Writing Effective White Papers
B2B marketers need to generate leads from their websites.
Visitors to the site are of little use in generating sales until
they are prepared to give basic contact information to the site
owner. One of the best tools to encourage them to do so is the
offer of a relevant white paper.
Here are some suggestions based on my own experience and that of
others on the internet to help you maximise the effectiveness of
your document:
- Before visitors even get to the white paper itself they must
decide on the basis of the title alone, or the title and a brief
summary, whether they want to download the information at all.
So the title should be short, use relevant keywords and indicate
the broad content.
- The larger your target companies the more people are
normally involved in any decision to purchase. So your paper
should be written to appeal to all relevant departments so that
it can be usefully passed round to the whole group.
- Your readers may be short of time and start with limited
interest. So you must write clearly and simply and avoid
large blocks of text and long sentences.
- Early in the sales process, potential customers are
gathering information rather than selecting suppliers. So
the paper must be informative rather than a sales brochure - but
since it may be passed on in different formats it is useful to
include some links to your site or references so that all know
the origin of the paper.
- Any paper that works as a lead generator on your site also
has a potentially wider use. So offer it to other relevant
sites and use it as online PR to generate visitors and leads
from all over the internet.
On average you should expect to get 12-15% good quality sales
leads from total downloads. You can increase the proportion if you
make the process of qualification harder. The danger is that you
will also discourage good potential customers. You must also
remember that the person you classify today as a timewaster could be
prime potential to-morrow. After all why are they bothering to
search for your product or service at all?
Happy Christmas, talk to you in 2007!
Stephen Orr |
