Whatever type of service you provide white papers can be one of the best marketing tools that you can use. White papers, often called reports or guides, are education based marketing pieces. They show prospects how to solve a problem while persuading them about the benefits to using your services.



They are effective marketing pieces because prospects are sick of chest thumping, hey-look-how-great-I-am marketing. They don't believe people that engage in this type of marketing anymore, they have heard it all before.

What interested prospects really want is useful information to help them make decisions. They have issues that they want solved and they will first look for information, education, and advice before they decide to hire someone. This is because they want to better understand their current situation and their options before the make a decision.

Many service firms make a mistake by thinking prospects start their buying decision by looking for a service provider. They don't. They start their buying decision long before that when they start looking for information. When prospects have reached the point that they are ready to hire someone, they are already far along in their buying cycle.

For example, if someone goes to buy a car they'll go to the internet, Car and Driver, or some other information source first. Then they will do a little research so that they are better informed. They don't start the process of buying a car by calling a car salesman. That step comes later.

Your prospects will go through the same process. The will do research and then contact you for help, or another service firm for help.

If you are a smart marketer and you are willing to provide marketing that educates your prospects, you can attract more clients than people who use traditional marketing methods. Why is this? It's simple, that's what prospects are looking for, they want to be more informed.

In his book Solution Selling, Michael Bosworth, wrote that he believes that the number of people actively looking for a solution, or in this case, a service provider, at a given moment in time is about 10%. My experience tells me that this estimate is pretty accurate. In some markets and for some services this could be lower, or this could be higher.

Traditional marketing only focuses on attracting this 10%. But, when you use reports as a tool in your marketing strategy you will attract this 10%, plus all the other people who are just entering a decision cycle and looking for information and education.

Many of these people are moving in the direction of hiring someone but they need to go through their decision cycle first. They need to investigate their options, do their research and may even need try to solve the problem on their own first.

This is why white papers and reports can be so powerful. They allow you to catch the prospect early in their buying process and start the process of selling yourself. When you catch them early you have the opportunity to educate them and persuade. Also, you can effectively shut out the competition and position yourself as the only firm who can provide the necessary solution.

As service providers, white papers and reports are about as close as we can come to providing a sample of what it is like to work with us. It allows our prospects to get to know our way of solving problems and dealing with issues and it's an opportunity for them to get to know us. The report also builds a connection and forms the basis for starting a new relationship.

And the nice thing is that you can give this sample of yourself to many people at once. It's an efficient method to spread yourself and your ideas around.

Not every prospect that you develop through the marketing of your reports will be ready to do business right now. Some will take more time to move through their buying process than others. However, identifying immediate prospects is not your only objective when you market with white papers.

You have a secondary objective when marketing with reports. This other objective is to build a long list of hot prospects and move them through their decision cycle so that they become clients in the future.

Anyone interested in attracting new clients will do well to utilize white papers and reports as an important marketing tool.