Promoting white papers after you’ve developed them is critical to ensuring they provide the value your organization hopes to gain from them. After all, the work you devote to developing your white paper will be meaningless unless you’re able to put it in the hands or on the screens of the people who need to read it, whether that’s prospective customers, employees, policymakers, or any other group of stakeholders.
Fortunately, there are many easy ways to share your white paper with the audiences who will find it interesting and meaningful.
Promoting white papers through your website
Perhaps the most natural use of white papers is posting them on your company’s own website, because visitors to your site are seeking more information about your company and its products and services. You can include an image of it on your home page. Visitors can click on the image to either download the paper directly or reach a request form that allows you to capture their names, email addresses, and other key information (this is called “gating” your white paper).
Or, if you want to track and compare the success of your marketing channels, you might consider creating one or more landing pages for your white paper. For example, if you’re promoting your white paper through your trade advertising, email newsletter, a direct mail piece to trade show attendees, and LinkedIn, you’d create a separate landing page for each of those four channels. The pages could be identical, except for their URLs. By tracking the number of unique visitors to each, you could compare how well each channel works for you.
Promoting White Papers On Other Websites
Some websites that provide news and information to the industries you serve may be willing to post a link to your white paper, even if just for a short time. In addition, companies who frequently work as partners with your organization might promote your organization by posting your white paper if it benefits them or if you reciprocate with their content.
Through Emails
Emails can provide several highly targeted ways to let your audiences know your white paper is available. If you send email newsletters or other promotional emails, you can include an announcement about your white paper, along with a link to a special landing page where the visitor can download it. One particularly effective way to do this is to spotlight an intriguing statement or statistic that will pique the reader’s curiosity.
Most of us have signature sections on our emails that include phone numbers and similar information. Why not add a link to your white paper? You can use a promotional message such as:
Download our new white paper, “Cross-cutting and spiral-coring: an engineering comparison”
In addition, many industry websites and trade publications send regular email newsletters and offer the ability to buy promotional messages in those newsletters for a comparatively low cost. You can create an ad spotlighting your white paper and link it to a landing page.
Blogging Opportunities
White papers and blogs are natural counterparts, and blogging presents several ways to increase awareness of your white paper. A well-organized white paper can become the source of several posts for your company’s blog, each of which can mention the white paper and include a link for downloading it. You can develop a post that summarizes the key message of your white paper, along with individual posts based on sections of it. These and many other methods for promoting white papers will ensure that your investment of time and money pays off in achieving the readership and results you’ve targeted from the beginning.
