From time to time, someone will call and say, “I need a white paper. We don’t have any and I have nothing to give people.”
Unfortunately, simply creating a white paper for the sake of having one isn’t an effective use of the time, effort and money. To get the greatest bang for your buck, it’s best to develop a strategy that matches the papers you create to the information requirements your customers have at different stages of their buying cycle. (Of course, other types of content will also be appropriate at different stages of the sales cycle, but I want to focus on white papers here).
The following are four commonly used types of papers that will help your customers through their buying cycle:
Generate awareness
Today, potential B2B customers start their purchase process by doing a web search for information that will educate them about possible solutions to business problems they may face. As a result, it’s a good idea to create a white paper designed to meet this customer need for information. These white papers are typically thought-leadership pieces that describe the particular customer problem and the benefits of solving it using a specific type of solution.
Because companies may target the same product to different industries or different roles within a particular company and each of these target markets may have different concerns, companies often create different variations of papers for the same product targeting these different audiences. The key is to carefully define these key audiences and their business challenges that you can address, and then educate these audiences about the benefits of the type of solution you offer to their particular role or industry at a business (not technical) level.
Another way to educate your readers at the awareness stage of the buying cycle is to perform primary research and publish the results. Such research often documents the magnitude of a particular business problem, why customers are having difficulties addressing the problem, describing best practices for solving the problem and finding out how many companies follow these best practices.
Often complex products, such as ERP software, address multiple customer problems. In this case, you might want to address key problems one at a time rather than describe all the problems the solution addresses at once. For example, an ERP software vendor might do a series of educational papers talking about how ERP solutions can address different business issues—such as how it improves productivity, enhances business intelligence, improves financial returns and increases collaboration.
Describe the product
Once the customer becomes interested in your particular solution and is comparing yours to other solutions, you’ll need a white paper that describes your actual product. Such a paper should briefly summarize the problem the product addresses, possibly describe the pros and cons of alternative solutions and technologies, then describe your specific differentiators, key benefits and the key features that provide those benefits. Generally, because companies generally provide data sheets to describe the features and benefits of a particular product at a high level, a white paper will tend to describe more technical details for a more technical audience or describe the product in greater depth than a brochure.
Address common questions
During the sales process, certain questions will arise repeatedly. You can create white papers to address these frequently asked questions. For example, one common issue that companies address with white papers is how the product addresses compliance with a particular new regulation or how it fits in with a new technology category. Again, these white papers are typically used when the potential customer is actively involved with the salesforce.
Validation white papers
Finally, toward the end of the sales process, you’ll want papers to reassure your customers that your products actually do what they say they’re going to do and that give customers quantifiable information they can take to their boss as they make their final decision. Papers that are useful support for this part of the sales process might document the total cost of ownership, especially for products like virtualization hardware that promise to dramatically reduce a company’s operational costs. Another variation on this theme is a paper that describes how a customer can measure the return on investment. Such papers look not only costs but also the top line benefits of implementing the solution. Often these papers can be paired with an ROI tool that companies can use to measure the ROI they can expect from implementing the solution in their own environment. Still another variation gives three to five examples of how customers have benefitted from the solution.
These four categories of white papers form the basis of a white paper strategy that will enable you to start meeting potential customers’ information requirements throughout all phases of the sales cycle.
What’s your white paper strategy?
Recent Comments