White papers are very attractive to IT and business professionals. So much so, that the majority of them are willing to go through a registration process to gain access.

Today, KnowledgeStorm released its new report entitled Connecting Through Content, Issue Two, co-sponsored with MarketingSherpa.

I just received my copy and here are highlights:

• Search engines are where buyers begin their research
• Most tech buyers read and click on pay-per click ads (note from me: White paper is a strong call to action in PPC ads)
• Offline marketing, such as direct mail and ads, drives 80% of tech buyers online (note from me: Again, white paper downloads are a strong call to action)
• About 80% of users will register for a white paper, more so than any other materials
• The amount of sample content for a white paper is strongly related to a likely registration (note from me: The study stops at 1 paragraph, I prefer 1 to 2 pages)

I asked Matt Lohman, director of market research for KnowledgeStorm, why he thought so many people were willing to register for white papers. He said:

It is not surprising that both technology buyers and marketers deem white papers as the most worthy content type for registration. While it certainly is not always the case, there usually is some implied standard of quality and credibility with white papers since many are professionally produced.

Read some of my early coverage of this report.

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

 Loading …

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Lead Generation, Marketing, Statistics. 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.