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How to Get Your White Paper Read

By Carolyn Frith on | From blog1.carolynfrith.com
White papers are, according the Content Marketing Institute, the third most popular content marketing tool.  Why?  Because they attract your target audience, build credibility and softly sell your business.

But a white paper is dead unless it gets read.


So how do you make sure that your target audience is going to download and read your white paper?  You figure out who they are and what they want before tapping out a single word on your keyboard. 

Suppose you’re a marketing consultant (like me).  You might think that your audience is people who need help with marketing.  In a broad sense it is, but that definition needs refinement.   If you talk to everyone who needs help with marketing, you end up talking to no one.

So ask yourself these questions:
  • What’s the title of the person you want to attract?
  Is it the stressed-out Marketing Manager who is juggling marketing, budgeting, forecasting, a host of other issues and a boss with unrealistic expectations?  Is it the Creative Director at an advertising agency who needs help with your niche expertise?  Or is it the small Business Owner knows very little about marketing, but their business is too small to add a marketing guru to their staff.
  • What type of company do they work for?
 Is your target cog in the wheel for a cubicle-infested corporation?  Or are they defining the path ahead for a small business?  And what industry do they work for?
  • What are their hopes?
  Does the Marketing Manager seek exceptional results so they can bypass the corporate ladder and take the express elevator to the executive suite?  Or does the business owner want to move beyond start-up, out of the red and into the black?
  • What are their fears?
  Being given a pink slip instead of a corner office with a view of the lake? Late mortgage payments as the company consumes all cash reserves?
marketing manager with pink slip
 
  • What is their knowledge level
 of your subject matter?  You don’t want to talk over their heads but you do want to add value by offering new insights.

Once you really know your target market, you can write a white paper that talks to them as if they were sitting across the desk from you.  Give it a headline that intrigues. Then spread the word.  Once your target audience reads your white paper, it will start to it work for you.

Learn more about how to write a white paper.

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