Tuesday Marketing Notes (Number 11—December 6th, 2005)
A B2B Marketing Newsletter for BMA Members
____________________________________________________________
Show What You Know: Using White Papers to Add Value and Build Credibility In Your Market
by Eric Gagnon
Whether you’re selling nuts, bolts, or complex technical systems, it’s a fact that you—and your business—have a unique approach to designing, making, selling, distributing, and servicing those products: A way of doing business that adds value for your customers, and can’t be matched by your competitors.
In the new, Net-fueled world of B2B marketing we live in, specialization and showing what you know—i.e., sharing the core knowledge held by your company that makes it special and unique in its field—is the key to turning semi-disinterested readers into ready-to-buy prospects for your company’s products.
The old-school ways of B2B marketing and sales—cold-calling, fluffy image advertising, and senselessly carpet-bombing your marketplace with zillions of direct mail pieces that nobody wants—can’t compete with this new, online, knowledge-focused world of marketing.
It’s very simple: What your prospect wants is the solution to their problem. Show how what your company knows about your prospect’s problem, and how this knowledge, and your product, solves their problem, and the prospect will come to you—and not someone else—for the solution.
Show What You Know!
High-quality white papers are the best platform for your company to show your market “what you know:” The unique, proven processes, insights, techniques, and solutions that set your company apart from everyone else who sells the same (or similar) stuff.
For B2B marketers, a white paper is an information document that adds value for the prospect, by helping the prospect solve problems in their work, by providing insight into new technologies or technical issues, and by showing how new applications involving your product or service provide new benefits to the prospect.
White papers communicate with the reader without resorting to the usual marketing hype found in many brochures, ads, direct mail or other standard B2B marketing deliverables. I think this is a very important feature of white papers, and explains their growing popularity: Many readers are sick and tired of seeing the same old marketingspeak. They’ve tuned it out. A white paper is a new and unique form with a clear and simple promise: Give me just that facts that solve my problem.
White Papers are “Anti-Brochures”
Indeed, what makes white papers so appealing to your reader is the fact that they are “anti-brochures:” That is, they offer the promise to the reader to deliver just the facts on the company’s product or service, without overtly trying to sell the reader with the hack marketing copy often found in brochures or marketing deliverables.
Where a brochure starts with your product’s benefits, a white paper starts with your reader’s fears, concerns, doubt, or other motivator to establish empathy with the reader, and then introduces your product in a sincere and objective way as the solution to their problem, using facts and adding hard data to prove its point.
What a white paper isn’t: Needless to say, a white paper isn’t your standard product brochure sales copy shoved into the no-frills white paper layout style (that’s more like a product data sheet). On the other hand, a white paper doesn’t have to be an unreadable technical document, either. As a marketing manager or agency pro, white papers give you the opportunity to present, explain, and simplify your company’s (or client’s) complex products, processes, or any other topic that’s important to your market, free of the need to overtly push product features and benefits in the same old way.
White Papers Have Infinite Forms and Applications
Use white papers for every application, market, and marketing goal: You can produce white papers on your product to focus on specific applications and markets for your product, or white papers directed to the specific needs of certain types of users.
A white paper can even be written for an audience of one: To help clients open new business development discussions, I’ve had success using white papers targeted to address the specific needs and goals of a lone CEO at a single company. If there’s a larger company that you, or your client, want to reach, you can write a white paper that outlines your company’s view of this larger company’s strategy or market, and then describes how your company’s product or service will help this company achieve its objectives, or adapt to the challenges it’s facing. There’s no better door-opener for a joint business discussion than a strategic document that influences the company’s CEO, and a white paper is the ideal platform for delivering this information.
White Papers: An Important Medium of Exchange in Our New Knowledge Economy
White papers are an important medium of information exchange and, as such, have perceived value to readers. This means you can offer them as an article of value in exchange for the reader’s e-mail address and attention. That’s why they’re often used in Google AdWords-type search engine marketing programs (see below).
