White papers are the Number One tool IT buyers look for in the research stage of the buying process. And the most important element in ensuring that IT buyers find your white paper online and open it is the headline.
When IT buyers begin to research the solution to a particular problem, they typically Google keywords. Headlines play an important role in Google deciding whether or not a document is relevant—and thus whether it will be found and how high in the rankings it appears.
Once the IT buyer finds a white paper, on average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. The better your headline, the greater your odds that people will open your white paper to read the rest. Of course, the ultimate success of your white paper will depend on how well you follow through on the promises of your headline—but that’s a discussion for another blog post.
Why a Series Specifically on Headlines for White Papers?
Because headlines are critical for driving action from any type of copy, whether it’s a white paper, sales letter, advertisement or website, much has been written about them. However, most of what I’ve seen applies mainly to ad copy.
This is not to say that many principles that are effective for ad copy won’t work for white papers. It’s just that white papers are different from ads in significant ways and if your headlines are to be effective, they must reflect those differences.
The biggest difference is the audience. While all audiences are skeptical of ads, IT buyers (and technology experts, in general) make skepticism an art form. IT buyers are exceedingly leery of anything that smacks of the slightest hint of hype. I’ll never forgot a conversation I once had with an engineer friend—who later went on to become a co-founder and chief technology officer of a billion-dollar technology company—who implied that marketers were bottom feeders who added nothing of value to technology companies. (Although I’m guessing that once he started a company of his own, he may have changed his mind.)
White papers are effective with this tough audience because they’re meant to appear objective and educational. Successful white papers take a soft-sell approach that discusses problems and solutions, rather than specifically doing a hard sell for the vendor’s product. They offer thought leadership on new ways to solve vexing problems. They discuss trends and provide lots of evidence, statistics, customer ROI, and so on.
Headlines for white papers must reflect this soft sell/educational/thought-leadership approach. This series will look at ways to adapt time-tested principles for writing headlines to this soft-sell approach.
Future Topics in this Series
In the rest of this series, I’ll cover the following topics:
· What you need to think about before you write your headline
· Attributes of effective white paper titles
· Templates for effective white paper titles
· The role of keywords
· Whether “proven” words can boost effectiveness of your titles?
What types of titles have you found most effective for your white papers?
Comments