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Market Smart: How to Gain Customers and Increase Profits with B2B Marketing

• Don’t advertise your company in the content of the
white paper, but do credit yourself at the end of the
document. Include an “about” paragraph at the end of
the paper with information on the author and company,
including contact information.

Distributing White Papers

The next step is just as important—in fact probably more
important—than creating the white paper itself. Effort must be
put into promoting and distributing a white paper to see good
results. I’ve seen many companies that almost completely
wasted their efforts, because they didn’t do anything with their
white papers other than post them to their website.

A well-written and effective white paper should travel across
hundreds of desks and inboxes in the course of its life. It can
be used for months, if not years, as a marketing tool.

Ten ways to leverage your white papers:

1. Post them on your website. If they are strong white papers
that share a significant amount of proprietary knowledge,
consider requiring people to provide their contact
information, before they can access the paper. The first
time someone accesses your content, ask for just four
pieces of information—first name, last name, company,
and email address. If you feel very strongly about knowing
who is accessing the content, email it to registrants (using
the address they provided), and consider disallowing
Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo addresses.

2. Build a separate landing page for the white paper, and
optimize the page (using SEO techniques—see Chapter
33) to attract people directly to where they can download
or receive it via email.

3. Do a pay-per-click campaign to promote the white paper.

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© 2012 Lisa Shepherd