White papers seem more credible than other marketing communications: Because it’s not viewed by the reader as the typical fluffy marketing they see every day, and because they are drawn to information that can help them solve problems, these readers—engineers, executives, and technically-oriented types—will be more likely to read a white paper than your brochure.
White papers position your company as a “thought leader” in its field: By taking on, and taking positions on, the important issues, processes, and systems of your industry, your company builds credibility in its marketplace. Over time, this value-added information, distributed across your market, can build a perception of industry leadership and premium positioning for your company’s product or service.
Show what you know!
What You Can Do With White Papers
Add value for the reader by showing how their problem is solved: Use a white paper to show how your product solves a critical problem in your industry, not by pitching your product, but by describing the problem, and then detailing how your product solves this problem. Next, use hard facts (and, wherever possible, verifiable numbers) to document what this means to the reader in terms of greater productivity, efficiency, cost savings, or other measurable benefit.
Simplify the complex: We live in a complicated, specialized business world. Industry products often seem too complicated even to the technical people who live and work in that field. Make it simple by using a white paper to break a complicated system or issue apart, explain its key parts, and then detail how your company’s product or service is a new and better product, system, or process.
Case studies/user stories: White papers are an excellent platform for documenting the experiences of real-life customers using your product or service before, during, and after their purchase. Readers (your prospects) will often find real-life stories involving a company’s products to be more credible than a company’s standard marketing boilerplate. Use white papers to document typical “before and after” scenarios involving your product, using descriptions and quotes from actual users, and publish their actual, measurable results: Cost savings, ROI, productivity increases, number of additional units produced per hour, etc.
Grind an axe or spark a meme: Rock the boat; create controversy. Float a new idea, notion, or concept that gets your industry talking. Hold a mirror to your market, exposing a problem that’s on everyone’s mind, but that few dare to address in a thoughtful way. One of the examples below illustrates how a white paper distributed to newspaper executives was used to confront the dire threat of online classified advertising, and to introduce the company’s technology as one of the solutions to this problem.
Using White Papers in Pay-Per-Click Advertising, and as Information Premiums
The best use of white papers is to offer them online, in exchange for the reader’s attention and e-mail address. White papers can be promoted as a premium in your company’s print advertising and direct mail programs, on your Web site, or in many other marketing projects, by offering them to readers via e-mail in exchange for the reader’s e-mail address. You can make this work if the white paper’s stated promise is valuable to the reader, and you promise never to misuse or rent out the reader’s e-mail address to anyone else.
White papers are especially useful as premiums in Google AdWords search engine marketing programs. Offer a free white paper promising (and delivering) useful information to your targeted audience in your text Google Adwords ad, and then link prospects to a targeted landing page sign-up screen on your company’s Web site offering the white paper advertised in the ad.
There’s no better way to begin a relationship with a prospect than by giving that prospect some information of value to them (your white paper) in exchange for something of value to you (the prospect’s attention and e-mail address).
Here’s an excellent example below, from Rich Sheridan of Menlo Innovations (www.menloinstitute.com) of Ann Arbor, MI, a software development consultancy:
White papers can also be used as response drivers for direct mail pieces, and in sales presentation packets, tailored to the prospect, audience, or market. Over time, you can produce a collection of white papers covering many different applications and solutions relating to your product, and your company’s sales reps can provide white papers that are responsive to a customer’s specific application or need.
White Papers: General Structure
Here’s an example of an outline structure for a typical problem/solution white paper:
First Page
Start with an executive summary of the white paper’s topic, in a single large-print paragraph. This makes it easy for the reader to get interested in your white paper by skim-reading this paragraph.
Next, lead your white paper with a concise statement of the problem or issue being addressed in your white paper, and describe how this problem or issue affects the reader in his/her industry. Then, briefly—and objectively (remember, no marketing hype!) summarize the best way your product or service helps the reader solve this problem.
Main Body
For the main body content of your white paper, take the space you need to unwind the problem or issue you’re covering. Break down the problem or issue into the individual elements understandable to readers in your market.
Supporting independent research and surveys add much credibility to the statements and positions you take in your white paper. Use them whenever possible. The same goes for trade publication article excerpts or industry analyst quotes. Any objective, quantitative information that supports your statements or position boosts confidence and credibility for your company and product in your reader’s eyes.
