Why White Papers Are So Damn Good at Converting

Why White Papers Are So Damn Good at Converting

 

Ever since they originated in 19th century England, white papers have served as a relevant, influential form of content marketing. Other marketing strategies have come and gone, but white papers show no signs of going anywhere. Not only have they survived through the technological revolution, but they have also weathered the changes in how we consume content.

In this article, you will learn why white papers are so good at converting, how companies can improve upon their white papers, and what companies should be doing to deploy white papers in their content marketing.

 

Why White Papers Convert

 

White papers offer in-depth information about a problem in an industry that interested parties are looking to understand. They also offer a practical solution to this problem in the form of a product or service. They are meant to educate buyers through the Evaluation Stage by providing in-depth information on a specific subject, advocate for a solution, and make a company be seen as a subject matter expert (SME). As a result, white papers are ranked #2 in terms of the most influential content buyers read before making a purchase, just behind product brochures and data sheets.

When done well, white papers are able to make your brand more persuasive and bring about meaningful change as your platform and influence increases. They can boost your brand’s exposure within your industry, media, and other critical circles, and can increase your brand’s strategic visibility. By having a well-crafted white paper, your clients, customers, partners, and investing will feel more confident in your brand.

White papers have no time for fluff. They are carefully crafted documents full of quantitative data written in an academic format. They are the thick textbooks of marketing: They are not always the most fun to read, but if your company is looking to make a significant business decision, you are grateful that they exist because of the breadth of information they provide.

However, this doesn’t mean that the white paper hasn’t evolved in its own ways. Modern-day white papers are often filled with infographics, images and videos, and interactive content.

White paper designs and templates have also gotten more modern. Here are a few examples from Venngage that you may find useful. 

 

How Companies Can Create or Make Their White Papers Better

 

First, companies need to understand what a White Paper is and what it isn’t:

 

A white paper isn’t like a research paper, it’s like your graduate thesis or capstone project! It requires a lot of in-depth information complete with credible data to back up every one of your claims. By writing a white paper, your company is looking to become the SME of your industry. If a sentence that you have written or if the fact that you have inserted can be disproven, your credibility will take a hit, and your buyers will mistrust you.

Carefully plan your White Paper, and take your time writing it. This is a document that will be valid for your company for at least a year or two and then revised to remain relevant. Make sure that it goes the approval from your company’s most scrutinous of editors, and don’t consider it a completed project until you are 100% satisfied with it.

Given the importance of this document, the amount of time it may take to put together all of the relevant information, and the writing skills necessary to create a well-crafted White Paper, many companies find that their best solution is to outsource writing one.

 

This is what should be included in every white paper:

  • Market trends and changes in your industry that make your product necessary (without actually selling your product)
  • Statistics, expert testimony, and quotes from industry professionals
  • Fully explore what your target audience’s key challenges, more so than a web page or brochure would do
  • Create a list of things to consider that is well-rounded and thoroughly discusses the problem at hand, potential solutions, and market drivers
  • At the very end, pitch why your product can help your audience. *Note: this isn’t the bulk of your white paper, merely the last page or two.

 

What Companies Should Be Doing to Market Their White Papers

 

Once a white paper is created, it should be marketed, so that leads in the later stages of the marketing funnel can evaluate them during their buyer’s journey. Here are a few ways to do just that:

Direct Email Campaigns and Newsletters: Email has an average  ROI of 122%, which is more than four times higher than other marketing formats like direct social and social media. Feature your white paper in your newsletter or as a downloadable PDF in your next e-mail marketing campaign.

Free Gift: Promote your white paper as a ‘free gift’ or ‘downloadable content’ on your website. If you want to get something out of it in return, offer your white paper as a gift that someone gets when subscribing to your site or e-mail list

Press Releases: Promote it as part of a press release complete with a link to your white paper, landing page, or site where the white paper is easily accessible. Press releases are submitted to search engines, social platforms, and industry journals and allow for a broad reach and more potential leads. On average, press releases generate traffic that is 38.9% less expensive than comparable traffic from a PPC campaign.

Reach Out: Contact influential bloggers, editors, and industry experts who work with or cater to your target market and pitch your white paper to them.

Social Media: 83% of B2B marketers use social media as a content marketing vehicle. Promote your white paper on your various platforms, again offering it as an ‘extra’ or ‘gift.’

Utilize Your Sales Team: Give it to your sales team to help them further nurture leads.

 

No matter what you are selling, a white paper is an excellent addition to your content arsenal. Not only does it make you appear to be an SME, but just about 2/3rds of B2B marketers actually use them, which gives you a significant advantage over your competitors that don’t. Keep that in mind for the next time you are spearheading a marketing campaign.

