Whitepapers are an essential part of any company’s marketing strategy and are an excellent tool to highlight your company’s directly to end-users.
By Amanda Brooks
The Power of a Whitepaper
Whitepapers in the technology industry have become increasingly popular for one reason: technology keeps evolving. Moreover, whitepapers offer high quality content that not only increase credibility, but help drive qualified leads and can play an important role for any sales force. Savvy B2B Marketing blog has curated a list of surveys to display the “value of white papers.” The surveys conducted concludes that “trial software and white papers are the most utilized, along with being among the most effective, forms of content for researching IT problems and solutions”. The report yields that “seventy-seven percent of respondents said they’d read at least one white paper in the last six months (compared to 68 percent in the 2008 survey), with 84 percent of them rating white papers as moderately to extremely influential when making technology-purchasing decisions”. This marks a significant increase in the success of white papers.
Benefits of a Whitepaper
Whitepapers offer many benefits to a business: lead generation, thought leadership, content marketing, etc. Whether part of a B2C or B2B audience, rarely will a random user take the time to register and read a resource so industry-specific. As mentioned in our Whitepaper Library, whitepapers are specific to a degree that other avenues of advertising aren’t. It attracts a specific audience which will decrease the amount of time and costs of following up on unqualified leads. Ultimately, white papers have a significant effect on the larger industry. Specifically, the tech industry uses and values whitepapers because it distributes a lot of information that is tailored to a specific audience.
Studies have shown that whitepapers are an effective way of collecting information from customers and buyers. Furthermore, a graph from Business.com’s survey highlights that most of the surveyed companies hold whitepapers in high regard as a lead generator. More than half of the companies indicated that whitepapers are a “valuable” or “extremely valuable” source of leads.
How to Utilize a Whitepaper
Whitepapers can serve many purposes and behave as a lead generation tool. It can be blasted across social platforms many times and used to start a discussion and generate activity with end-users, like posting its conclusions to industry-specific LinkedIn groups. It can also lead to online and print marketing campaigns, generate interest and secure briefings with reporters and analysts, present material for industry conferences and speaking opportunities, and provide the basis for byline articles – one of its greatest value! Whitepapers are used to educate the reader and bring to a light a new and different perspective. In fact, it is considered to be one of the most influential forms of business collateral. The blog The Importance and Use of White Papers states that 76% of people have used whitepapers as part of their decision making efforts.
An example of a whitepaper can be found here:
TDS: Five Steps to a Successful Data Center Relocation
PR Firms and Whitepapers
Ultimately, an experienced PR firm like Milldam has the ability to use a whitepaper to provide additional value for your business. At Milldam Public Relations, we use whitepapers to showcase knowledge, branding, and leadership. Whitepapers serve important sales and marketing functions, such as creating new leads, increasing your company’s profile as a leader, and setting your brand apart from your competitors. Our goal is to use whitepapers as a lead generation tool that strengthens your company’s image. After all, whitepapers are a vehicle of thought leadership because it keeps your audience aware of the products, services, and issues relevant to their lives. Will you incorporate a whitepaper into your PR strategy for next year?
To read more about whitepapers visit our Whitepaper Library.
Interested in our Whitepaper service? Contact us.
