A white paper—or guide, report, or other similar term—is a classic form of content marketing.  Its purpose is to draw people in by giving them free, valuable info about a topic in exchange for the right to plug your business as the solution at the end.

Like articles, infographics, videos, and other top-of-funnel materials, white papers help establish you as an authority in your field early in the buying process.  It’s not an in-your-face sales tactic, it’s an inbound one.

And it works.  According to Demand Metric, such content generates three times as many leads as traditional marketing.  Not only that, but it costs almost two-thirds less.  Pretty nice upside.

Here’s where some organizations get hung up, though.  They do all this work in pulling together awesome insight, put it out there, and then…wait.  Build it and they will come is just about as effective of a strategy for a white paper as it is for the business itself.  If no one knows about it, how in the world are they supposed to use it?

The truth is, sometimes you have to market your marketing.

This calls to mind a client of mine who asked me about some content they were looking to publish.  They were planning to complete a new guide focusing on a key process in their tech space.  The guide would be an improved, up-to-date version of the one that had been circulating for years and was still their most popular content asset among prospects.

Now, I didn’t do content strategy for them, and they weren’t asking me to take this on officially.  But, I had worked with their team long enough to understand how their business fit into the space.  So, I compiled a high-level roadmap to demonstrate what they’d need to consider throughout the process.

This is that roadmap reproduced and sanitized for confidentiality (we’ll call the product in the guide “XYZ”).  I knew they’d be handing it around internally, so it had to be simple and to the point.  Marketers and non-marketers alike had to understand it at a glance.

Approach

An effective launch required a logical sequence from product development to final distribution.

Message

First, they’d need to align on the right narrative for the guide in their B2B market.  This would involve gaining input from various business units in order to best position the messaging.

Goals

With the guide (product side) and positioning (brand side) structure in place, they would next have to lock in what they’d want the guide to accomplish for their audience and, in turn, for the company.

Channels

They had various channels at their disposal to take this thing to market ranging from proprietary resources like their website and social accounts to strategic partners. They’d need to consider all of this inventory as they progressed from high-level strategy to ground-level execution.

Tactics

Out of this robust portfolio of resources, it would be necessary to determine which were platform-relevant and could play complementary roles in an integrated promotional plan.  Then the team could begin preparing final tactics for launch.

Metrics

Internal analytics leads and/or external agencies should establish a measurement plan tied to pre-launch goals. This would include the proper metrics to track along with owners for each.

Outlook

The relative timeline below put everything together to help them visualize a thoughtful launch that would drive global objectives.

None of this needs to be complicated.  What it does need to be is organized and inclusive, meaning that all the right people are contributing in all the right ways at all the right times.

In other words, build it—then distribute it, promote it, measure it, and rebuild it if needed—and they will come.

How’s your content looking these days?  Packaging your capabilities and all-around genius in the proper ways is critical to achieving business goals.  Get in touch if you’d like to chat about how we can paint you in the best possible light to drive your growth.