Introduction

When it comes to B2B content marketing, publishing whitepapers is more effective than articles, blogs and newsletters according to a 2016 State of Content Marketing Report.

More statistics show that 71% of marketers in B2B companies have white papers as an integral part of their content strategy. This makes perfect sense because B2B buyers find them useful. As a matter of fact, 71% of B2B buyers use white papers when making decisions and 61% of them share them with members of their teams.

Whitepapers boost B2B marketing in different ways. The most important ones are positioning your company as a thought leader in your industry and generating quality leads for your business. What makes white papers great when it comes to B2B lead generation is the value they offer readers. Statistics show that out of every four B2B buyers, three are willing to share their personal details in order to access a white paper.

But this does not mean that you can attract prospects simply by developing a whitepaper and uploading it on your website. You need to do more to get the white paper in front of your target audience to generate the quality leads your business needs.

The most effective way to do this is to partner with a B2B demand generation company. In this article, we look at 5 ways B2B demand generation companies place your white paper before your target audience:

#1. Creating Efficient, Clean-Looking Landing Pages

After investing time on developing a whitepaper and uploading it on your website, how do you generate leads from it? Every B2B company that uses whitepaper to generate lead needs a strategy to convert its web traffic into leads.

The most effective way to do this to create a landing page – here’s why.

Over 40% of marketers create a new landing page for every marketing campaign according to Serpstat. There is a good reason for this – available data shows that companies that use 10 to 15 landing pages can increase their leads by 55% while those that have 40+ landing pages get up to 12 times more leads.

When it comes to results, landing forms – particularly long form ones – do not disappoint. They generate up to 220% more leads for a business.

Demand generation firms like UnboundB2B help B2B companies to create clean-looking, highly efficient landing pages that attract and convert visitors from their whitepapers.

In simple terms, a landing page is a page that provides details about your whitepaper. It showcases the benefits of getting the whitepaper to visitors and is the page your visitors will be directed to after clicking on your whitepaper ad or link.

But not all landing pages will produce the results you desire. Landing pages that feature multiple offers have a negative effect – pushing conversion rates by a whopping 266% .

On the contrary, a clean, well designed whitepaper landing page can serve as a lead capture machine for your B2B company. There is evidence that landing pages that feature images, videos, descriptions and intuitive call to actions generate more leads than those that don’t. For instance, including videos on your landing page can boost conversions by up to 86%.

See how Oracle utilizes an image in its whitepaper landing page design example below:

Here are some good reasons to create a landing page for your whitepaper:

• Generate high value leads
• Collect demographic data from prospects
• Provide clarity and purpose to visitors
• Remove any distractions
• Encourage visitors to make a decision
• Track prospect engagement

#2. Driving Traffic to Featured Whitepapers Through B2B Publishing Platforms

When you publish a whitepaper online, you want it to reach as many people as possible. A good whitepaper on your site is of no use if your target audience knows nothing about it.

The more traffic you have on your site, the more leads you are likely to generate. With the average landing page conversion rate standing at 2.35%, it is an open secret that B2B companies need to push traffic to their sites.

B2B companies that partner with demand generation companies are able to do this with ease. To drive traffic to B2B company websites, most lead generation companies use their publishing platforms or media websites to push traffic to their featured whitepaper.

Working with a B2B lead generation company to push traffic to your whitepaper enables you to target your efforts to relevant prospects and build a solid lead nurturing program.

#3. Reaching Target Audience Through Well Designed Newsletters

Marketing your whitepaper to the target audience is a must for any B2B company that is keen on generating quality leads. Rather than waiting until your target audience visits your website, you can deliver your whitepaper directly to your target audience by partnering with a B2B demand generation company.

Lead generation companies will design beautiful newsletters – see an example below – and run an email marketing campaign to get your whitepaper to your target audience.

B2B companies that work with demand generation companies to deliver well designed newsletters to their target audience enjoy a wide range of benefits. Here are the key ones:

• Quality Leads: Because they are sent to a targeted audience, email newsletters generate quality leads for B2B companies
• Credibility: Email newsletters provide your target audience with informative and helpful content. With time, you earn trust and build credibility in their sight.
• Traffic: According to Salesforce, 82% of email recipients open emails sent to them by companies. This is a significantly high number which translates to more traffic on your company website
• Brand recognition: Email newsletters extend your company’s reach to new audiences. Since they are sent on regular intervals, they enhance the recognition of your brand by new as well as potential customers.

In addition to these benefits, email marketing offers B2B companies a high return on investment. Statistics show that this marketing strategy delivers a 73% ROI for businesses – making it the most effective online marketing channel.

#4. Tracking Prospect Behavior With Marketing Automation

After marketing your whitepaper, you need data that tells a story about the leads generated through the campaign. This is not always easy for B2B companies to hack. For 35% of marketers, lack of quality data about leads is the biggest challenge that keeps them from achieving lead generation success.

To get reliable data, B2B companies that use whitepapers to generate leads need to track the behavior of prospects they get through their marketing campaigns. Doing so will enable them to understand their target audience better. To enable B2B companies to keep tabs on the behavior of prospects, demand generation firms like UnboundB2B use marketing automation to track customer behavioral journeys.

The thing is – every interaction your lead has with your content or site indicates the stage they are in on the sales funnel and the buyer’s journey. For instance, if they go to your pricing or contact us page, it means they are at the bottom of your sales funnel and are ready to buy. On the other hand – if they spend more time reading your blogs, they are most likely at the top of the sales funnel.

Lead generation companies help B2B companies to track behaviors of leads so they know which prospects are likely to buy and which ones are not. They help with setting up lead scores for online activities to provide B2B companies with lead scores that reflect the actual lead engagement levels.

This makes it easy for B2B companies to score leads and make informed decisions on which leads to nurture and which ones not to nurture. Statistics show that only 27% of leads that 61% of B2B marketers forward to sales teams are qualified. Tracking prospect behavior can go a long way in ensuring your marketing team is able to identify high quality leads that convert.

#5. Measuring Marketing Campaign Success

When you use whitepapers as a marketing tool, you want to know whether your campaign was a success. The only way to do this is to measure how effective the campaign is in meeting your marketing goal.

For many B2B companies, measuring results of their marketing campaigns is a big challenge.  However, this becomes a breeze when you partner with a B2B demand generation company. When it comes to measuring results, any lead generation company will want to understand what you want to achieve with your whitepaper marketing campaign and the performance metrics that matter to you.

For example, if your goal is to generate quality leads from the whitepaper, your lead generation partner could suggest using metrics such as open rates, click-through rates and number of whitepaper downloads. While the company will have to drive traffic to your site in order to generate leads, looking at the number of visitors is a top-of-funnel metric that does not help you measure the success of your marketing campaign based on your goal.

Final Thoughts

Creating a white paper that engages your target audience takes effort and time.  To maximize this investment, you need to ensure that you place it in front of your target audience in order to generate high value leads.

The easiest way to do this is to partner with a demand generation company like Unboundb2b. By creating a clean landing page to attract leads, pushing traffic to your white paper, running an email newsletter campaign and tracking prospects behavior, we place your whitepaper in front of your target audience to ensure you get the high value leads you are looking for.