Reasons Why B2B Whitepapers Are Still Powerful Content Marketing

One of the greatest benefits of content marketing — and why it’s such a key part of your overall marketing strategy — is you can tailor messages for very specific audiences.

Those messages can be simple or extremely in-depth. It all depends on who your target readers are and the subject matter.

Normally, the rule is to keep marketing messages short, sweet and to the point. But when your potential customers are B2B professionals, especially IT practitioners, seeking solutions through technology and similar topics, they’re usually open to longer, more in-depth forms of information.

That’s where whitepapers can be a powerful addition to your content marketing plan. According to a “B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends— North America” report, 68 percent of marketers use whitepapers as part of their marketing initiatives.

And there’s a good reason for it. Actually, there are six good reasons.

1. Connect with Key Decision Makers and Influencers

The most successful business professionals are always searching for knowledge. They constantly strive to grow. Whether it’s to help their companies or their careers, they want information they can use

Whitepapers provide them with a significant source of extensive information. It also helps you draw attention to your company’s strengths and authority to influencers and prospective buyers.

2. Establish Thought Leadership

Whitepapers provide you with an opportunity to show the market how knowledgeable you are on any given subject. They help establish you as a trusted leader.

And if your prospects trust your expertise, they may also trust that your products can help them solve problems or improve their lives.

3. Build Brand Image

Like other content marketing entries, whitepapers don’t include blatant sales messages because it risks turning off knowledge-seeking readers. But they can still help build your company’s brand image and promote your organization as an innovator in your field.

Along with including your logo throughout, you can add a profile page about your company at the end of the paper. Include a brief about who you are and what you do to help customers. Also include contact details so interested prospects can follow up for more information and to purchase your products.

4. Apply Effective SEO

Since whitepapers contain multiple pages of industry-specific facts, descriptions, and statistics, it’s a terrific opportunity to apply aggressive SEO tactics to pull potential readers to your website or wherever you host your paper.

Even if you post your paper as a PDF, that format is still searchable by Google and other search engines.

5. Enhance and Adapt the Content

Whitepapers are ideal for establishing the foundation of your company’s technology marketing message. You can then adapt it into a wide variety of other forms of digital media.

Use it to create videos, blogs, webcasts, infographics, podcasts, interviews, advertising, and much more. By repeating your core message across those different formats, you also increase chances of your message being seen by and resonating with potential customers.

6. Generate Customer Leads

Everything cited so far shows why whitepapers are one of the most effective content marketing tools. And the ultimate goal of any marketing tool is to generate leads.

The combination of education and persuasion in whitepapers results in high conversion rates. They also help pre-qualify prospects by inserting them farther along the levels of the sales/marketing funnel.

Plus, with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other recently implemented digital privacy restrictions, whitepapers can be a viable source of compliant opted-in leads in the European Union and other regions.

Distribute Your Whitepapers Across the World

You could create the most insightful whitepapers ever, but they’re useless unless you get them out into the world. So spread them everywhere.

Post them on your websites, share them on social media, link to them from blogs, hand them out at trade shows and other events. But don’t stop there. Increase exposure by publishing them on other sites geared toward your target audience.

One such resource is OnlineWhitepapers.com. It’s a vast library of in-depth B2B whitepapers by major companies covering a wide range of topics in written and video formats.

OWP just redesigned their site and introduced new submission plans to help your whitepapers reach millions of potential readers and customers. If you have whitepapers ready to go, visit their site and discover what they can do for you.

If you don’t have papers, contact us. Our content development team will work with you to create whitepapers that will be a powerful part of your content marketing plan.