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Magazine Profiles White Paper Marketer, But…

By Michael Stelzner

Can white papers actually help a business grow?

You bet!

And Inc. recently profiled a company that it says is doing a great job at white paper marketing. The article is entitled, “Wooing Customers: One White Paper at a Time.”

Keep reading, because there is a twist in this story.

Here is an excerpt:

“Thought leadership” may sound to you like a fussy marketing strategy, but for Dan Dershem, it’s easily defined. Dershem’s company, LeanLogistics, develops supply-chain management software for the transportation industry. To drum up business, the Holland, Michigan, company offers expertise free of charge to as many people as possible in the form of white papers and case studies on supply-chain management. The company has invested more than $2 million over the past few years to build up its library of logistics literature.

Folks, this goes back to my mantra: To win business, you must give away something important. The best giveaway is knowledge in the form of educational white papers.

Now for the twist.

I visited the Lean Logistics library and guess what I found?

“Info center coming soon.”

It seems that this nice information repository did not make it online before the Inc. article ran.

Thanks to Michael Mackenzie for first writing about this.

What do you think?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 5:35 am and is filed under Lead Generation, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Mortgage Man;

    I fully agree.

    Check out the great stats about the power of white papers in the sidebar under categories.

    Mike
  • And yet, the basic premise of the article is right: white papers and thought leadership ARE good ways to get leads. If you are perceived as an industry innovator, then people will be far more interested in getting in touch with you. That's fairly simple.
  • Mike;

    This also calls into question this claim from the article:

    "The company has invested more than $2 million over the past few years to build up its library of logistics literature."

    First, come on. Who spends millions on white papers??

    Mike
  • Ummm, that maybe a "whoops" is in order ?

    Their homepage also has the most "Recent News" as 1/3/07, which was over 4 months ago, so I'd say they need to hire someone to keep fresh news posted and to create some white papaers and to ...

    What do I really think ?

    That's just poor and happens way too often on the internet.

    This medium can reach more people in a day than you can ever get to "walk in" to your business, yet it's treated like a second-class citizen by some companies that are managed by someone who doesn't grasp the enormity of the 'net.

    Disclaimer: I'm not saying that this company fits that description, but that's what I'd feel like if I followed the magazine article to their site.
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