You might be a product manager who needs supporting collateral for sales, a marketing team member who’s been given the assignment, or perhaps you have a small or mid-size business, without the luxury of a marketing team, writing it yourself. Will you leave it behind after a sales call? Think of this as more of an educational tool than a sales pitch. You might brainstorm with your team or your sales rep to identify specific pain points your product solves—or perhaps you already know. Welcome to part one of the “bake a white paper from scratch” series. MORE >>

The rush is on to get in the content game and offer information prospective and current customers will find valuable and that will ultimately drive sales. I came across some research done by IDG spread across two different posts that was pretty interesting. They interviewed over 100 information technology buyers about their content preferences from vendors. IDG noted there has been a 60% increase in content assets over the past five years. Only 39% of those interviewed said they find relevance in links offered to vendor content (though their expectation is only 50%). MORE >>

How about finally writing that white paper sales has been clamoring for? Make Your Marketing Program Blossom in 2012 I love January 1 st ! The noise of Christmas settles down and life promises to get back to normal— whatever that is! But the New Year brings new possibilities. It brings hope and the promises of new and not so new passions. Flowers bring hope and promise too. Somehow, every January my flowers push their little buds through the soil once again. They reach out with tender green shoots, testing the air for readiness. Sometimes, they experience setbacks along the way. MORE >>

Sales meetings – White papers are great tools to leave behind after a sales demo or meeting. Sales training – You’d be surprised what your sales team can learn by reading your white papers. Having been in IT and been pitched by sales folks, I’ve seen many who understand their product but have no clue how it would be used in the real world. So there you have it—a nicely-written, neatly-formatted, white paper. Now, it’s sitting there, all shiny, just begging to be read. Now it’s time to make it available and get the word out. We need to do more. Tweet about it. MORE >>

And, finish with your call to action – which might be reading a case study on your website, downloading an e-book, or even contacting a sales rep for more info. In Part One , we talked about planning for your white paper. You need to understand your purpose. White papers require a fair amount of effort, so you should be clear on what you expect to achieve. You also need a well-defined topic. Did you do your homework from last week? Great, let’s get started. find it’s easiest to begin with an outline. You want the reader to be quickly interested. This is probably 100-200 words. MORE >>