The white paper, an in-depth report that typically runs from 8 - 12 pages, has become an increasingly popular B2B marketing communications tool. Consider its versatility: it makes a great offer for generating qualified leads; it can be a tool for attracting favorable media attention; and it fortifies your website with quality content.
A step-by-step approach white papers can take a book (and already has), but here a few tips that’ll give you 90% of what you really need to know.
First, identify the hot buttons.
Successful white papers can embrace a wide variety of topics including market trends, emerging technologies, new business processes and market analysis. The best topics, however, are not necessarily what you want to write about, but what your audience is drawn to read. Typically, that means pressing a hot button - speaking to an issue that raises hopes, fears, alarm, dread, desire, ambition, etc. The best topics combine a desire for gain with competitive fear, i.e., “Profitable Warehouses: How Leading Manufacturers Manipulate Inventories for Market Advantages.”
Don’t lead with your methodology.
Yes, the way you gathered your information (and are able to substantiate it) may be important. But it’s not engaging - and it certainly doesn’t give anyone a reason to read. Put the methodology in an appendix or, if it’s crucial the subject (such as in a white paper based on market surveys) let it follow the introduction or executive summary.
Answer, “Why this paper?”
The two most important parts of the paper are the opening and the conclusion. The opening establishes the context - why is this particular subject worth reading about? The key is to link the topic to potential gains and losses that mean something to your reader. For example: “Inventory control may seem one of the more mundane aspects of daily operations. But according to the Institute for Advanced Gadgets, excess inventory represents the single biggest tax liability faced by widget manufacturers today. More importantly, savvy inventory managers gain market momentum - our research shows a 12% - 27% speed-to-market advantage for successful inventory managers.”
Summarize the important points up front.
Don’t make the reader hunt for your main points. Just as Broadway composers introduce their major melodies in the opening overture, you want to introduce your top three to five points (keep ‘em limited to a handful) right in the beginning. The truth is, many of readers won’t read further. But if you’ve stated your case up front, you’ve done your job anyway.
Build your bodies with statistics and direct quotes.
The body of the white paper develops the themes you established in the introduction. Your job is to descend from the high-level themes in your introduction to the down and dirty proof that earns reader respect. Back up your assertions with real numbers (when possible), vivid anecdotes of real-life events, and direct quotes from participants and/or interview/survey subjects.
Tie it back to the reader.
Blame it on every teacher we’ve had since elementary school - we’ve been told to restate our main points in the conclusion. Or, in other words, to credit our readers without enough intelligence to retain the points from the introduction and the body. Try a better idea: link your main points directly to your readers’ concerns. Make it easy — create a checklist of all the issues discussed in the white paper and invite readers to mark corresponding “yes,” “no,” “planning to,” “never will,” etc. boxes alongside them.
For example:
[ ] Yes [ ] No We barcode all inventory
[ ] Yes [ ] No Our inventory database is searchable by multiple parameters
[ ] Yes [ ] No We review our inventory stats on a regular basis.
And so on. Then conclude with an invitation to discuss the results - or any questions and issues raised by the white paper - with one of your representatives. Simple, right? But a very effective way of getting readers to bring the subject matter into their own worlds - then bring you into theirs as well.
Jonathan Kranz is the author of Writing Copy for Dummies, http://kranzcom.com/book.html, and the principal of Kranz Communications, http://kranzcom.com, a marketing communications and public relations writing firm specializing in B2B and consumer services marketing. He offers customized in-house and on-site marketing and PR seminars, and is a popular speaker at professional association events, meetings, workshops and conferences, http://kranzcom.com/speaking.html
All in one printers, also known as multifunction printers (MFPs), are printers that also can copy, scan, and in some cases, fax. These machines perform all of these functions, generally using a single set of ink cartridges for both printing and copying. They are not much larger than stand-alone printers, making them a great tool for small home offices.
You can find an excellent all-on-one Epson printer for under $200 - a steal if you ask me. Have you ever priced a copying machine? Good luck finding one for under $750. These little gems produce high quality printouts and color copies that are indistinguishable from the originals. You’d think that these machines would “drink” ink - I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is not the case. The copying process uses about the same quantity of ink as the printing process.
Most MFPs offer high resolution, photo-quality printouts without sacrificing speed. This makes them ideal for the amateur photographer, the average home owner, or even the college student who needs to print thesis papers and PowerPoint presentations. You can’t imagine how helpful it is having a copier in your home. For a few extra dollars, you can pick up a printer with a built in copier and never have to run to Staples again.
The printer market is so competitive right now that you can probably score a significant rebate on an all in one printer. Recently I’ve seen rebates for as much as $50 off new Epson all-one-printers. Check around, do some price-shopping, and you too can experience the luxury of a low-cost, home copier/printer.
Bill Smith has written hundreds of articles about printers and ink cartridges, some of which can be found at http://www.buythebestbuy.com.
Keeping up with the times…
Is It Still Called Stock Photography ?
A century ago, magazines featured mostly text. Graphics were secondary. Today, it’s reversed. If you include advertisements, our periodicals today feature more graphics than text. The new “automated” stock photo services (with Royalty-free photos that offer lower prices for photos), are providing quality generic images to publishers who previously couldn’t afford photography as an option. As a result, new markets are now opening up for photographers who produce generic images.
