4 Ways to Promote Your White Paper
So, you have just created your brand new white paper. Now you must promote it and get it in front of the right decision makers, but that is easier said than done. According to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs' 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, 80% of B2B marketers agree that their organization is focused on building audiences and 44% of B2B marketers agree that over the last year, it has become increasingly difficult to capture their audience's attention.
With prospects being pulled in every direction, here are the must-do promotion tactics to get their splintered attention on your white paper:
Feature Your White Paper on Your Website
When promoting your white paper, a focused and optimized landing page is a must have. Otherwise, all your hard work and marketing efforts will be wasted.
Make sure your landing page is separate from your homepage and that it is accessible from all devices. It is also important that your landing page clearly explains what the value your white paper provides and why the reader should download and read it.
If you decide to gate your white paper, you can get visitors to provide their email address and other information in exchange for the paper. According to DemandGen Report's 2018 Content Preferences Survey, 75% of buyers would share more information to receive white paper content. Not only that, when reviewing white paper content, 54% of buyers spend between 10 and 60 minutes.
Share Your White Paper via Email
Email is both an easy and cost-effective way to promote your white paper. Your sales force, your partners, and your existing customers are great contacts, since they will have a built-in interest in your business and the business challenges that you help them solve.
In building your email campaign, you can send an email solely to announce the white paper, or you can include it as a part of your regular newsletter (more on this later). Email continue to rank the highest in terms of which channels content is most frequently shared, with respondents sharing it 70% of the time, according to the DemandGen Report 2018 Content Preferences Survey.
Don't forget to include some intriguing details, such as a head-turning statistic or graph, followed by a visible link where readers can download the paper in the email.
Share Your White Paper on Social Media
After email, social media is one of the best promotional tools for your white paper. But for this to really pay off, you need to have first built a following on different social media platforms.
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 stand out from the noise in social media streams.
To get more eyeballs on your white paper, you should pin your posts featuring it to the top of your LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook pages. If you have the budget, you can pay for sponsored advertising for exposure to specific targeted audiences on those social media platforms.
For maximum effectiveness, be sure to include a visually engaging image (or even a video) with the link to grab as much attention as possible.
Blog About Your White Paper
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.
A white paper can be easily repurposed into blog posts on your website and your company's LinkedIn profile. This is also an effective way to produce additional content without having to perform extra background research.
Converting white paper content into blog posts is a matter of manpower and experience. If you have the time, seek out and contact the top bloggers in your industry and ask for them to give a shout out about your white paper. Also, be sure to ask your white paper writer if they are able to extract blog posts from the finished white paper.
Since white papers tend to be longer documents, you will have to cut and compress when repurposing them into blog posts. However, no matter if you decide to produce one or more blog posts, the call of action should be the same: to download the full white paper.
Conclusion
No matter how you choose to promote your new white paper, creating an effective landing page is the #1 priority for any white paper promotion.
Because almost every promotional tactic leads to the landing page for your white paper, you need an effective page where prospects can go to learn about and download your white paper.
Be sure to keep these tactics in mind and you will be off to a good start in promoting your next white paper. Remember: no matter how much you do, you can always do more!
This post is an excerpt from a longer white paper. To download the whole paper and learn more, click here.
