On today’s playing field whitepapers don’t seem as sexy as videos or e-books, but they play a critical role in lead generation. More and more businesses are recognizing the power of whitepapers to boost their company’s authority in their industry, increase their prospect’s trust, and in turn generate higher quality leads.
However, only spending your time crafting a high-quality whitepaper does not guarantee prospects will download it and read it. To get the real value out of your whitepaper you must be able to promote it to your target audience. Typically, whitepapers are used to engage your active leads (a middle of the marketing funnel content piece) nurturing them before they are ready to make a buying decision. But they can also be used to attract new leads (a top of the marketing funnel content piece).
Here are some steps to promote and utilize your whitepaper in both top and middle of the marketing funnel:
1. Send your whitepaper in an email to your active leads as a nurturing campaign.
2. Attract new leads by creating a landing page that will entice leads to fill out a short form to get access to your whitepaper.
3. Once you have that set up, create a social media post to entice leads with a free whitepaper offer that will send them to your landing page.
Don’t stop there! The best part about utilizing a whitepaper in your marketing funnel is that it truly is a multi-use tool for lead generation. Get the full lead generation potential from your whitepaper by recycling/repurposing the content. Here are some ideas of how you can easily re-purpose your whitepaper into different content pieces:
- Break the content up into different blog posts
- Host a webinar around the topic of the whitepaper
- Create a slide deck simplifying the key points of your whitepaper
- Make a video walking your audience through the slide deck
A well-written whitepaper can be one of the most effective lead generation tools a company has, but to succeed you must properly promote it. When starting the process of creating a whitepaper don’t forget the main objective: to reach as many potential customers as possible and nurture their interest in your products and services.