Experts Share Latest Strategies To Optimize Performance Of White Papers, Lead Gen Offers

The content format also continues to have strong viral impact—one with 93% of buyers passing along up to half of the white papers they read/download, according to InformationWeek’s Best Practices Research Series on white papers. However, in order for white paper offers to stand out and succeed in a crowded field of lead gen offers, cutting edge marketers are realizing the need to stand out from the crowd by trying new approaches and integrating outside tools and tactics to optimize their content messaging.

Michael A. Stelzner, author of the book Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged, and Executive Editor at WhitePaperSource.com, stresses that white papers with quality content, and supported by well structured landing pages and email offers can still deliver huge numbers and have a long shelf life. For example, one gated white paper Stelzner released in 2002 has yielded more than 70,000 leads to date, and has continued to deliver 50 qualified leads each day since its original launch. While a separate white paper offering from Stelzner, which offered without a registration requirement, was read by 40,000 people in four weeks, producing substantial exposure despite fewer qualified leads.

“If [your goal is] lead gen, then you have to consider gating the content in some way,” says Ardath Albee, author of the Marketing Interactions Blog. “If the goal is to gain wider exposure for your company’s thought leadership, let it rip. Where the compromise comes in is in how you choose to gate. Long forms will decrease your downloads. Shorter forms make the choice to complete them easier.”

Up to 95% of your audience will abandon content gated with a Web form, according to data from Vitrium Systems. “Of the 5% that remains and fills out the Web form, many provide inaccurate, bogus data,” says Peter Nieforth, CEO, Vitrium Systems, the parent company of docmetrics, a Web-based application designed to allow marketers to enhance standard PDF files with dynamic features like qualifying data and document analytics technology.

Keeping the viral impact of white papers in mind, experts offer some unique strategies to innovate and optimize content offerings:
•    eBooks: The unique twist on the white paper format has proven successful for many BtoB marketers. The format can provide a more engaging experience for the reader, typically more lengthy than a white paper and landscape in format with more graphics. “eBooks borrow heavily from the content models of good white papers,” notes Stelzner.

Howard Sewell, President of demand generation consultancy Connect Direct Inc. points to a recent eBook from Marketo, the “Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing,” as an example of well- packaged though leadership which is driving results. “It’s 38 pages, yet it generated 1,000 downloads within 24 hours of its launch,” says Sewell. “It’s full of very practical advice without any promotion of the Marketo product. It’s not a brochure posing as a white paper, as so many are.”

•    Integrated Packaging: Sometimes readers need to give more to get more, but asking prospects to share more data requires marketers to give them an offer they can’t refuse. In order to sweeten their offers, some marketers are integrating video and other digital media into their white paper offerings. As an example one industry insider pointed to a recent white paper offering from SAP/Business Objects, which required a 27-step registration process, but provides the registrant with access to a video white paper and a link to download the white paper in PDF form.

“A better approach would be to embed the video component inside the PDF version as one package and leave the content open for download,” says Nieforth. “We believe embedding video inside PDF content is a powerful white paper delivery method that will grow in popularity over time.”

•    Making It Easy To Share: Joe Pulizzi, Founder & Chief Content Officer of the custom content portal Junta42, points to a recent white paper/eBook designed to support the launch of a new Web site called Authority Rules as a model for making content easy to access and share. “This white paper/eBook is available on its own microsite, in PDF form and in HTML form,” explains Pulizzi. “It’s set up to share from the moment you get there. I like that model and I think it has legs.”

Vitrium Systems CEO Nieforth points out that one of the key payoffs his customers are seeing is the ability to place the gate for content in the middle of the document. “One of the benefits of embedding lead generation forms inside your content is their ability to capture pass along leads,” says Nieforth. “The lead generation form travels with the PDF and continues to generate leads from all readers, well after the initial download.”


•    Social Bookmarking: To increase the circulation of content on the Web, marketers are leveraging additional tactics in addition to tweeting and blogging about content offerings. “If someone writes about your white paper (or your product, for that matter), be sure to recommend/bookmark that review on social bookmarking networks and Stumbleupon in particular,” says Sewell, Founder & President, “If it gets ‘picked up’ by one of the networks, the increase in traffic (and downloads) can be phenomenal.” Albee also suggests marketers start a conversation with a provocative thought starter when posting a white paper on a site like LinkedIn.

•    Content Packaging: While many white papers are in fact promotional tools, marketers run the risk of sounding too product-centric, when value should be focused on solving a particular business problem. “You need to have a certain number of pages upfront to be able to educate that reader and fulfill the goal of the white paper,” says Jonathan Kantor, Author of the forthcoming book Crafting White Paper 2.0: Next Generation Information for Today’s Time and Attention-Challenged Business Reader and Founder & President, The @ppum Group. “Companies that are choosing to produce smaller white papers are kind of defeating that purpose and in the end they end up reading like a sales brochure or product overview.”

Marketers can work the Web endlessly to promote a white paper, but it’s important to keep business objectives top of mind and to hone in on your desired audience(s). “[Syndicated] sites are usually broken down by vertical,” says Kantor. “They’re a great way to get exposure and visibility. Just like you have with just about every medium on the Internet, it starts at the broad [level], and then we start to go down to these niche markets and communities around content.”

Kantor notes that the current economic conditions are causing companies to revisit all of their marketing budgets, and as a result organizations are producing smaller-sized white papers, which in most cases are focusing just on a solution and its attributes. “But what makes white papers successful is that educational approach to inform that non-informed reader,” he says.

“A well written and constructed white paper with a targeted audience can realize anywhere between a 10-40% increase in lead generation from that white paper, though the effort is more than just producing a white paper,” he says. Kantor advises marketers to supplement the white paper offering, like mentioning it in your email signature, corporate newsletter and social networks like Twitter for maximum impact.