Apr
1
A white paper should be part of a much larger campaign in your sales cycle.
Whatever other online marketing you are doing – ads, datasheets, case studies – you should try to tie everything together.
Ultimately, you should have a lead generation process, in which the different stages of the buyers are given a different type of information. If you don’t know your prospect’s buying process, you run the risk of either overloading or underloading the customer during the buying process.
Apr
1
Ideas for white papers
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The topic of a white paper is often a major discussion. It should certainly be customer-centric, rather than you-centric, but how do you know what to write?
Here’s one way to get ideas -
Email your sales team and ask them how many customers they could call and solicit feedback. Ask them to send a quick email requesting permission for a senior product manager, or whoever has recognition in your company, to ask for feedback on a new topic for a white paper.
Gather those emails and have the product manager send an email requesting the following information: “What is the one problem plaguing you in your industry/job/role.” Or, “What is the one thing you would like to see in new products in our industry.”
Take the responses and tally them up. The responses should provide a great starting point for topics.
Some important points to remember while you are doing this exercise:
- You must ask for permission first. Don’t spam your entire email list just to get topics for a white paper. Let me repeat, do not spam anyone.
- Your salesperson should have an existing relationship with the person. It’s fine if they haven’t bought your product or service yet, but they need to have a relationship. Some customers who don’t really have a good relationship with a customer or prospect, so they need to be left off the list for a survey.
- Don’t have your salesperson send out the request for topics. This isn’t a jab at sales, but the request might be misinterpreted as some type of sales pitch. You’ll get a much better response if it comes from a product expert or other management person
- Don’t send out a list of pre-approved topics. Ask an open-ended question for topics. When you send a list of ideas, you run the risk of (a) overlooking a potential topic and (b) having the person hastily respond just to answer the email.
The end result? What will happen after everything is tallied? You will have a common, repeated concern show up in the responses. This common response is the number one thing on your customer’s mind. Write about that topic.
Apr
1
Knowing your audience
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Do you know who is reading your white paper?
The audience you are writing for can make the difference between someone reading your paper and it getting deleted.
Different readers have different requirements when it comes to information. The type of information, the presentation of the information, and the key takeaways of the papers are all dependent upon your audience demographic.
Before you start, there are a few basic things you should know before you start writing:
Who is the audience?
What is their title?
What are their biggest constraints in their job?
Which of their problems is your white paper solving?
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Putting the time into understanding your audience will increase your research time, but will bring higher returns in the end. Why? By understanding your audience, you will be focusing your thoughts and your concentration on a unified demographic. The paper will be written for a real person, rather than a generic, ephemeral model buyer who you hope will purchase your product.
The stronger a connection you make with the buyer, the greater the chance of a follow-up interaction.
