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.

Our Billy Madison argument went something like this.

Me: Sans serif fonts are cleaner and have more aesthetic appeal.

Him: Serif fonts are easier on the eyes.

Long on opinion and short on data.

Finally, last Friday, I decided to consult The Google.  I found that we are both right.  The common wisdom is that serif fonts are more readable (i.e., easier on the eyes) except on computer screens where sans serif fonts are more legible (due to varying screen resolutions).  This is why the Wall Street Journal is publised in a serif font while WSJ.com is in sans serif.

Anyone have another preference or opinion?

**Ironically, the writer who created Superman was named "Jerry Siegel" – look it up.

People are busy these days.  Very busy.  And journalists, the primary targets for a news release, are busiers than most.  They receive hundreds of news releases a day, and have to flter through them to find, research and write a few good stories before their deadline.  So why would I bury the important stuff under a pile of fluff?  I’d rather make it as easy as possible for them to find the information they need to write a story about my client.

Of course, bullets in writing are nothing new; they’re not even new in a press release.  But yesterday’s experience is a good reminder that we need to adapt our tactics to how people are consuming information these days.  We’ve been good at writing web content with bullets and bold face to immediately get people to the important information.  Maybe it’s time to look at everything we write and be sure our time starved audiences can easily find what they’re looking for.

In the beginning, the usual process with a high tech start-up is: start a company, get a creative designer to design a logo, pick some colors and fonts.  Sometime later, messaging is developed.  So, the look and feel (visual brand) and the language (verbal brand) of the company are disjoint and possibly out of sync.  With so many companies vying for your audience’s attention these days, consistency is critical – so it is critical that the visual and verbal brand act as one.

There are three main concepts to think about when architecting an integrated brand.

1. The Word - Think about what your company does.  What word does it bring to mind?  Now, how can you get your brand to look like this word?
2. The Core Values – Think about how your company does what it does.  What values does it bring to the market.  Now, how can you add flavor to your brand that reflects these core values?
3. The Market – Think about your competitors, partners and customers.  What do their brands look and sound like?  Now, how can your brand stand out while fitting in?

By approaching your brand development in this structured way, you are more likely to have a tighter bond between what you say and what you look like.

Most marketers are no longer swinging for the fences with marketing communications – they are thinking through their marketing goals and mapping out phased communications strategies that get them there over time.  They are walking before they run, dating before they marry, and establishing a dialogue  before they sell.  Here are a few examples of progressive thinking in the area of marketing phases:

Marketing Experiments Blog: Writing Headlines that Don’t Sell — But Get Much Higher Conversions

Startup Hustle: Acquiring, Engaging, Retaining and Monetizing Your Customers

Marketing Interactions: B2B Websites Need to Focus on the Long Term

Drew’s Marketing Minute: Are You Expecting too Much From your Marketing?

I’m a big believer in marketing programs that don’t sell or try to do too much, but instead happen in phases and focus on long-term success.  I’m glad to see that others agree.  What do you think?

Much like a 5-speed transmission, marketing communications activities need to work in sequential stages to be effective, especially with more strategic sales.  Take, for example, a developer of enterprise-wide security solutions, where there are many stages in the buying cycle and several stakeholders involved in the purchase decision.  Customers for this type of solution aren’t going to a website, downloading a free trial and installing it.  They’re writing RFPs, kicking tires, calling in technical experts and getting their finance department involved.  Marketing communications for these high touch sales doesn’t begin in 5th gear – you can’t post a web site and expect a thousand people to click "Buy it Now".

It all comes down to understanding the buying cycle in a given market, looking at the stakeholders and learning about their chief concerns.  Think about first gear – where prospective customers begin the process of evaluating new products – and implement programs that position your solution as a viable option.  In second gear, when technology evaluators begin putting competitive products to the test, be sure your communications activities differentiate you.  Rolling into third gear, a business level audience may get involved, so you must be able to demonstrate how your product can improve the bottom line.  Fourth gear may target an operational team tasked with figuring out how your solution will impact existing systems and processes; so build some tools that demonstrate simplicity and integration.  And in fifth, when last minute considerations can derail a sale, be sure you have the information and materials you need to manage objections.

