Attract More Customers with White Papers - Part 2

For most people, writing a white paper sounds like a dreary chore. Something handed down from above, perhaps, that lands on your desk and threatens to consume weeks of time better spent on something else. I know how you feel. But there's no reason for that to be the case. Today I'm going to give you two things to think about:1) IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LONG. Sometimes a 10-20 page white paper might be OK, but I like 1- and 2-pagers best.
Short little guides, reference tools and problem solvers that people will keep in their desk.
That's a magic formula, and it doesn't take long to write. You can probably do it in a couple of hours. You might consider breaking a 10-page white paper into three small documents, each
addressing a very specific issue. (You can potentially get three times as much PR mileage from the same content, by doing it that way.) At that point, the key is to have a follow-up system that continues to nurture that prospect until they take a next step -- call you on the phone, email you with a question or whatever.2) You don't have to give the person an exhaustive technical treatise, you only need to give them knowledge that enables them to DO something. White papers
are not theoretical. They are action-oriented. So make a list of two or three or five things you want your customer to know how to do as a result of reading your white paper, then just tell them how. About ten years ago, there was a very popular book by Steven Covey called '7 Habits of Highly
Effective People.' Maybe you read it. In that book, Covey talks about the idea of an 'emotional bank account' that everyone has. When you do something good for someone, you make a deposit into their emotional bank account. When you ask someone to do something for you, you make a withdrawal. If the account balance is zero, they will ignore your request. Most advertisers and marketers try to make a WITHDRAWAL from a customer before they've made a DEPOSIT. No wonder sales is such an uphill battle! A White Paper is a way to make a deposit before you make a withdrawal -- with useful, problem solving information. People are VASTLY more responsive to this kind of information than they are to a traditional ad. It builds trust and credibility like no other kind of advertising does. In comparison, telemarketing creates distrust and annoyance. And people just ignore most ads they see. So the best thing you can advertise is...a White Paper, guide, problem-solver or report. At the same time, that paper is also a way to help the customer define the problem in *your* terms, not somebody else's. There's a lot of subtle power in that.

Perry Marshall
http://www.perrymarshall.com/whitepaper

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