A Wider Net

Michael Stelzner, a prominent white paper author and consultant, wrote about a new RainToday study into the state of lead generation. From his post:

A new study by RainToday revealed that 74 percent of professional services companies ranked white papers as an excellent source of lead generation.

In addition, white papers are one of the top two marketing strategies businesses plan on implementing in the next two years.

White papers make a lot of sense for B2B marketing because they position your company as a thought leader and they foster deep conversations that can lead to new business. One thing that isn’t clear to me is whether these papers are getting read. I’m sure Mr. Stelzner has plenty to say on that topic on his blog. It comes to mind that Forrester Research discovered several years ago that their study briefs, which were only a dozen pages or so, were considered too long. Their solution was to boil the study down into a 3-5 minute video summary.

That, to me, is a more compelling way to leverage all the work that went into the white paper. Record a 3-5 minute video and post it on your website and maybe in one or more aggregation sites. The video player should be embeddable on other people’s blogs, so they can better reference your example. B2B customers will appreciate the short-form because it shows sensitivity to their time, and it makes your company look more tech savvy.

Having just written that, I expect a call from my marketing department any minute now about a couple of my white papers…