The stock photo industry has finally come around to recognizing a previously largely neglected major marketing principle (one that we actually have been espousing here at PhotoSource International since our beginning). To wit: there’s a vast market of photobuyers who are not interested in high-fee, RP (”rights-protected”) photos. They simply want an image they can temporarily use, one-time, in one of their low-circulation, limited-readership, publications.
Let me backtrack.
In the 1950’s, there were few stock photo agencies. When I returned from a trip through Africa in 1958, I sought out an agency from the few listed in the Manhattan telephone directory. My photos landed at Photo Researchers, then a two-person, New York City hole-in-the-wall on 42nd Street. Photo Researchers is still there today.
The dozen or so “managed-rights” photo agencies of the ’60’s have increased to several hundred agencies today. In the late 80’s this “managed-rights” stock industry was at its peak. Today it’s still thriving, with a major impetus being the emergence of the massive corporate digital agency (Corbis, Getty, Jupiter Media, Index Stock Imagery, etc.). The smaller stock photo agencies are folding or being absorbed in mergers, or have resorted to specializing.
THE TRANSFORMATION
The Digital Era has transformed other major industries: communications, transportation, banking, plus the military and government. It was bound to transform our stock photo industry, and it has.
In the past, traditional “managed rights” stock agencies demanded very high fees for their images, and why not? They had the market all to themselves. There was no “Kmart” counter in the stock photo industry.
The formation of micro digital stock agencies has changed all this. These new companies are able to reach out to markets that couldn’t afford the traditional high stock fees of the past. Using “volume” as their guide, rather than “managed exclusivity,” these digital agencies have proved that there was a sleeping market for their inexpensive on-line offerings.
This movement has opened a whole new market area for individual photographers whose files are filled with generic photos that, up to this point, have been going nowhere. Today, by using the power of automation, digital photo corporations are selling “Royalty-free generic images for very low fees: $35, $15, and $1.
Do these lower fees deflate the market? We have seen in other industries that they do not. The textbook progression is that after a leveling out period, thanks to lower fees, the market actually expands. If you have an automated volume product at a lower fee, the bottom line usually improves. The consumer benefits, and so does the corporation. It’s called free enterprise.
This marketing approach, of course, is what we have been espousing here at PhotoSource International since 1976 when we introduced our first marketletter, The PHOTOLETTER–still in existence today. Back then we observed there were thousands of small graphic houses, regional publishers, denominational houses, and small book publishers, whose budgets would not allow the use of $200, $300, or $3,000 images.
Many of our subscriber members, by concentrating on only a few specialized markets among these lower-budget buyers, found they could earn healthy incomes by selling to these markets in volume. Back in the 70’s, these photographers in effect automated their selling methods and reduced administrative costs, much the way corporate digital stock houses have learned to do today.
The theme of my first book, Sell & ReSell Your Photos, emphasizes this approach. If the picture is good, more than one photobuyer is going to want to use it, when there’s no cross-readership conflict and the price is within their budget. The early stock photography pioneers found it was a lot less stressful selling a photo 10 times at $75 to these lower budget editorial markets, than selling one picture at $750 in the high-pressure commercial arena.
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WHAT IS EDITORIAL STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY?
You know what photography is, and you know what stock photography is — yes?
Take another look. During the past couple of decades, an aspect of photography has been growing to where it is now planted firmly on the scene as a photographic division in its own right: editorial stock photography.
These are the photos of everyday slices-of-life, the insights into the human condition, the events and vignettes and moments you spot — and then dive for your camera. Editorial stock photos show people involved, doing things; they feature specific geographical locations; they give a “real” look at every aspect of human activity and the world of nature. As legendary Magnum photographer Elliot Erwitt has said, “[Photos] have got to tell you something that you haven’t seen, or touch you in some way emotionally…” As to his personal preference, he says, “With regard to photography that I respect, my view is fairly narrow. I like things that have to do with what is real, elegant, well-presented and without excessive style. In other words, just fine observation.”
Editorial stock photos are in contrast to commercial stock photos, the latter being the slick scenic and product shots, the gorgeous sunset, the healthy senior citizen couple bike-riding through autumn leaves, that we see in advertisements and commercial promotions.
Commercial stock photos have to conform to “what sells.” The commercial photographer must engineer the photos to fit into commercial clients’ needs, trends in the industry, and to appeal to a wide, general audience. The resulting photos are often called generic images because they can fit a variety of uses.
Editorial stock photos are produced by a different approach. Rather than appeal to the commercial needs of a client, the editorial stock photographer follows his or her own interest areas, and targets certain segments of life and culture that they enjoy photographing. Examples: medicine and health, sports, social issues, travel, etc. The photographer then sells these photos to markets that use images in those specific subject areas.
Buyers in the commercial field include designers at graphic houses, corporate art directors, and ad agency creative directors. There’s much turnover in these positions, so developing consistent working relationships with these markets is frustrating and difficult.
In the editorial field, the buyers range from photo editors at books and magazines, to photo researchers — the people who are hired by publishers and art directors to seek out highly specific pictures. There’s less turnover and more longevity with editorial buyers, and editorial stock photographers can enjoy strong long-term working relationships with their buyers, which translates to more consistent sales.
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Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. 1 800 624 0266; Fax: 1 715 248 7394. http://www.photosource.com
