White Paper Copywriter

White Papers - marketing's best kept secret

 

What are white papers? Essentially, they are valuable, authoritative, management briefing documents on topical business issues. At the very least, for B2B operations, they establish your organisation as a Voice in your Industry. A recent Forbes magazine survey of top decision makers revealed that:

• 63% use white papers or case studies to evaluate products and services
• 78% pass white papers and case studies to colleagues.
• 93% felt that high quality vendor white papers positively influence a company's image.

 

But they are really much more than that. They are probably the best sales lead generation technique available in the B2B environment. These are some real life examples of the responses my UK clients have gained from White Papers (audited):

 

Paper                                                                  Response rate

Consumer Credit Act                                           24% response from MDs of UK finance companies

Traceability in Food Processing                          19% of UK Food Processors responded

Flexible Working in the Legal Sector                   25% response from senior partners of top UK law firms

Evaluating Clinical Trials Systems                       18% response from the world's pharmaceutical companies

Selection Guide to Financial Accounting             1,700 FDs of the 5,000 largest UK companies responded

Public Sector Data Security                                 17% response

IT in the Shipping & Freight sector                       over 20% response.

 

Why/how are White Papers so effective in lead generation?

The problem with traditional mailings (physical and electronic) is that, even when a recipient likes what they read, inertia sets in - I'll deal with that later. The true reason for not responding is the knowledge they will have to speak to a salesman.

 

Using an offer of a White Paper / Management Discussion Paper / Management Briefing / Survival Guide (same thing) has the following benefits as a lead generation technique:

• It is not pushing a product or service - it is offering something of value. Free of charge
• Offers of a Business Document stand a much higher chance of getting past the gatekeeper than a product/service sales mailing
• It is non-threatening. Instead of having to speak to a nasty salesman, the prospect is simply going to receive a valuable report (we always make it easy to respond, without human contact. Given the option, no-one uses the phone to request the paper - always, email or Fax)
• It meets emotional as well as rational needs - eg Fear (of making a wrong decision), Kudos (displaying their new-found knowledge to colleagues), Laziness (not having to research information for themselves)
• Once written, it is incredibly low cost and can be used in campaigns over and over again (one client has been using what is essentially the same White Paper - a Survival Guide - for more than 10 years).

Remember, in the B2B environment, our objective is simply to get prospects to identify themselves, not to sell our product/service. Once identified, then we can call in the sales team.

 

Clients also offer downloads of their respective White Papers from their websites - but prospects have to register first!

 

Contact me to learn what could be achieved in your B2B environment with an on demand white paper copywriter - len@copywriting-on-demand.com or  len@mdltd.demon.co.uk