Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

Can A White Paper Be An Effective Marketing Tool?

Posted by Anonymous on 3/11/2005 at 6:28 PM ET 250 Points
I'm currently working on two projects which lend themselves to producing white papers as a tool for building awareness and generating leads. The first project is a conference where the white paper will be used to generate awareness of the event and hopefully lead to registrations. The second project is for a hardware vendor looking to "shock" their customers (IT managers) into taking action by presenting them with some hard-hitting research about the spam appliance industry. Has anyone had any experience and success using white papers to promote an event or generate leads? I'd like to hear your views on this medium.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 3/11/2005 at 8:28 PM Accepted
    White papers can be used as a marketing tool, but you need to be careful. White papers are not meant to be directly marketing, but instead are meant to provide technical background on a product. They should not come across as marketing papers.

    So, writing a white paper about an event likely would not be appropriate. Hard hitting research sounds like it could be appropriate for a white paper.

    Marketing wise, the authors of the white paper look to be experts in their field, which is always useful. And you can catch email addresses through having people provide email address and some other basic data to get access to the white paper.
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 3/12/2005 at 4:15 AM Accepted
    Hi Richard B,

    White papers can be extremely effective marketing tools when they are used to reward somebody for responding to a call-to-action such as signing up for an e-newsletter.

    Ideally the white paper is created internally, where it then serves a dual purpose of positioning your or someone in your organization as an industry expert.

    I hope that helps.
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