Cover technical material at two levels: Provide both high-level summary detail for executives, and low-level, specific detail for technical readers. Place high-level technical points in text sidebars along the margin of the main text of your white paper to make these summary points skim-readable to busy non-technical readers.
Next, introduce your product objectively as the solution to the reader’s problem. This is important: Forget all the usual superlatives and buzz-phrases you use in your brochures, ads, Web pages, or other marketing deliverables. The “solution” part of most white papers must read as if it were written by an objective, third-party observer to the problem or issue described in the white paper. Remember that you are providing thoughtful, objective analysis of the reader’s problem, and now you must describe, just as objectively, how your company’s product solves that problem. Resist the temptation to jazz up this section by resorting to promotional copy hooks and overt salesmanship.
Conclusion
Make a strong finish: Condense and summarize the core problem or issue faced by the reader, and how your product solves or addresses that problem or issue. Summarize the key strategic and competitive benefits your reader gains by adopting your position or approach. Provide further contact information for your company.
You can also print an “About the Company” text box at the end of your white paper to provide additional description about your company, its background, products, and the markets you serve.
Points on Format and Style
Keep it factual: The promise of a white paper to the reader is to deliver factual information and useful analysis. If you surrender to your marketer’s impulse and toss in your usual marketing boilerplate, you’ve broken that promise. Don’t do it.
Use sidebars at the margin with text and infographics to highlight important key concepts—and to increase the likelihood this material will be seen by readers who might be too busy to read the body of the white paper.
White papers can be any length, but four to five pages seems right for most marketing applications. The best guideline is to use the space and page length you need to state your case.
White Paper Examples
Here are two examples of white papers I’ve written and produced. Google the phrase “white papers” and you’ll see many good white papers written by others:
Jump Code System white paper:
http://www.realmarkets.net/tmn/Newspaper-9-04-WHITE PAPER.pdf
Outsourcing company “X” white paper (sample template used for case study format):
http://www.realmarkets.net/tmn/case-study-sample.pdf
Showing What You Know Takes Many Forms
A white paper is just one platform for demonstrating your company’s knowledge and expertise via distribution on the Internet, by direct mail, print advertising, or sales support. You can also do this in many other formats; each of which are compelling information-based premiums that increase sales response in your marketing program:
Books, booklets, and reference guides: The white paper concept taken a big step further. Books and reference guides have high perceived value to interested prospects;
Slide guides: Tabular reference information that’s specific to your market can often be turned into useful cardboard slide guides and calculators;
Software programs: ROI and technical function calculators specific to your industry’s technical requirements;
Video how-to guides on Web or DVD: What better way of showing what you know: On-scene product demonstrations, along with interesting interviews with your company’s executives, add new depth to your company and its products;
Maps and wall charts: These large-format pieces also have high perceived value and put your company right up on the prospect’s wall for daily reference.
“Showing what you know” can be reduced to many different forms, and each of these deliverables are highly valuable tokens of exchange for the reader’s contact and attention.
Next week, I’m going to do an “extreme makeover” of two actual B2B Web sites and marketing programs, to improve their effectiveness using the principles of clear presentation in Web development, Web video, copy, and other techniques I’ve been describing here over the past two months . . .
Comments? Suggestions? Send them to me at eric@realmarkets.net
_____________________________________________________________
Eric Gagnon (eric@realmarkets.net), is president of GAA, a sales and business development consulting firm, and is the author of The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, the master study guide for the Business Marketing Association’s Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Builder, and Certification (MSA/B/C) programs.
For more information on The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, available to BMA members at a special discount, link to:
http://www.businessmarketinginstitute.com/book.html
_____________________________________________________________
Test, Train, and Build Your B2B Marketing Skills for Better Sales Success: BMA Announces New Assessment, Training, and Certification for B2B Marketing Managers
For more information on the new BMA Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Building and Certification (MSA/B/C) training and professional development program, visit http://www.businessmarketinginstitute.com
