Courtesy of: Branex
White Paper Structure for the Win
Good white papers sell products because they have a persuasive tone, and pack a lot of useful information into a clear and readable structure.
White papers should include:
- Throw down the glove. Describe the pain the prospect is experiencing. (That you can help with, naturally.) Describe the problem from their standpoint, and be sure you know what that problem is.
- Tell them how technology will solve their problem. Don’t tell them about your specific product yet. Make the case for how a given approach will solve their problem. Along with the challenge statement, this section will comprise 2/3 of the paper.
- Add examples and scenarios. Actual case studies with actual customers are ideal, but if you can’t mention customer names (common in the financial world), it’s fine to speak more generally. “A financial services company recently deployed…”
- Introduce your product as the specific technology they need. Introduce how your product works, and how it meets their challenges.
- Get specific on product benefits. This section combines with the technology section and includes ways that the product meets the challenge. You can also use this section to contrast your approach with other technologies, especially if your product is innovative.
- Push a positive return on investment. ROI has always been a big deal, and with reason. If you have great hard cost numbers, terrific – don’t hesitate to use them. Soft benefits work too if you have them, but the more quantifiable the better.
- Conclude with relationship-building. Include an offer, like an ROI calculator, useful infographic, or vertical-specific content. Include your contact information, and make it as easy as possible for them to respond.
7 Very Cool Blogging Stats for B2B
Blogging is important to lead gen. There’s a reason that my retainer clients all include multiple monthly blogs in our contracts – because regular, consistent blogging works.
This post started from an information-packed post called “52 Incredible Blogging Statistics to Inspire You to Keep Blogging” by Julia McCoy. I encourage you to read it. It’s written as much for solo bloggers as B2B companies, but there is a lot of applicable research for B2B .
Luckily for you I’m not repeating all 52 statistics (read the original post). I will list the following 7 stats and their sources that I can personally attest to.
7 Cool Blogging Stats
- Social Media Examiner says that B2B businesses are more likely to use blogging for lead gen than B2C. It’s true that consistent content marketing can significantly shorten sales cycles, especially in technology marketing. A big reason is that buyers will typically begin their research online, and not reach out to a vendor until they’ve consumed several pieces of good content. (Defining “good” as practical, problem-solving, smart, easy-to-consume, and/or thought leadership stuff.)
- HubSpot says that B2B marketers who use blogs in content marketing get 67% more leads than the ones who don’t. Again, not surprising – if your content is rising in natural search results and it’s attractive to the kind of buyers you want to attract, you’re going to get more leads.
- HubSpot also says that blogging is more cost-effective and takes less time than advertising. Well, yeah. Look — I don’t have anything against advertising. The right ad in the right channel at the right time can bring in good leads and a lot of industry attention. But advertising can be a crap shoot, and consistent blogging will cost a lot less and have better persistent results.
- Back to HubSpot; those guys are nothing if not prolific. Their research shows that an average of 1 in 10 blog posts are compounding, meaning that they get a high proportion of shares, traffic and content. In fact, because they’re so active they’ll generate nearly 40% of overall traffic. The higher quality and quantity that you publish, the likelier more posts will compound. But sometimes a post you thought was a minor piece hits the market sweet spot. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth; publish frequent blogs to get more compounding effects.
- Demand Gen Report, 2016 says that B2B buyers highly rate content from industry thought leaders. How do to this can be a puzzler because your thought leaders probably aren’t writing 3 blogs a week; they’re doing their jobs. So, let your writers interview the leader and draft the posts, and the leader finalizes them. Best of all possible worlds.
- Contently makes an excellent point about nearly 60% of marketers repurposing their content 2-5 times. Content repurposing is the most important tactic for feeding the content maw. Put those blogs together into reports; break down that white paper into web pages; take 5 case studies and turn them into a field report.
- Don’t give up on older content. HubSpot reports that 75% of its blog views and 90% of blog leads come from old posts. However, don’t just let them sit there– revise them periodically and republish them. Show evergreen blogs some love, and they’ll love you back.
Takeaway
Writing the occasional blog post when you don’t have anything else to do really will not cut it. You need to consistently produce high quality, interesting posts that your audience wants to read. That’s not incredibly easy to do, and you will need to devote staff time to it. Many companies also have good luck with retainer agreements with freelance writers, who contract to write 2-4 (or more) blog posts a month.
However you do it, just do it – blogs are important to inbound marketing results and healthy lead gen.
Make Money, Save Time – Use Freelancers to Create Your Content Marketing Assets
“Oh sure,” you say. “Just what I need, another line item in my budget. Gabe or Laura will write it.”
But Gabe is madly creating pages for a major website overhaul, and Laura is heads-down on media relations for a big launch. They must do what they’re doing; the blog / white paper / eBook / case study will wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Meanwhile your content marketing isn’t showing the results you hoped for, the CMO is not impressed, and Sales is being, well… Sales.
The upshot is you saved $5,000 by not using a freelancer. And you lost $150,000 from the qualified leads who would have engaged with your company thanks to your engaging content.
