Develop your white paper strategy …before starting to write
November 30th, 2009 Posted by: Bill Gadless
A fair number of our B2B clients do pretty well on the basics of website content and email nurturing, but tend to fall down on the more in-depth kit that is needed to induce conversion, raise the degree of prospect engagement, and demonstrate thought leadership.
Exhibit A: white papers. No lie, they’re not easy to do; so B2Bs have a tendency to…
- delay doing any for as long as possible; then
- give the job to a volunteer, who will frequently be someone with a lot to say …but not necessarily the content your prospects most need to see.
In these cases, we generally recommend first developing… a plan, and then assigning oversight of each component to the most appropriate resource. (Note: that doesn’t mean tying those people up writing for 3 months; they simply need to specify the required content to the level of a detailed outline, then farm out the copywriting.)
So we were glad to see a post by Jonathan Kantor that kicks this up a notch by recommending a formal white-paper architecture. It’s worth the click over just for the nifty visual, but here’s a quick summary of his recommended structure:
- (35,000 feet) High-level / Strategic Vision. E.g.: “Bing: the decision engine”
- (10,000 feet) Mid-level / Solution-oriented. E.g.: “Using search in healthcare”
- (Ground) Base-level / Tactical. E.g.: “Visual search vs. Google Alerts”
It’s not necessary to do everything at once; but a structure such as the above should help define what’s important to fill in, and on what sort of priority schedule. Such a strategy provides a road map that helps ensure the timely delivery of consistent messages at different levels.
Moral: it’s not only your product and your website that benefit from being designed to an architecture; so too will your white papers and other thought-leadership content.
Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy
