The 4 Essential Steps of Building a White Paper that Converts Posted on January 28, 2016May 27, 2016 by Jessica Lunk White papers help businesses to earn trust and ultimately generate more sales, especially for B2B companies. In fact, nearly three-quarters of professional service companies think that whitepapers are a great way to generate leads. White papers are also the most consumed kind of marketing—more than webcasts, blogs, podcasts, reports, or any other format of information. In addition, more than half of the professionals who read white papers pass them on to colleagues. So, for every 10 people you reach with a white paper, six of them will pass it on to others, helping you get more eyeballs on your brand. Now the question is, how do you create an effective white paper that will attract the right type of buyer and ultimately convert more customers? Here are the four essential steps to building an effective white paper: 1. Decide on Your Topic White papers are a marketing tool – not a sales tool – and are most effective when they answer a burning question for your audience. The goal is to connect to prospects very early in their buying journey. For example, if your business plans corporate events, a great white paper might be “10 Ways to Stretch Your Venue Budget that Only the Pros Know.” White paper topics are built on the needs of your ideal buyer. So, if you haven’t pin-pointed who your ideal customer is, now is a great time to take a step back and build out an ideal buyer persona to help direct your marketing strategy. 2. Create Your Content Creating content can be tough for businesses with smaller teams and budgets. At the same time, don’t feel like you have to write a novel or dissertation. Instead, use your company’s unique voice paired with your expertise to create helpful, quality content. In fact, if you can break down a complex idea in a short, simple manner, all the better for your audience. If you need help getting started, download our “White Paper Template.” Finally, if you don’t have the time or skills to write your own content, there are lots of platforms that make it simple to outsource, such as Media Shower, Foxtail Marketing, Upwork and Fivvr. 3. Convert Web Traffic into Downloads A white paper is a great way to begin a conversation with top-of-the-funnel prospects who are just beginning to explore problems and solutions. To generate these leads, use a landing page form to present a short summary of your white paper and ask for contact information. Don’t overdo it on the form fields – just a few simple contact details, including name, email and company, are enough to get the conversation started. Depending on your topic, you may even be able to tease the white paper and have people register to receive it in their email before the paper is actually released. This works well for time-sensitive subjects, for instance a quarterly or yearly reports. For example, you could collect survey data from your audience and have survey takers sign up to receive the report in advance. 4. Nurture New Prospects White paper downloads don’t turn into customers on their own. Once a contact downloads your white paper, help them along their buying journey with a lead nurturing campaign. Email them relevant resources over time, and check in with a friendly phone call just to touch base and keep your brand top of mind. As they learn more about their problem, potential solutions, and how your business can help, you can put them on more targeted campaigns that begin the sales process. If you need help building email campaigns for new prospects, our content marketing grid can help you plan what type of emails to send. A whitepaper is a solid way to market your company, find out who is interested in your products and services, and turn interested prospects into new customers for your business. Building a white paper that converts starts with a compelling topic and ends with a nurturing campaign that generates sales.
Getting Started with Marketing Automation in 5 Easy Steps Posted on November 3, 2015June 18, 2018 by jmiller If you are moving from an email marketing strategy to a marketing automation strategy, it can be overwhelming the first time you see how it all works. Once someone sees the level of sophistication of a marketing automation tool, it can cause spontaneous paralysis and a quick retreat into the old way of doing things. Don’t give in! Be ready to make a change…and…EVOLVE. I speak with customers every day about how to get started with marketing automation and how to avoid getting lost in the details. Marketing is not an exact science. You have to test, try new things, learn what works and improve. A solid foundation is the best starting point. Here are 5 steps to get started: Make an Offer Capture Leads Engage your Audience Stay in Touch Keep customers up to date Make an Offer The best way to attract a new client? Offer something that you have that they don’t have and want to have. Identify what that offer is and give them a taste of it. Come up with an enticing incentive, or lead magnet, to offer people in exchange for their contact information: Your offer could be something like: White paper Case study Report Free sample Free 30 minute consultation Leveraging existing content/expertise is the most efficient way to go. If you have multiple offerings, use them all. Test out different offers to see what works best to attract the right audience. Protip: Don’t give more than two offers on a single webpage, or more than one offer on a landing page. Capture Leads Putting a white paper on a website for instant download can limit perceived value. Don’t give away valuable content for free; require information in exchange for the offer. Design and embed a lead capture form on your website or landing page. The more value you offer, the more information you can request. For example, require an email address to sign-up for your blog, but request more information if you are offering someone 30 minutes of your time for a consultation. Protip: Make sure the information you request matches the offer. Engage your Audience Now that your contact has requested information, send them a little more information. An engagement campaign is a short term campaign that ultimately leads to a specific call to action, like