the problem and its causes are mentioned and the better half of the paper is about how effective the solution by the issuing company for that is.
A whitepaper in my opinion should be about a trend, e phenomenon in the marketplace, what influence it may have on businesses, what general aspects should be taken into account when dealing with that. Also some piratical hints. It should be written as an expert in the field, not hard selling.
Whitepaper is pull marketing, it makes that prospects will store that information as useful and think ogf that when the problem or situation described in the whitepaper becomes actual, the prospect will contact the issuing company 'because they are experts on that'.
Regards,
Jaap
This article is really making me consider writing a white paper for my business. Thanks for the clear guidelines which were definitely enhanced by Ryan's comments.
We recently wrote and released a white paper (we called it an eBook). It was excruciating to get the stakeholders in my group to agree on the language and messaging -- the only thing I can think of that was more painful was deciding on a logo!!
I would love to hear the opinions of the experts, who can post their comments here for the benefit of the larger group as a case study. What do you guys/gals think?
Here's a link to the ebook:
resource management ebook Thanks!
Rich
Rich,
One of the things we do when we write white papers for clients is to perform an assessment call. During the call, you identify the reader, the problems, the trends and the outline. Do not start any interviews until the outline is approved by all the stakeholders. This will ensure you are pointed in the correct direction, and it ensures you have buy-in up front.
The other point of the interviews is that you are getting buy-in as you go. If you ask good questions during your interviews, you should have no problem keeping everyone on tasks and the risk of scope changes at a minimum.
Ryan,
Our ebook is focused on a specific market segment -- it's targeted at one of our defined marketing personas. If we were to write a white paper for an
individual client, I can forsee several potential problems:
1. During our customer problem/pain discovery calls, clients often share proprietary information. We'd have a hard time sanitizing and including this information in a white paper for general consumption.
2. A white paper focused on an individual customer's use case may be too narrowly focused to be applicable to others.
3. A customer that invests the amount of time you describe might want some ownership of the final product, which would significantly limit its value to us -- especially if we were pursuing multiple prospects in the same market simultaneously.
The assessment process you describe sounds like a sales/nurturing activity and not a marketing activity. Are any of my concerns valid? Did I misunderstand your comment?
Hi Richard,
You probably got caught on the word client. We are often hired by companies to write white papers for them so that was the angle I was speaking from.
So my comments are still very valid, as your client could be your boss or a stakeholder in your company (you're your boss as CEO, but you get my point).
The point is that anytime you do an assessment as I mentioned and do interviews, you get consensus from people as they provide you information. It often saves you some challenge and conflict that you have described.
If you want to chat about it, give us a call and I'd be happy to 949-209-9442. No strings, just happy to help.
Sir,
When we are doing online marketing ,it is always important to write "white paper" seriously. Points which you told , are really important. These some points will always be use ful for me.
Great post. The tips are really helpful, a summary of what we need. If your post is joined with Ryan Malone's, it will be really useful.