Originally published September 25, 2022 , updated on July 19, 2024
The online marketing landscape is saturated with sales content. And while hard-sell content can work well in some instances, it often doesn’t. This is especially true for a target audience that requires more substantial evidence of a value offering, like business executives and other decision-makers.
Professional white-paper writing services can be the solution you need as part of your content marketing strategy. White papers help companies establish brand authority and expertise, ultimately leading to more sales. These long-form documents also provide valuable information for decision-making.
According to Forbes, creating white papers is a powerful way to boost your B2B content marketing campaigns. You’ll become a thought leader in your industry by providing in-depth information on a particular subject and explicitly demonstrating your expertise.
Read on to discover more of the benefits of using white papers in your online marketing.
Top Benefits of White Papers for Businesses in B2B Marketing
Done well, white papers can offer superb information, build trust, and increase leads for your business. Today, many companies use agencies that produce professional white papers to achieve the following objectives:
1. Provide Answers and Develop Credibility
White papers can lead prospective buyers down the sales funnel toward a purchasing decision.
Prospective buyers can get more comprehensive answers than during brief sales consultations, which could give them the background information they need to make decisions.
Giving answers relevant to each stage of the buyer’s journey also helps to build credibility for your brand. White papers can offer lots of valuable information to the reader, which helps to build trust.
2. Establish Thought Leadership
Companies can position themselves as thought leaders using agencies that produce professional white papers.
This process typically involves coming up with topic ideas that have the potential to evolve into concepts and also conversations that reverberates across a specific industry.
3. Generate Leads
The information contained in a white paper typically has lead generation value long after it’s been published.
According to 2021/2022 numbers reported by FinancesOnline, 61% of B2B transactions begin online. Subsequently, almost 70% of a buyer’s journey is complete before the buyer contacts a company’s sales team. It’s no wonder that quality lead generation is the top priority for 79% of today’s online marketers.
White papers work incredibly well for lead generation. These documents don’t simply sell services or products. Instead, they inform and educate potential customers. This approach helps to build trust and ultimately leads prospective buyers towards a decision.
Your business can also use white papers as incentives to get valuable information for future marketing. By asking readers to provide information before downloading the document, you can collect data for future marketing (remember to ask them to opt in).
4. Foundational Content for Other Documents and Projects
Marketers often use the content contained in white papers for blog posts, social posts, eBooks, podcasts, and also presentations.
The comprehensiveness of these documents usually makes them a superb source of information to which other marketers can link. The backlinks, in turn, can help improve your website’s search engine ranking (links from other websites show Google’s bots that you’re a trusted, credible source of information). In addition, backlinks can bring in traffic from other websites, ultimately helping you to grow your online presence.
5. Provide Content Suited for the Middle and Bottom of the Sales Funnel
One of the most neglected parts of the sales funnel is the middle “consideration stage”.
Skilled white-paper writers know how to create well-researched documents that answer questions for this stage of the buyer’s journey accordingly. These white papers can lead prospective buyers toward the bottom-of-the-funnel stage, where they typically make a purchasing decision.
6. Upsell Solutions to Existing Clients
The information captured in white papers can also be used to upsell to existing clients.
Through regular publishing of these documents, you can show your ongoing expertise in a field. Publishing white papers also shows your business is serious about improving its services.
With the help of these in-depth documents, you can certainly inform and educate your existing and prospective clients on your solutions.
Three Ways Your Company Can Use White Papers in Marketing
Your business can use the information contained in white papers as an incentive for target customers to subscribe to your newsletters. Because you’re offering a valuable, information-packed document, you can ask users to share their data in exchange for the paper.
Printed white papers can also be used as handouts at seminars, events, or conferences, or as supportive documents for pitches and proposals. Additionally, you can distribute these documents to technical or research managers at prospective client companies who may use the information to recommend your company to their executives.
Here are the three most important ways your company can use white papers in your marketing:
1. Let a Professional White Paper Writing Service Help Generate Leads
White papers make for great gated content. To access the information, the reader could share some of their contact information, giving you the opportunity to establish an ongoing communication channel with the reader.
2. Make Use of White Paper Writing Services To Help With Thought Leadership
Using professional white-paper writers, you can share your thoughts on the future of your industry, a new technology, the latest trends, or a novel approach. In doing so, you show that your company is forward-thinking and knowledgeable.
In addition, you can convert thought leadership pieces into articles to publish in trade journals.
3. Use White Paper Writers To Help You Close the Deal
You can hire writers to create technical white papers for your business that explain how a process, solution, service, or product works. This type of white paper must answer the target audience’s technical questions, helping these customers make decisions about solutions for their companies.
Make sure the white paper also includes a CTA to talk to a sales consultant for more information.
You can also opt for a hybrid publication that answers prospective buyers’ business and technical questions. This approach works for buyers who are in the middle or at the end of the sales funnel.
Where to Find Professional White Paper Writers for Hire
The white paper is without a doubt a great marketing tool. That said, creating one from scratch can be challenging. The content marketing tool should offer thought leadership and also educate customers. This can be a challenging and time-consuming process.
Much work goes into the research, design, and production process of a white paper. You’ll need to:
- Identify the target audience
- Choose the right topic
- Do in-depth research on the topic
- Organise the information
- Create the content piece
- Design the white paper
A white-paper writing service can make it easy to create an in-depth document that will help you get your company recognised as an expert in your field, attract new customers, educate existing ones, and also up-sell your services.
At Goodman Lantern, our team of expert technical writers, editors, researchers, and marketers can create the white papers you need to build your business. Connect with us to discuss how we can help establish your company as a thought leader through our white paper writing services.