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White papers as marketing collateral: Beyond a grey area

By Manoj Aravindakshan

Singapore, May 30, 2005

If there has been one constant in the ever transient paradigm of marketing on the Internet, it is that "content" is the key to attract a steady stream of the uninitiated as well the converts (I am not talking religion at all… .). What kinds of content serve that purpose cost-effectively keeps the grey cells of those with an interest in content and marketing functional.

While I'm not the first person to say this in recent times (nor will I be the last), I will assert that good white papers (vendor-generated or commissioned ones by 'neutral' third parties) definitely serve to generate awareness about a product/service/organization, and more importantly, cause people to inquire and potentially buy the product/service in question.

The advantages
There are some obvious advantages of creating and using high-quality white papers as part of a company's marketing mix (apart from the $40-million evidence presented by the takeover of white paper aggregator BitPipe by TechTarget some time back):

a) Additional content on the company's website: If you are not in the business of aggregating or publishing proprietary content (like a news site, for example), keeping a website fresh with some new content on a regular basis is a perennial challenge. Here, whitepapers can add a bit of depth and variety to your website content. You can either write these yourself, or commission a third party to produce it for you; the benefits of having additional relevant content are fairly well documented.

b) Ease of distribution: White papers can be easily distributed for almost no cost to the organization. Readers of white papers are more likely to pass on the document to their colleagues or friends. How often does one hear of regular ads or other marketing collateral being circulated?
Moreover, there are a number of white paper aggregators around, who will be happy to list your whitepaper for free. In such cases, you are only paying for the creative and distribution service (if doing it through a PR firm), but unlike traditional online advertising, you are not paying for the real-estate as well. The advantages of having the links to the whitepaper and to your site are quite obvious.

c) Format: The format of preparing a white paper is fairly simple, and therefore the turnaround time can be much faster, compared to some of the other collateral, that have to go through numerous cycles of "I think that picture should be moved to this corner" and "the brand is not prominently displayed"-kind of critical review sessions. With most other collateral, brevity is another constraint that one has to contend with.

d) Perception: There is a perception (rightly or wrongly) that white papers are absolutely objective and factual, almost like scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals. A certain academic weight/ bent is placed to a white paper; and specifically for that reason, white papers should be used for marketing sparingly and intelligently.

e) PR value: A whitepaper is treated as content and not advertising. Editors are most likely to include quotes from white papers; you can bet they don't write about ads, (unless of course, it is a multi-million dollar ad at the SuperBowl, or a new Benetton 'controversial' or a report on who won the Golden Lion at the Cannes ad festival).

Some "Don'ts"
Having decided to produce white papers, one needs to excercise some basic cautionary steps so as not dilute the effectiveness of this method.

a) Don't overuse: lest whitepapers lose their value (the same rule applies to press-releases, or for that matter anything in life!).

b) Don't make it (read like) a multi-page text ad: that is, don't attempt a hard sell with a white paper. Present the facts, and don't make claims like ads do. You might be better off paying for a good ad made rather than doing a white paper that attempts to be an ad with out its attention-grabbing flair.

c) Don't ignore the external environment: the whitepaper shouldn't be all about a company, product or service; it has to be set in a much broader context. A whitepaper has to be analytical, informative and educative.

How to do it
The question is whether any company, irrespective of its size and the nature of business, can use white papers as part of its marketing strategy. May be, not. White papers will be particularly useful if they talk about a technological breakthrough, an operational breakthrough, or they are documenting/revealing/validating certain trends/ phenomena. Else, it probably doesn't make much sense to write a white paper and expect to get any attention to it.

Depending on the resources at an organization's disposal, it might make better business sense to engage the services of an editorial services/marketing services company/ PR firm to write their white papers. Many organizations prefer to commission a reputed third party (mainly a market research firm), to coat an additional layer of neutrality to the white paper.

The advantages are fairly obvious: professionals with considerable experience and the right technique in writing these, an established distribution channel (typically) and usually adept at getting the whitepapers (and therefore the organization commissioning the white paper) the mileage they had hoped for. And it would probably be much cheaper than a full-fledged ad campaign.

A white paper by Oak Hill Pubs shows, with the help of solid data, why organizations should outsource their technical publishing requirements. Some of those arguments could quite comfortably apply to white paper writing as well.

(Manoj Aravindakshan is Director of On Target Media & Marketing Services, a Singapore-based content & marketing process outsourcing company, specializing in a range of editorial, marketing communications and Internet marketing services.)

Interested in adding white papers to your marketing collateral mix? Find out more about On Target's marketing services and how we can help, today!