The Science of Marketing

This one’s for all you high-tech companies out there.  I’m talking about companies with products that have complex value propositions, long sales cycles, and multiple buyers.  For these types of companies, white papers are a key arrow in the marketing quiver.

For most companies, white papers are developed in one of three ways:

1. A member of the product team has an idea, writes a paper, and marketing rewrites it so it’s readable
2. A member of the marketing team has an idea, writes a paper, and the product team rewrites it so it’s accurate
3. Someone has an idea, but they have no time to write, so they hire someone to write it for them – then rewrite it just because

But there’s a new option out there, and recently I’ve seen it produce some highly readable, highly accurate white papers.  Find an independent expert, someone who knows your market and your company better than anyone else, and make them your white paper editor-in-chief.  Whether it’s a consultant, an analyst or even a journalist with some spare time, an educated, external viewpoint can be a huge asset in developing highly relevant works.

But don’t simply assign your expert a topic and dictate an outline for them to follow.  Empower them to guide the topic and direction of the paper, and let them do what they do in assembling a flow, gathering the details and writing the paper.  From what I’ve seen the results can be extremely compelling- the kind of paper your audience will want to read.  And that’s a nice change for you and the reader.

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