Marketing with White Papers

Educated prospects are more valuable - and more qualified -  than uneducated prospects. Clients that understand the value of a good online customer experience, for example, appreciate the value (and price tag) of a talented information architect. 

One of the ways we educate prospects is with events, books, or white papers. By way of review, the term "white paper" comes from the concept that you are communicating your position and point-of-view (POV) on plain white paper, absent of corporate letterhead or brand. It's a position piece, not a promotion piece. 

While you include your name at the beginning of the paper (as the author) and at the end (in a call to action) the content in between should be used to educate, not promote, lest your POV appear too self-serving.

Over the years, companies have indeed started to creep some "light promotion" into their white papers. McKinsey and Accenture for example, stick to the old rule and don't link their services to their point-of-view. They stay out of it and remain the objective educator. But product companies like Oracle, BEA or SAP subtly pull their solutions into the issues their white papers discuss. 

Of course, readers aren't naive. They realize the point-of-view you communicate in your white papers is naturally reflective of your firm's products and services. If you read a paper about hardware virtualization by IBM's VP of Technology ... would you think it has the same objectivity as a paper from an MIT professor? Probably not.

You expect the IBM white paper to be sympathetic to the IBM approach, although you certainly appreciate the general education you get from IBM. After all, they are indeed experts, and they are successful. So you don't entirely discount it. However, if they start to really talk up their products, you start to think, "this is a marketing piece, not a position piece."

If you use white papers to educate your audience, keep in mind some best practices:

• Quote experts outside your own organization to bolster your point-of-view and position.

• If you want a byline on your white paper, think about using a non-marketing or sales professional as author. Executives in research, human resources, finance, technology or manufacturing are good choices.
  

• Commission a paper from a known expert that will lend credibility to your point-of-view.

• While anyone with bottom-line revenue responsibility in your organization is usually not a good choice for a byline (again, they are seen as self-serving) the CEO is sometimes the exception, especially if he or she founded the company or is retired. Does a white paper by Larry Ellison gets more attention than the same paper by Todd Forsythe (Oracle's CMO)? You decide.

• Illustrate your points with examples of companies that are not your clients. An IT services firm for example says "E-bay (not a client) is the poster child for leveraging the value of services oriented architecture."

• Use an independent consultant, analyst or expert to introduce your topic, similar to what you see in business books. Websense, for example, introduces their webcasts with an independent point-of-view on web communications security from an analyst from Gartner or IDC.