While audiences, tactics, and messages will vary, the approach holds up to any complex sale.  Phase your communications efforts to mesh with what’s going on in the buying cycle.  Those who try to close a strategic sale in first gear will find themselves spinning their wheels. 

Drew McLellan recently wrote about expecting too much from your marketing, concluding that "marketing takes time, repetition, and patience."  So true, and to that, I’d add a progression that jibes with the buying cycle.  What would you add?

A few years ago, I was at a high tech startup that launched "The Carcass Campaign," a series of advertisements that used images of predators and their fallen prey to emphasize the importance of speed in the animal kingdom (and in telecommunications).  Despite the occasional letter from PETA, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with most onlookers saying "I get it."  But The Carcass Campaign is the only example I can think of that taps controversy to break through the humdrum clutter and reach the corporate world, and I wonder if today’s overloaded business audiences demand a little more edge from the companies trying to strike up a conversation with them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that the CEOs of B2B companies begin pulling a Mark Cuban, or that four-letter words start showing up in press releases, but as I flip through the pages of Network World and check out the ads, I’m bored stiff.  Big headline…picture of a person’s face…picture of some hardware…company logo….repeat.  Can’t we do a little better than this, or is the high road good enough?

Please someone…anyone…point me to a good example of a business to business company that isn’t afraid to be edgy.  Or is there just no room for controversy in B2B marketing?

We’ve gotten great response, but we also got something that we didn’t expect. Several people have asked us: how do we do it? what tools do we use? Well, it’s really pretty simple and I’ll let everyone in on the "secret".

Start With an E-Mail Marketing Service

We use MailChimp for all our e-mail campaigns. (We’ve tried a few different services and like MC’s ease-of-use and campaign reporting.) Like most e-mail marketing services, MC allows you to embed links and track click-throughs.

Create Landing Pages

Each of the links above goes to a different landing page on our web site. These pages say "thanks for participating" and have links to other pages for more information.

Count the Clicks

MC reports on a wide range of statistics for each campaign (in this case a newsletter). One of these statistics is the number of click-throughs for each link embedded in the e-newsletter. Just tally up the clicks for each link and you have your survey results.

So, that’s the secret of the 1-second survey. It’s just that easy.

Have fun.

First off, it’s important to understand the scale of the iPhone 3G’s launch – the company reportedly sold a million units in 21countries in 3 days. But these aren’t just "units", each iPhone is a well integrated, well packaged collection of cutting edge components and software. Design, development, testing, sourcing and manufacturing a million of these beauties in time for July 11th are enough to make any product manager cringe. Beyond the device itself, there’s Apple’s carrier partner AT&T, which had to build and operationalize a new network, America’s fastest 3G network – in time to support the finished iPhone 3G on launch day. Then there’s the third parties, the application developers, whose innovations unlock the true power of this new device. Come up with an idea, learn the developers toolkit, figure out how to write the application, work out the kinks – and do it all by launch day. Again, no small feat. Sure, there were a few glitches on day one, but Apple and AT&T were able to respond quickly and accelerate their pace of deployment over the weekend (proving their support plan, too, was well designed).

To pull this launch off, Apple had to develop and execute on a serious plan. I can only imagine the thought that went into bringing all of these moving parts together so the first million people in line could walk into the Apple Store or an AT&T retailer on the weekend of July 11th, and walk out with a shiny new iPhone 3G. It got me thinking about all the components that go into a good marketing launch – web content, collateral, presentations, media briefings and a healthy pre-launch buzz, for example. As marketers, I think we should all plan and execute at least one launch in our careers that inspires people and makes them wonder how we pulled it off. Have you had yours yet?

With that, Our Ten Most Popular Posts: 

1. Internal Communications: Own It
2. The Blogosphere: You Don’t Have to Blog to Belong
3. Mission Statement: Make it Possible
4. Slogans: Say What You Do
5. Market Segmentation: How to Prioritize Targets
6. High Tech Blogging: Why?
7. Lead Generation: The Bell Curve
8. Communications Part II: To the Right People
9. Age of Conversation 2: The Deadline
10. The SEO Triple Play: Message, Mechanics, Maintenance