Are White Papers Dead?Or just in need of an evolution for the 21st century…

Traditional white papers are likely the staple of your content marketing portfolio, and for good reason.

According to several recent studies from IDG and DemandGen Report, buyers still leverage white papers to help make B2B purchase decisions.

Early Discovery: for finding new ideas and potential solutions — helping answer “Why Change?”

Although white papers are still a workhorse, there is a dirty little secret you may not know - The effectiveness of white paper fueled campaigns has been on the decline for the past six years – with the number of responses / downloads declining 5% each year.

Across the buyer’s decision-making journey, white papers are leveraged during the following phases:

Middle Consideration: assessing the priority of the issue and creating a short list of vendors, helping answer “Why Now?”

Final Decision: determining which solution can best deliver the lowest cost, least risk, and best value solution, helping answer “Why Your Solution?”

Your current white papers just don’t have the same impact they once had … but why?

5%of white paper marketing campaigns

have declined each year

It now takes significantly more reach to generate the same amount of lead responses from white paper fueled campaigns. This at a time when IDC reports that it takes 50% more leads to generate the same amount of revenue as just two years ago!

Over the past six years, the effectiveness

- DemandGen Report

Are White Papers Dead?

Buyers now receive 32% more marketing campaigns than they just a few years ago (SiriusDecisions). How many white paper campaigns were in your inbox today alone? Likely your white paper fueled campaigns are getting lost in a sea of look-alikes, with little to differentiate your white paper from the hundreds of others.

Here are a couple of reasons we may be seeing the change:

Marketing Overload

The typical white paper is just too long. The typical white paper is now more than 10 pages according to IDG, lengthened to address a wider range of buyer roles and industries, more buyer challenges and more complex solutions. Studies indicate even 5 pages might be too long today. And the content, its just too text heavy for today’s more visually stimulated audience.

Short-Attention-Span Theater

The Internet and other consumer technologies have spoiled B2B Prospects with the expectation of customization - that they can get any content they want fully customized and tailored to their personal preferences. However, traditional whitepapers are one-size-fits-all with little personalization and lagging relevance.

More Empowered

Today’s buyer has heard it all before, and they are wary. They most trust content recommended by peers, and authored by a third party. Only 13% said they view content that is created directly by a vendor as credible.

More Skeptical

Buyers today are inflicted with Frugalnomics, a “do more with less” focus on the bottom-line like never before. Buyers don’t want another product pitch. They want to know the positive business outcomes you can deliver, unfortunately most white papers remain product focused versus value centric.

More Frugal

Buyers now receive 32% more marketing campaigns than they just a few years ago

- SiriusDecisions

Are White Papers Dead?

Schedule a DemoVisit alinean.com to learn more and schedule a demo

Download ValueStoryValueStory is available online as an HTML5 application, and as a native app through the Apple App Store.

Learn MoreVisit the Frugalnomics Survival Guide at alinean.com to learn more about value marketing & selling best practices.

Alinean empowers B2B vendors to better connect, engage and sell to today’s economic-focused buyer via the development and delivery of value messaging, interactive sales / marketing tools and sales training. Alinean-powered value storytelling, financial justification and ROI / TCO creates more compelling value-focused conversations and proposals — generating more demand, challenging the “do-nothing” buyer into action, accelerating sales cycles, increasing deal size and improving competitive win rates.

Leading B2B firms leveraging Alinean tools include: HP, IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, OfficeMax, IDC/IDG, AT&T, BMC Software, ADP and SolidWorks.

So how do you overcome these issues with traditional white papers? Are there perhaps other more modern / effective ways to generate more, higher quality leads?

You could dynamically personalize the right content

- to connect with each prospect on their particular

challenges, and communicate your value aligned with their unique perspective on what’s

valuable to them?

You could communicate your value message using visuals

versus words - leveraging dynamic visual storytelling,

whiteboard animations, embedded video and

interactive infographics?

You could collect and leverage benchmarks and

discoveries from prior prospect engagements to

dynamically deliver unique insights to each prospect

You could quantify the cost-of-do-nothing and value-

of-change to each buyer interactively, based on his or

her unique opportunity?

Technology has come a long way and can definitely be leveraged to deliver a more compelling and effective connection with your prospects. The white paper may not be dead

yet, but it is certainly time to deliver marketing content more effectively and evolve white papers for the 21st century.

Learn more about potential solutions

Only 13% said they view contentthat is created directly by a vendor as credible.

You need 3rd party generated / powered content.

What if...