Question

Topic: E-Marketing

White Paper - Write One Or Get One?

Posted by Anonymous on 4/26/2011 at 12:05 PM ET 250 Points
Has anyone had success in growing their email list by offering a free white paper? If so, did you write it yourself or offer a product already produced? If you used the white paper by another author, how did you go about doing it? Did you just re-offer the item (giving full credit to the author, of course), or did you have to get specific permission to do so?

Any suggestions/comments are greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 4/26/2011 at 1:43 PM Accepted
    Most important is that the white paper needs to be of interest to the readers you want to reach. In business, white papers refer to documents used by businesses as a marketing or sales tool.

    As such, the white paper generally are written by someone within the company (or by someone that the company paid to write one).

    If you can find a product tat is already out there which you can re-offer, I would contact the author and get permission. But of course, something which is already out there may not be "new" to the folks you want to reach, so may not add value to readers so not get a lot of new addresses for you.

    Before people jump on me and my white papers are marketing comment - Of course, I know they are not supposed to be marketing nor come across as such, but in reality they are.

  • Posted on 4/26/2011 at 2:02 PM Moderator
    Peter is absolutely right. You probably ought to have your own white paper rather than one that's already "out there."

    I have written white papers for a number of clients. Each is a custom job, so there's no chance the reader (i.e., prospective customer) has seen it before. And it usually highlights a benefit that is unique to my client (who is offering the white paper).

    Of course, there's an explicit agreement about ownership rights between me (the author) and the client (the nominal author or "owner" or provider of the whitepaper). This varies based on the client, of course.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 4/26/2011 at 8:51 PM Member
    Dear Sue,

    Yes, you need your own content.

    But, rather than writing a white paper, why not make a simple video?

    Video offers more value, it gets your message across more powerfully, and it can become part of a series ... the more that sign ups give you e-mails of their friends and associates that might also be interested in your offering, the more free content the initial sign ups receive.

    Gary Bloomer
    The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
    Princeton, NJ, USA

  • Posted on 4/27/2011 at 8:50 AM Author
    Thank you for your insightful comments. As I suspected, the best route is to write my own. The idea of a video series is something we've been considering and it's in our plan...

    Thanks again!
    Regards,
    Sue
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