 

6 Ways to Measure the Success of Your Marketing Campaign

Companies both small and big have access to the world’s most influential marketing tool: the internet. The web helps level the playing field, giving advantages to companies who know how to use it. A small business with a tiny marketing budget, but a successful marketing campaign can outshine its much wealthier competitor.

The average business spends 12-13% of their revenue on marketing. A single marketing campaign can influence millions of people around the world. If done effectively, you can enjoy significant ROI from that campaign.

But how can you measure if your marketing campaign is successful? What qualitative and quantitative data do you need to determine whether the value of money and time you spent on this campaign was worth it?

Here are 6 ways to determine exactly that:

 

Goal Setting for Your Marketing Campaign

 
 

Before launching your successful marketing campaign, create a list of goals for yourself or with your team. How many impressions are you seeking to make, and how many leads would you like to generate? Are you looking for an increase in revenue, and if so, by how much?

Make sure you are setting tangible, attainable goals for yourself. Keep your expectations high, but be realistic. First-time actors aren’t expecting to win an Oscar. They’re just hoping to land a second, more promising gig. Your success measurement should be in terms of you, not Apple, Starbucks, or Walmart.

With a list of tangible goals in mind, it’s time to check out your quantitative data.

 

Keywords and Domain Ranking

You can use Google Analytics or any comparable search engine marketing tool to analyze your site’s traffic to determine where you were before and after the campaign. There are four types of web traffic: organic, social, referral, and direct.

  • Organic – Organic traffic comes from unpaid listing on search engines and directories, like when you type keywords into a search bar, and a link comes up.
  • Social – Social traffic refers to traffic coming from your social media platforms or networks.
  • Referral – Referral traffic is measured by link building, or when someone visits your site after being on a different site.
  • Direct – Direct traffic is most commonly the result of someone physically typing in the URL to your site, or by clicking an untagged link from an email or on a Word or PDF document.

Analyzing the web traffic you had before and after a marketing campaign will show you how influential your campaign was on all four of these different avenues. You can also input your domain and see the total change in traffic. This will further help you measure your success.

 

Analyzing Web Traffic

Google Analytics also allows you to figure out how many new and return visitors you have. Google Analytics also allows you to track your visitors by demographic.

You can track new vs. returning visitors under the audience > behavior tab on Google Analytics. This information won’t be 100% accurate, because the same new user can access your site on their mobile device, laptop, and tablet (and if they clear their cookies, they are considered a new user again). Still, it’s a helpful source to determine if your marketing campaign is influencing new people. Return visitors are people who have already accessed your site and are browsing it again.

New users can you help determine if your social and referral traffic works. Odds are most of your new users are coming from one of those two sources. If you don’t see a significant increase in new user traffic, you will want to rethink your marketing strategy for future campaigns.

You can also find demographics under the audience tab. All these can be important, depending on which demographics your campaign hopes to influence.

 

Links

Links built and inbound links are measured on Moz’s link explorer. The number and quality of links you have will increase your domain authority score. This makes it easier for people to find you organically.

Off-site content strategy can play a significant role in your marketing campaign. According to Forbes, any link you embed in your content will pass authority to your site. Using Moz’s link explorer, you can determine how many links you’ve built and how effective they are.

Inbound links are also relevant. The more times your site is linked as a point of reference, the higher your domain authority will rise. Moz’s link explorer allows you to identify a site’s influence and the inbound links to a page. It also helps you with several other analytics that could be useful in your marketing campaign.

 

Social Media

Social media offers several other ways to analyze the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. You can track the number of new followers you acquired on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. You can also view the levels of engagement on each of your posts.

Social media traffic also allows you to determine how many new email and website subscribers you have after running a campaign. All this information will help you decide whether you ran a successful marketing campaign.

 

Value of Time and Money

The final way to analyze a marketing campaign is to determine how much time and money you spent on it, and whether it was worth it. Keep a spreadsheet that lists all your advertising costs, including labor, to get an estimate of how much you budgeted for this campaign. Also, make sure you kept track of how much time you spent on this endeavor. What other projects or opportunities could you have been exploring instead of working on a marketing campaign?

Upon its conclusion, while you analyze your links, web traffic, social media, keywords, and domain authority, use this spreadsheet and compare it with the results. Compare it against your initial goal and decide whether you ran a successful marketing campaign.

 

The Importance of Marketing Campaigns

Businesses that don’t market themselves get lost in the Google algorithm abyss. Their websites predate the 2016 election, their links are dead, and their only social media link is to their MySpace account. Your campaigns won’t always be as lucrative or rewarding as you want them to be. However, with each attempt, you’ll better understand how to improve and prepare for future campaigns. If your marketing campaign beats out larger, more profitable competitors, you know you’re on the right track.

How do you measure your marketing campaigns, and what has worked for you in the past? Leave a comment below.