Nine Strategies for B2B's Greatest Lead Generation Content Tool: The White Paper

Nine Strategies for B2B's Greatest
Lead Generation Content Tool:
The White Paper
From the Staff of
emedia B2B Lead GenerationFor most business-to-business marketers, there is no more reliable, powerful, and anticipated content type in 2010 than the white paper. Unless what you're marketing is utterly beyond differentiation - a commodity among commodities - and your service, method of deliv-ery, etc. offer no marketable points of distinction, white papers will add value to your marketing plans. Period.
. 93% of IT Buyers Pass Along up to ½ of the White Papers they Receive (Information Week 2009 Tech Marketing Series "White Papers" p. 15)
. 68% Find White Papers Useful for Researching Individual Ven-dors, and 59% For Creating a Vendor Short List (Information Week "White Papers" p. 21)
. 85% of B2B Decision Makers and 82% of In? uencers Find White Papers to be Moderately-to-Extremely In? uential in their Pur-chasing Decisions - the highest among content types surveyed (Ec-colo Media 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report p. 2)
B2B decision makers rely on and expect white papers nowadays.
In this paper emedia lays out the nine common applications of B2B white papers today, and colors our list with real-world ex-amples taken from our 12 years of experience driving sales leads using quality client white papers. This paper is designed to in-vigorate your content planning, and to help you decide how white papers can best drive your lead generation program.
1. Develop Trust and Legitimacy
White papers are ideal for showing that your company under-stands a particular marketplace or technology, and is a problem-solver within a certain space. An extended, multi-page opportu-nity for analyzing a common issue experienced by your market, the white paper lets your company build a sort of empathy with prospects. Then, by laying out a set of possible solutions and expert recommendations for dealing with the issue, the white paper gives you a chance to exhibit your company's expertise. Your brand awareness goes up, your sales team enjoys greater recognition - and more meetings - and your company ? nds itself added to more vendor lists as a viable, trustworthy alternative. 1Example: Marketing to Marketers. A lead gen solutions provider with an SME focus released an extended paper on managing the lead life cycle. Tackling a broad but essential subject for marketers, this pa-per helped put the young company on the map as a credible resource for decision makers tasked with delivering quali? ed sales leads. Readers absorbed the company's analysis of the lead life cycle. Consequently they made an easy connection with the company's solutions for lead life cycle management.
2. Thought Leadership for Thought Leadership's Sake
Numerous companies use white papers to put themselves on the fore-front of developments in their industry - in the eyes of their customers. "Thought leadership papers are typically written to demonstrate forward thinking, to help convince existing customers to stick with a company and to persuade the world to buy into a future vision", according to white paper expert Michael Stelzner (Writing White Papers, WhitePaper Source Publishing, 2007, pg 8).
This is especially useful for companies that seek to position themselves as selling value, rather than simply products or services. Sometimes these papers are conceptual rather than prescriptive, and aimed at higher level decision makers more than implementers.
3. Overcome Commoditization in a Saturated Marketplace
Well-crafted white papers enable reach in a world where the average decision maker is inundated with information. It is a fact of the modern age that decision makers tend to initiate the buying process on their end. They pan the great assortment of online published information available for solutions to business issues, or tap into social media or their networks.
DemandGen Report's 2010 BtoB Buyer Transformation Survey indicates that over 80% of B2B buyers "either called the solution provider directly or were contacted after they requested further information online." A quality white paper makes your company's solution available at this key stage. It permits your company to reach decision makers at the outset of their buying process, before they want to deal with sales people.
2Example: Supporting the End User AND the Channel. A ... [download for more]