Why White Paper Marketing Is A Must for Your Business

It’s no secret that for many businesses, the past 2 years had been among the most challenging, and we have reasons to believe that times ahead are going to get even tougher.  Combine that with the fact that today’s consumers are sales-resistant, ad-blind and shrewd buyers so it’s getting harder and harder to find qualified leads and win over new customers.

If you’re still doing Traditional Marketing methods and old media, you will have long noticed that it’s becoming less and less effective.

You need to find cheaper and more effective ways to market your business – but how will you do that?

One of the best ways to increase your bottomline is to NOT focus on selling, but on consistently creating better and more value for your prospects and customers.

Instead of trying to actively get into your prospect’s pockets, educate them about ways that will help them get more of what they want, and then relate the solutions or action steps you recommend to your products or services.

In short, selling is out, and Pre-selling is in.

And one of the best ways to pre-sell? Writing White Papers!

What is a White Paper?

A White Paper is an authoritative  guide designed to to educate readers and help key people to make concrete decisions regarding specific issues. In business, White papers are often used to generate leads by informing prospects about industry-related research, statistics, know-how, and other relevant (often technical or somewhat complex) information.

For example:

1.  Suppose you own an Accountancy firm. Inform your customers how exactly they could improve their cashflow or make sound strategic financial plans, and then state clear calls to action.

2. If you’re selling freight services, you may want to conduct a study to show your prospects/customers how the buying decisions of today’s consumers are greatly affected by how fast their orders are going to be delivered to them.

Why White Paper Marketing?

This works so much better than telling people to buy your stuff, because you are actively helping them get what they want so they naturally pay attention to what you are proposing.

The following findings are highlights of TechTarget’s report called Media Consumption Benchmark Report:

1. 52% of buyers read at least 5 white papers within 3 months. In addition, buyers consume more white papers than any other type of media.
2. Buyers use White papers to evaluate solutions. 59% says they rely on white papers more than newsletters (51.8%), trials (46.2%), product literature (40.7%), articles (38%), webcasts (47.7%), case studies (25.7%), podcasts (9.3%) and virtual trade shows (8.4%).
3. 80.5% of buyers find white papers to be very effective or somewhat effective in the decision making process, and more so than any other marketing tool.
4. 47.6% of buyers use white papers to gain awareness and 35.7% use them when considering a solution.  This places white papers above all other forms of marketing for gaining awareness and consideration.
5. 41.6% of buyers forward white papers to friends or colleagues, and is the most forwarded form of marketing material.

In another study conducted by Eccolo Media, the findings were:

1. Prospects Who Read White Papers Are On the Increase. In 2008, 68% of survey respondents said they’d read at least one white paper in the last six months. In 2009, this number increased to 77%!
2. White Papers are Influential. 84% of the respondents rated White Papers as moderately to extremely influential when making final purchasing decisions.
3. White Papers are Viral. 89% of respondents forwarded the White Paper they’ve read to others. Plus 1 in 3 of these  respondents shared them with 3+ more people!

In short, White Paper Marketing is one of the best lead-generation tactics you can ever use, and it consistently triumphs over other means when it comes to getting the best bang out of your marketing buck.

(By the way don’t get stuck on written reports. There’s no stopping you from delivering your message via audio or visual formats if these are more applicable to your audience.)

Later this week I’ll provide some more resources about White Paper Marketing, but if you now want to add White Paper Marketing to your marketing arsenal for 2010, our good friend Michael Stelzner is giving away a free class about it, as part of his upcoming live online event, Marketing White Paper Success Summit 2010.* We are great fans of Mike’s works and highly recommend his materials. Make sure to check out his story about how writing White Papers boosted Mike’s business during an economic slump.

This live online event will empower you to attract quality leads and grow your business. The world’s leading white paper experts will be available to show you how to use educational white papers :

1. Michael Stelzner (author, Writing White Papers)
2. Bob Bly (author, White Paper Marketing Handbook)
3. John Jantsch (author, Duct Tape Marketing)
4. Brian J. Carroll (author, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale)
5. Roger C. Parker (author, White Paper Design that Sells)
6. Joe Pulizzi (author, Get Content Get Customers)
7. Jonathan Kantor (author, Crafting White Paper 2.0) and many others!

You can “attend” the live events from your home or office, but if you can’t you will also get the recordings so it’s not a problem.

Go here now to learn more and get White Paper Marketing-related freebies: Marketing White Paper Success Summit 2010.*

* Please be aware that if you decide to buy the materials we recommend here, we may get a small commission. You can be assured though that commissions never shape our decisions about which products and services we tell you about. We are committed to only recommending those that we believe will truly impact your business. To see the full version of our Disclosure click here.

Related posts:

1. White Paper Marketing Secrets Revealed: Straight From The Pros!
2. Social Media Marketing Interview with Mike Stelzner
3. Why You’re Killing Your Business By Not Having a Business Blog (10 Proofs You Must See)
4. Marketing is Dead: Why Your Business Must Change Now…or Die
5. Blog Marketing: To Do Or Not to Do?