Well, it’s Dec 25th and just another working stiff’s day in Japan. But, be of good cheer, because your tech poet laureate’s been putting pen to paper again…

… not content with the Internet classic, “Case Study Opportunity – The Twelve Days of Christmas“, he now gifts you with:

A White Paper Christmas

I’m dreaming of a white paper
Just like the ones I used to see
Where the headlines glisten,
and vendors listen
To content marketing made for me

I’m dreaming of a white paper
With every online form I write
May your signups be simple and light
And may all your papers be white

I’m dreaming of a white paper
With every online form I write
May your signups be simple and light
And may all your papers be white

And there you have it. I do requests for a fee…

Oh, and the answer to my question in an earlier post about that IBM Software Group Case Study.

IBM’s document is written as a classic case study and deserves a separate post describing just how good it is. However, the focus.com site’s unfortunately cataloged it under “Industry White Paper”.

This oversight is more than mere semantics because white papers and case studies fulfill separate roles in an evolving b2b lead generation relationship with the prospect.

The white paper is often used as an educational and familiarization tool by a prospect in the early stages of looking at possible solutions for existing business problems or meeting future opportunities.

Prospects, at this time, are not really interested in buying – or in being sold to.

But, of course, that doesn’t stop some vendors from cramming their ‘white papers’ with “buy us now” sales messages.

And then wonder why lukewarm leads go cold… it’s like pouring scalding water on a tender sapling.

Case studies, on the other hand, can help with the middle to closing end of the solution cycle. Here, the prospect is looking to buy and probably has your offering, along with those from some of your competitors, in the internal review arena. Your case study is one piece in a social proof jigsaw that your prospect is constructing from each vendor’s sales and marketing collateral.

- Mark ‘Bing.com’ McClure

One of the ‘cold’ marketing searches I occasionally do is to find up-and-coming companies in my niche who could benefit from the tactical implementation of a content marketing strategy. (BlueMile Inc Marketing folks; if you’re reading here, please see the section all about your website near the end of this post…)

These are IT (networking) companies with solid products and services where technology-savvy customers are looking for (aka ‘demanding) ‘feature-rich’ solutions.

But the old rules of marketing, nay human psychology, still apply. Namely, that people will buy on emotions and justify with logic. This means even knowledgeable and level-headed b2b prospects will be partly swayed by emotional responses to the problem confronting them and to a vendor’s suggested solution.

Any marketing approach that ignores the prospect’s logical or emotional responses will dilute its sales effectiveness i.e. you won’t sell Jack!

For technology buyers and marketers it’s usually a given that the feature sets stand out strongly. I came from a computer networking geek background and long admired the bells and whistles that vendors built into their offerings. Even implementation manuals sometimes held a special place in my digital heart!

However, go two or three levels up the tech management org chart and any such attachment is mostly reduced to hacking away at the cells in a capex spreadsheet! For sure, the peer level managers on the business side will have little to no interest in technical features. They’re not even sure they ‘need’ IT these days…

Enter The Content Marketing Strategy

This is where things get real interesting because a content marketing strategy can help educate prospects on the proven solutions to the biggest problems they face in their business.

How is this done?

There are many tactical ways to reach/attract and educate your ideal prospects online e.g. regular blogging, audio podcasts, video, webinars, white papers and customer case studies are some of the popular tools being used.

Over time, the educational nature of the content marketing path can help nurture those prospects who begin to trust what you’re saying and proposing. This is ethical marketing and good for business.

Which brings me to one of the IT networking companies I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

BlueMile’s Web Site Has Plenty of Features…

Take a look at the BlueMile Inc Web Site.
They’re a Columbus, Ohio-based service provider with a range of technical solutions for local, national and international customers.

It’s all quite impressive and they’re doing a good job (remember they’re less than 50 people, if I recall correctly) at showing their technology options. Exactly the sort of thing I’d be checking out if I was interested in matching their capabilities against my requirements. In fact, my logical, network engineering mind would be hunting around for specs, data sheets, data center operational statistics etc.

