3 Promotion Mistakes to Avoid on White Papers
In past posts, I’ve discussed mistakes to avoid when planning your white paper, as well as writing mistakes to avoid. However, those aren’t all the pitfalls you need to watch out for when it comes to creating a solid white paper that will be widely read by prospective customers.
No matter how crisp and compelling your white paper is, it won’t help you achieve your marketing objectives if nobody reads it. To avoid your white paper being ignored by your target audience, avoid these common promotion mistakes:
PROMOTION MISTAKE 1: Not Having a Landing Page
Depending on the topic of your white paper, it can be anywhere from a few pages in length to dozens of pages long. For prospects, reading them can be a daunting task if they aren't already familiar with the insight and value your business can provide. This is especially true if your white paper is tucked away on your website's resources page or on a page that doesn't highlight its value.
When you create a white paper, it's important to place it on its own dedicated landing page, where it can be featured. This landing page should make clear what benefits the white paper will provide to whoever reads it. This way, you can convince potential readers that downloading and reading your white paper will be worth their time.
An optimized landing page will also come in handy when you're trying to promote your white paper. Since almost every promotional tactic leads to the landing page, you need an effective page where prospects can go to learn about your white paper and download it.
For it to be the most effective, your landing page should include the following elements:
A short letter telling the reader the contents of the white paper and why they need to read it. This sales letter should be persuasive and be between 100-300 words, so that it's a quick and easy read.
The keywords featured in your white paper, so that prospects can discover your landing page and white paper on search engines.
A link where readers can download the white paper, or a form that they can fill out to receive a copy.
Ads or no ads?
Since the goal of your landing page should be get visitors to download the white paper, think carefully if you'll include ads on the page. Ads can potentially distract visitors, and they may click on the ad offers instead of downloading your content. To optimize your white paper conversions, you may want to get rid of all the ads or at least minimize them on the page.
PROMOTION MISTAKE 2: Not Promoting Your Paper
Finally, your white paper is finished. But without getting it in front of readers, it'll simply collect digital dust on your website. With so much content available for prospective customers to consider, you need to have a solid plan to promote and distribute your white paper. Otherwise all of your hard work will have gone to waste.
Besides having an optimized landing page for your white paper, there are other essential promotional tactics to consider. Here are just a few ways that companies go about promoting a newly created white paper:
Your sales force, your partners, and your existing customers are great email contacts, since they will have a built-in interest in your business and the business challenges that you help them solve. Be sure to include some intriguing detail, such as a head-turning statistic, followed by a visible link where readers can download the paper in the email.
Social Media
After email, social media is one of the best promotional tools for your white paper. Assuming you are active on social media, all you have to do is share the link to the landing page where the white paper exists. Be sure to post multiple times in order to make your white paper stands out from the noise.
Blog Posts
Because white papers tend to be very in depth and well researched, you should have compiled enough information for several blog posts or articles in the process of developing the paper. Since white papers tend to be longer documents, you will have to cut and compress when repurposing them into blogs.
Host on Other Websites
By hosting your white paper on distribution services and partnering with industry associations, your white paper can be exposed to a wider range of audiences that you may not have access to otherwise.
PROMOTION MISTAKE 3: Not Reusing Your Content
A white paper can be a time-consuming project that takes weeks to research, write, and edit. It should be treated as an investment. To get the most out of your white paper investment, reuse the content in different forms. People have different preferences when it comes to consuming content, so why not give them multiple options to access yours?
While you may not have the time or budget to do all of these tasks at once, it's useful to keep them in mind. Of course, when you're deciding which tactics to implement, it's important to take into account your budget, your target audience, and your overall objectives. With that in mind, here are some of the popular ways that you can reuse and repurpose your white paper content:
Infographic
Since most white papers are packed with data, you can easily pick out the most compelling information to focus on a specific angle. This is an easy way to transform your paper into something more digestible at a glance.
Slide Deck
A slide deck often complements a white paper, since you can use it to present the highlights of the topic in an online webinar or in-house presentation. You can then offer a white paper to readers who want more details and create a content loop, which leads to more sharing.
Video
You can also make a short video based on some of the information in your white paper to entice people to download the whole paper. Make sure to upload the video to your corporate YouTube channel and feature it prominently on your website. If you have blog posts about the white paper, be sure to embed the video in the posts as well.
Podcast
A podcast can offer a tantalizing preview of the full content in your white paper. Podcasts are a largely untapped marketing tool for B2B marketers with the potential to reach a wide audience of listeners who might not otherwise be exposed to your white paper.
This post is an excerpt from a longer white paper. To download the whole paper and learn more, click here.
