Let's start out with an understanding of what a White Paper is NOT:
-It is not a thinly-disguised product brochure
-It is not a sales letter
-It is not a sales pitch
-It usually does not teach your customer about
every feature or bell or whistle in your product.
It only alludes to those things and makes the reader
curious enough to talk to you
But it's also not a doctoral dissertation. It can't
be boring. I'll say more about that in a couple of
days.
Now why should you offer your customers a white paper?
Why is it better to offer problem-solving information than
a straight sales pitch?
Because: Nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill.
They wanted a hole.
Therefore, if you sell drills, you should advertise information
about making holes, not about drills!
That's the core idea. So today I'm going to give you some
ideas about how you can use white papers to promote your
business. Here are some recent examples:
- I've got a client who helps small and medium-sized companies
go public, which is an extremely complex process. So he
publishes white papers that explain the issues involved in
taking a company public: SEC regulations, implications of
the "Sarbanes-Oxley" act, things that investors look for in
a business plan, and the process of doing a procedure called
a "reverse listing."
These white papers teach the customer how to
do those things themselves, but in the process, they also
demonstrate how complex this stuff really is. They decide
to hire him to do it for them and he makes tens of thousands
to hundreds of thousands of dollars on each deal.
- Another client offers a network troubleshooting
guide. He buys clicks on Google AdWords and about 20%
of the visitors opt-in for his report, and also fill out their
name and address to receive his catalog - which sells
troubleshooting tools (of course). The guide doesn't sell
his tools, but the catalog does. Those sales leads
cost him about $1.50 each. These leads are good quality
and the cost is 1/10th of every other method.
- I've got a member, Mark Clark of Instant Access Music,
who sells to video producers. He offered a detailed guide on
video production planning that they could hand out
to THEIR customers. When he offered it to his
email list he got a 16% response!
When you advertise problem-solving information like
this, you get terrific response... and you ALSO build your
credibility as a quality source of information, instead
of "just another peddler." And you get permission to
communicate to that person again in the future.
How much is that worth?
Tomorrow I'm going to give you some tips that
will make it fast and easy to get your white paper written.
Best,
Perry Marshall
http://www.perrymarshall.com/whitepaper
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