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Is the white paper dead?  Recent studies suggest they’re not, but there’s no denying that too many of them have fallen into a zombie-like state.  Fact is too many fall short of their sales mission.  But the findings such as those by Sirius Decisions last year reveal that white papers remain primary tools for building influence.

One out of every two B2B customers in the Sirius survey considered white papers the most important source of content when it came to making purchase decisions.  Even more important than analyst reports (54% vs. 39%).  A separate study by Eccolo Media showed that 47% of purchase decision-makers considered them “extremely important” in the buying process. The unmistakable take-away:  the venerable white paper is very much alive.  Now you just need to keep yours kicking.

So what’s the difference between white papers that make customers want to know more about you and the ones that make readers quickly turn to something else?  Turns out that the principles of producing a successful paper today are no different than what it takes to create any successful initiative across all marketing and sales.  It must be carefully targeted, well crafted, optimized for social media and oriented towards a specific result.  Last year, a study by Ziff-Davis revealed that the primary purpose of white papers in the buying process was to provide information during the customer’s research-and-discovery phase.  Message: Those customers will be looking specifically at what you know and have to say about their interests, not yours.

One out of three B2B customers utilize white papers to look for new ideas and solutions. Message: keep your content fact-rich but easily digestible.  Know when and how to use infographics to make a key point, for example.

Nearly one in four readers will narrow their vendor selections with the content found in white papers. Message: spotlight what makes your solution competitively superior. To the greatest extent you can, make your comparisons measurable, quantifiable and, if at all possible, graphic so as to be very quickly understood.  Remember that your reader is at least as busy as you are.

One out of ten readers will make the vendor selection based on white paper content. Message: readers will be influenced to the extent they are convinced your solution is a rifle-shot at their problem.  So you must be intimately familiar with what this problem is. Tailor the content to the customer’s need in the terminology they use and the issues they grapple with.  Know your customer.  Understand their anxieties. If this sounds like the age-old best practices of selling and marketing, it’s because that’s exactly what it is.

Tom Pisello’s thoughts on content marketing and the “buyer’s journey” reminds us, again, that great customer knowledge is the cornerstone of great content for customers. Great content marketing, in other words.

There’s a specific category of content for suspects and prospects that call for careful sorting of the content to present to each at various points along their decision path.  It may not necessarily accelerate the buyer’s journey from kicking the tires to writing the check, but it ensures a better ROI for each individual piece of content. What you make available to each group can effectively nudge them along their way.

In a world where skepticism and frugality reign supreme, knowing which stage your prospect is in will determine whether your carefully crafted content is useful or irrelevant. It can make the difference between material the prospect considers valuable or useless.  As with most things in life, timing is everything.  Note that there is always overlap in groups such as those described below, but Pisello’s rule-of-thumb still applies:

1. Think of the first stage of the journey as the discovery period.  Here, buyers are in fact-gathering mode.  They may have made the decision to purchase something, but not necessarily your thing.  This is the group to which white papers, webcasts, events and diagnostic assessment tools are most useful.

2. In the consideration stage, the buyer is looking to justify the purchase.  This is the decision-making time when specific vendors are put on a short list and their offerings more closely scrutinized and screened.  In this phase the prospect (no longer a “suspect”) may be particularly influenced by your solution case studies, video testimonials and white papers that are less theoretical and more solution-minded.

3. Finally, it’s decision time when the buyer will be most influenced by content that demonstrates the rightness of your value proposition.  They want a compelling answer to the question, “Why is this the right decision for me?”  Any content that reveals ROI will be most appropriate at this stage: interactive business-case tools, feature-function comparisons, value-oriented white papers and total-cost-of-ownership comparison tools.

There are horses for courses.  And there is specific content for specific mindsets.  Do you have compelling marketing content that fits each phase of the buyer’s decision process?  How are you measuring its ROI?