They went to your competitor instead. The one with the active content.
“Don’t think mediocre content cuts it. We’re in the middle of a content arms race. As more B2B marketers adopt best practices, buyer expectations continue to rise. They demand greater insights and information tailored to their deepest needs, not generic one-size-fits-all platitudes. That means you need to bring your A game.” (Chuck Frey)
Freelancers Can Fix It
Good freelancers understand your difficult role as a B2B marketer. You strive to help your clients hit their marketing objectives and sales goals. You position and focus and create the content that reels in the leads. You don’t stop until you fill that sales funnel — in fact, you don’t stop at all.
That’s where we come in. We lighten your load by taking on your strategies, messaging, facts, logic, and stories. We build them into persuasive content, and analyze the analysis so we can adjust and improve. Then we do it all over again, as long as you need us.
Unsurprisingly, Good Content Marketing Takes a Lot of Good Content
“Times They Are a-Changin’”, wrote Bob Dylan, although he may or may not have shown up in Stockholm.
Nobel prizes aside, this is true for B2B technology sales cycles. In the good old days, prospective customers called up IBM or Sun to see what’s new and if they needed it. After a few years, buyers heard of some scrappers called Network Appliance and Hewlett Packard, and called them to start the sales process.
Three out of four of those companies are still around, but this isn’t the way it works anymore. Today people fire up Google to launch the buying process.
75-80% of prospects conduct their own research online before they ever reach out to vendors. They’ll search and read, talk to their peers. They may or may not run across your product in their research. And if they do, they may – or may not – care.
You need them to care. They need to understand what you do and why you do it and how you are going to make their work lives better. How do you get the message across if they won’t talk to you until you’re on the short list, or may never talk to you at all?
This is where content marketing comes in. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing like this: “A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Takeaway: Stack the odds in your favor. Create and position content for three main sales stages: brand awareness, customer research, and buying decision.
When they’re searching for the type of solution you offer, and you have put out plenty of good content, they’ll find you.
Put your interesting, attention-grabbing, original thought pieces out there. Readers will like it and look for more. They’ll read your blog, maybe subscribe. They like the eBook download with checklists, which has practical tips for their real problems. And they really like the persuasive white paper that they can share with their boss, because by now you’re on their short-short list.
Takeaway: You need quality, interesting content written for strategic marketing and lead capture. Invest in a B2B copywriter who knows what to write, how to write, and who to write it for.
You know that you’ve got to get the content in front of your prospects. Link to it on social media, support it with email, send it to sales and channel partners, post it on the website, create landing pages, capture sign-ups – yeah, it’s a lot. But it’s worth it because unshared content is as useful as a helium-filled paperweight.
Not everyone sets up analytics on content. It takes web page analytics, social media analytics, and download tracking. None of it is particularly hard to do, but someone must set it up and keep it going.
Marketing acts on analytics by consistently monitoring and adjusting.
- How many sign-ups did the new eBook get this week? How many downloads from your website, how many click-throughs from the landing page?
- The thought leadership piece is three times as popular as the technical white paper, or is the other way around?
- And look at that – people shared your infographic 972 times and counting.
Track the content your prospects are consuming. Plan content additions, revisions, and marketing channels accordingly.
Takeaway: Invest in a B2B copywriter who understands your analytics and uses the information to adjust content.
Call me a snoop, but when I’m at a technology conference I glance around at what other people are doing on their laptops. While the speaker drones on, people are typing emails, checking their Twitter feed, and reading the news. I’m pretty sure I saw one top analyst sneak onto a recipe site.
The same fate befalls boring content. When your white paper comes over the transom, your would-be readers don’t even have to feign interest. They’ll scan your headline and make a run to a recipe site.
The fix? Good design is important, but stories are vital. Story-led content increases brand awareness and encourages downloads and shares. In B2B marketing, the customer success story is the most obvious example. Another example are white papers that illustrate challenges and solutions using stories. Infographics, email, video, presentations: stories work because people remember.
Takeaway: Find an experienced copywriter who knows how to punch up your content and tell your stories.
Marketing pros give it all to their clients. Let B2B content writers give their all to you.
What Content Writers Need to Know
Write to customer personas. Find out what motivates them and worries them at work. Write educational content they can use today and product-specific content when they’re ready to buy.
Understand their paint points. Write core content to answer the big questions that define your prospects. Then sharpen the message by writing specific content to different customer segments.
People are people, not data points. Tell business stories about your company, and how you made your customers’ lives more productive, easier, or more profitable.
Create a lot of content. Create infographics, eBooks, and video scripts for brand awareness. Write business white papers, blogs, case studies, and presentations. Collaborate on technical white papers, focused case studies, and field reports. Aim for quality AND quantity – you can do it by creating consistently, and leveraging each piece to create or revise other pieces.
Reach out for help when you need it. Work with B2B writers to get your core content started, or to keep up with ongoing content creation like blogs or newsletters.