request a meeting, signing-up, or downloading information. This type of campaign can be 3-7 steps over a 2-3 week period (this can vary depending on content available). Emails within an engagement campaign can include, but are not limited to: An introduction to your company A case study A testimonial Educational material The goal of the engagement campaign is to drive the contact into your sales process. Protip: A simple engagement campaign can have 2 emails and 1 phone call to follow up. Stay in Touch Not everyone is ready to buy right away, but it doesn’t mean that they never will. Build out a long term nurturing campaign to stay in touch will all of your contacts on an ongoing basis. A nurture campaign may include an email every 30 – 60 days. The goal of a nurture campaign is to educate your audience, offer validation as to why they should do business with you (case studies, testimonials) and simply to stay top of mind. The nurture campaign may have calls to action or offers that can pull someone into an engagement campaign or directly into the sales process. And, with marketing automation, you can track engagement activity; if someone starts to engage, a good marketing automation tool will trigger actions that can pull contacts into your sales process over time. One tip to help build out nurture campaigns is to use a resource like www.alltop.com, where you can leverage 3rd party articles and recommend them to your audience. Protip: 1 email sent every 60 days means that you only have to build 6 emails to stay in touch with your contacts for a year! Keep Customers Up to Date Don’t forget to share your blog, a newsletter or a deal of the month. “Just in Time” communications offer you the freedom to communicate when the mood strikes you. The objective here is the same as a nurture campaign but includes timely information; a new product offer, PR updates, recent newspaper articles, upcoming events. “Just in Time” communications can also be influenced by the season or time of year. Protip: Returning customers spend 20% more than first time buyers, so staying in touch with your customers is just as important as staying in touch with prospects. Getting started with marketing automation can seem like an enormous task. But, by taking a step-by-step approach, you can easily tackle attracting new leads, nurturing prospects, and staying in touch with customers.
The White Paper – A Cornerstone of Marketing Automation Posted on October 3, 2014June 18, 2018 by Jessica Lunk When it comes to marketing automation, content is key to attracting new prospects and nurturing them through the sales process. A white paper is one of the primary building blocks of your marketing automation strategy. Here’s how white papers fit into marketing automation, and how to build one: Attract New Prospects Marketing automation uses online forms to capture information about the leads that are visiting your website via search engines, online ads, and social media properties. However, most people don’t just offer up their name and email address online without getting something in return. Offering a white paper on your website creates a give/get scenario. You can give your audience a great white paper that will educate them on an challenge and it’s solution. In return, they’ll give up their credentials, like name, email address, title, company size and other information. You get a new lead. Nurture Prospects Leads generated through inbound marketing are extremely valuable. By downloading your resource, they’ve raised their hand and said, “Hey, I’ve got a problem you can help me with!” Once you’ve collected information about a contact through an online form submission for a white paper you’ve offered on your site, you have a fresh new lead. The worst thing to do would be to let that lead sit on the sidelines, waiting for them to come back to your site on their own, or putting them on your generic email blast list. Instead, marketing automation nurtures these leads with relevant content until they are ready to make a purchasing decision. With a white paper as a resource, you have a foundation of content for fueling marketing automation’s nurturing process. You’ve already put a significant amount of content in your white paper, and have it well organized. To get more milage out of it for the nurturing process you can extrapolate on the main ideas to create blog posts, infographics, guides, checklists, slideshares, and other types of content to fuel a hyper-relevant email campaign to follow the download. How to Build a Whitepaper So what does a good white paper look like? GOAL: The goal of a white paper is to be informative, educational and solution-oriented. It’s not meant to be a hard sell. Providing long-form information in an easily digested format is a doorway to building brand awareness among your audience and building trust in your brand. In addition, while you want to educate and provide value to your audience, you don’t need to write a text-book or dissertation. Make it simple for your reader to understand the problem and the solution. BRANDING: A white paper can demonstrate your thought leadership on a topic, and is a great opportunity to showcase your brand. The tone, look, and feel should match your branding and value proposition. For instance, at Hatchbuck, we provide simple marketing automation software to small businesses. It wouldn’t make sense for us to publish a complex white paper using overly-technical jargon. We keep our resources in line with our brand, not only following our visual brand guidelines, but also echoing our value proposition of simplicity by using simple language and organization to help small business owners be more effective at marketing. ORGANIZATION: Topic: choose a pain-point your audience has that you can address. Problem: empathize with your audience by outlining the problem. Solution: add value to your audience by outlining a course of action they can take to solve their problem. Awareness: reinforce your authority on the topic and introduce your audience to your business. A white paper is a cornerstone to your marketing automation strategy. Hit on an obstacle your audience is facing, and serve up a solution to drive new leads, and nurture them with relevant follow-up content until they convert.