TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Industry News
• White Paper Marketing: Content-Targeted Advertising for White Papers
• The Death of Team Versacorp: The Risks of Skipping the Needs Assessment
• Research Corner
• Writer's Tools

WHITE PAPER MARKETING (top)

Content-Targeted Advertising for White Papers
By Brent Applegate

Content-targeted ads gain mindshare from your target audience when they are reading relevant on-line editorial content. For example, while reading an article on CNET News about servers, a potential customer might see related white papers at the end of the article as additional resources. Well-informed white paper advertisers are leveraging the power of content-targeted ads to better promote their papers. While the playing field for content-targeted white papers ads is still evolving, this article will help you to make sense of the options.

Single-Site Promotions

The simplest place to start advertising your white paper is at a popular industry news site. Although not all on-line publications offer content-targeted advertising and many do not specialize in white paper advertising, there are still plenty of options. The process traditionally involves picking your favorite IT content site, choosing the categories that best describe your paper, paying a fee and watching the impressions roll in.

InfoWorld, E-Week, TechTarget and others have utilized this approach. For example, the InfoWorld program costs $4000 per month for a guaranteed minimum of 500,000 impressions.

Single-site promotions are easy to set up and provide a focused presentation of your paper to a very refined audience. However, single-site promotions do not provide registration services or lead tracking.

CNET Network

A bit higher up the food chain, we encounter CNET’s IT Papers. Their service provides an option to contextually present white papers throughout CNET network properties. Peter Spande of CNET marketing notes, “We have built persistent contextual integration on News.com, ZDNet, TechRepublic and Builder.com so that a user on any of those properties will receive focused contextual white paper referrals on almost every editorial page.”

Uniquely, CNET provides registered lead reports to advertisers for follow-up. It takes 2 to 4 clicks to register and read a paper, which is a nice feature to protect advertisers from casual surfers. Pricing begins as low as $1000 per month and is determined by the volume of traffic requested, the number of papers promoted and the duration of the promotion. Large-scale campaigns can run 6 to 7 figures annually. Unfortunately, advertisers must depend on producers at CNET to determine appropriate category placement for white papers; however, a paper can be limited to a specific CNET property.

I am most impressed with the prominent placement given to white papers on CNET sites. CNET’s IT Papers is a strong provider due to their depth of content, tight integration and commitment to white papers as an integral part of their editorial offerings.

IndustryBrains Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

IndustryBrains has carved out an impressive niche with PPC ads for white papers. IndustryBrains offers auction-based, content-targeted ads in marketplace listing sections that appear on publication sites such as ComputerWorld, InfoWorld and Ziff Davis publications.

Bid prices for ad placement vary considerably from a low of 50 cents per click to $12 or more per click. The top five bidders for each site-specific category appear below relevant articles. It is worth noting that your ad may compete for clicks against a publisher's “new white papers” box.

IndustryBrains is purely a PPC business and does not offer any user registration, screening or lead management services. David Setzer of VirtualConnect has used IndustryBrains content-targeted ads to direct readers to its Mailprotector product and white paper. Setzer likes the low up-front cost and tight control over placement that IndustryBrains provides.

Closing Comments

Each model has its unique strengths. Single-site promotions from on-line properties such as InfoWorld are easy to set up and provide great exposure, although to a narrow spectrum of readers. The breadth and depth of CNET’s service leverages an entire network. Lastly, IndustryBrains offers low up-front costs and the ability to try out categories for content-targeted ads with limited risk.

I am the most impressed by CNET. They offer the most prominent placement of white papers, have a variety of offerings that attracts the serious buyers, and show a consistent and ongoing commitment to the most robust integration of white paper listings and relevant editorial content. Content-targeted ads are also a great way to get your paper in front of just the right reader at just the right moment. Brent Applegate can be reached directly at brent@whitepapersource.com. DISCUSSION: Discuss this topic at the WhitePaperSource forum

WHITE PAPER TECHNIQUES (top)

The Death of Team Versacorp: The Risks of Skipping the Needs Assessment
By Michael A. Stelzner

I remember watching Donald Trump's hit reality show "The Apprentice." It was early in the season and the men – team Versacorp – were suffering a crushing defeat by the women – team Protégé. The task was to develop an ad campaign for an airline while under an extreme deadline. Team Versacorp made a fatal error that ultimately led to their demise: they decided to forgo calling the airline to understand its needs. They sacrificed clarity for time. Versacorp chose not to ask the questions that would have produced a targeted result. The women did the right thing and ultimately prevailed. Whether you work for an agency, are an independent writer or have been tasked by your company to write a white paper, skipping the needs assessment is akin to swimming blindfolded.

The essence of the assessment involves asking questions about the target audience and the paper’s objectives. For example, while recently writing a white paper for a large mobile phone manufacturer, I determined that their primary target audience was analysts and the media, while their secondary audience was small-business users. Had I incorrectly assumed the target audience was carriers, the entire paper would have been written from the wrong perspective. Secondly, I discovered that their objective was to convince the media that their new technology was important and worth writing about. Having that information was critical to help me develop a targeted and relevant white paper.

Here are a few needs assessment tips that will help you avoid a Versacorp blunder:

• Identify the primary and secondary target audiences for the paper.
• Ask lots questions about the audience: what is their typical title, average age, general disposition and so on.
• Determine the objective of the paper: to educate, sell, inform, differentiate, introduce, etc.
• What are the big level issues, problems or needs that must be addressed in the paper?
• Develop an outline that will guide future discussions.
• Who are the key players who must be interviewed?
• Who are the key competitors to analyze?
• What is the schedule and timeline?

By understanding and agreeing up front on the direction of the paper, you will save yourself from team Versacorp’s fate.
Michael A. Stelzner is author of the popular paper entitled "How to Write a White Paper" and has successfully conducted needs assessments for the most challenging of projects. He can be reached at mike@stelzner.com. DISCUSSION: Discuss this topic at the WhitePaperSource forum

RESEARCH CORNER (top)

ClickZ Stats: Looking for the latest trends in Internet research? ClickZ Stats (formerly CyberAtlas) offers extensive free research ranging from online revenues to global Internet usage. For white papers that need a reference or statistics on anything related to the Internet, ClickZ Stats is a research gold mine. Visit ClickZ Stats at http://www.clickz.com/stats/.

WRITER’S TOOLS (top)

Dictionary.com: When Microsoft Word does not recognize a word or its thesaurus is just too rudimentary, consider Dictionary.com, an excellent resource for spelling, word definitions and extensive synonyms. Visit Dictionary.com at http://dictionary.reference.com/.