Relevant white papers drive lead generation
February 27th, 2007 | Marilou BarsamIn a recent article, “Traffic Building Tip: Use White Papers” (Feb. 27th) author Jonathan Kantor points to publishers like TechTarget that are fully leveraging the powerful pull of a well-written white paper.
He challenges a recent report that gives white papers a lukewarm ranking as a means to drive traffic to websites, and then proceeds to enumerate on the many applications of white papers. He poses the question as to whether we agree with this report ranking.
From our experience it is a combination of good SEO strategies coupled with the posting of a relevant white paper that will pull traffic to a website. White paper titles and abstracts need to have choice keywords embedded in them so to attract traffic to download the white paper in the first place and to earn high search results rankings.
In terms of lead generation highly relevant white papers pull the largest mass of leads-hands down. Anyone experience anything differently when it comes to white papers?
February 28th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Thanks for asking. When a white paper is used with another offer tied to an unusual advertising concept, the ROI is often much higher in comparison to the white paper only approach.
On this issue we have way too much anecdotal information and not enough split-run test data. B-to-B marketers should be working with fewer opinions and more facts.
March 5th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Marilou;
I would agree with your assessment.
Wondering when you guys will be coming out with your next report on white papers?
Mike