From the perspective of a technology marketing writer the next steps are to add the business benefits into the case their website is making for doing business with them. (Of course, business is not won or lost solely on web site content. But it has a significant impact on prospects, especially those who are not yet looking for your solution. Just give it a year or two, however…)

Here are a number of ways to start doing this:

1- Turn the CEO’s whiteboard video sessions (Oct 2011 Update: the url links is broken) into a series of white papers, blog posts and even podcasts. The raw material is there ready to be re-purposed (my favorite content marketing buzz phrase at the moment!)

2- Start a blog or multiple blogs and use some of the staff featured in that fine home page staff photo to help come up with the content. Any good marketing writer will have an interviewing skill set they can draw on to extract the nuggets of wisdom and experience that form the core of useful posts.

3- Pick the key market you want more business from and create several customer case studies that show the business benefits and problems resolved or averted by choosing to partner with BlueMile Inc. (You’ll notice that BlueMile have started down the case study road by featuring some case studies from their partners. It’s only a matter of time, in my opinion, before they have a whole web page of their own.)

You might be wondering what sort of interest I have in this company. Well, go back and read the first paragraph of this post again. People do like to read constructive and positive things about themselves and their businesses. I know I certainly do.

And from checking freely available sources on the Internet, I suspect they are looking seriously at increasing their content marketing efforts. Carpes diem.

Anyway, regardless of where my horse comes in that particular ‘race’, there are probably marketing managers of other IT companies out there who will come across this very post. Yes, this blog does serve as one of my very own content marketing outposts

Feel free to contact me about all things white papers, case studies and a ton of other technical copywriting projects.

- Mark ‘technical marketing writer’ McClure

It looks like Avaya Data Networks, having digested that sumptuous Nortel meal, are positioning their convergent network solutions around a marketing meme tagged as ‘Fit for Purpose’.

That wee gem is not the subject of today’s post because there’s plenty of copywriting gold to be panned in one of Avaya’s recent white paper offerings.

My white paper ‘senpai’, Jonathan Kantor, alerted me to yet another example of multinationals running rough shod over the educational marketing opportunities that white papers deliver, with this provocative post:

How to Lose Your Reader on the First White Paper Page

It’s an interesting read of what can happen when the temptation to shoehorn mini-case studies into what could have been an authoritative white paper has resulted in a cross between a sales brochure, data sheet and case study.

Somehow I doubt that’s what Avaya’s marketing folks had in mind. But that’s how I’m reading it.

Are White Papers from Venus and Case Studies from Mars?

Or something like that!

The point being that a well-written and visually attractive white paper will capture the marketing high ground in a prospect’s mind simply by giving away credible information about a problem-solution of interest to that prospect.

And all without trying to ram the vendor’s own gee-whiz, alphabet-soup concoction down their gagging throats. That’s not why they signed up for it in the first place.

The white paper needs to be as subtle in vendor positioning as Aphrodite was in selling her very obvious charms. To borrow a dating metaphor, it’s often what you’re not showing that gets the most attention…

Some technology companies would do well to carefully review what they’ve put on very obvious display, long before the mating ritual’s even got to the hand-holding stage.

As for the case studies?

Well, in working with Casey Hibbard’s mentoring program, it’s as plain as daylight that the extended social proof that case studies bring is a key component of helping future customers see what’s in it for them.

And, for the life of me, I can’t see how mixing customer case study elements in a white paper is building credibility in the prospect’s mind.

More likely he/she is thinking, “I’m being propositioned, again. Phew!”

I’d encourage you to check out Jonathan’s post. I was excited enough to leave a comment almost as long as this blog post!

That link again:

How to Lose Your Reader on the First White Paper Page

- Mark ‘white paper agony Uncle’ McClure

Well, it’s taken a little longer than I expected in this post, but I’m pleased to say that the new look samuraiwriter.com web site is now open for business.

I’ll be adding new content there over the coming weeks and months – in addition to publishing blog posts here.

You can also subscribe to receive my free white paper as soon as it’s released – the target date is 10th October.

If you’re a technology marketer in the computer networking industry, then this is for you.

Just click the image below to visit the landing page and subscribe.

- Mark McClure

PS – Oct 2011 Update:
Yes, the whitepaper  is still in the works…