There’s one proven method for generating more B2B leads that taps into the exponential potential of the Internet: Creating a product and then giving it away free online.
The classic product that your company can create, of course, is the industry whitepaper. The classic whitepaper lays out a problem or challenge facing an industry, and then works through possible solutions. At the end of the whitepaper, there’s a call to action to follow up with a specific company offering a specific product.
In the analog era, the whitepaper became the go-to option because that was the way people consumed content – in the form of print products. In the early years of the Internet, it was still hard to find industry data and information online – and certainly not in one convenient location – so the whitepaper was like a gift from heaven. It neatly presented all the information, included proprietary content, and best of all – it could be plunked down on your boss’s desk as proof that you did your homework.
In the modern digital era, however, you can go well beyond the whitepaper to include almost any type of multimedia content. The successor to the PDF whitepaper is the e-book. There’s an added advantage to the e-book, though, because there’s potentially a market for this content on Amazon.com as well. So you can easily point to the fact that the e-book costs $9.99 on Amazon.com, but for certain VIP prospects, the cost is zero. As in absolutely free.
Just like the whitepaper, the e-book lays out a basic business challenge or problem, and then works through potential solution. And, since it can be read on digital device, it fits into the modern digital lifestyle of potential sales prospects. There’s no way that someone is bringing a thick whitepaper with them everywhere they go, but that’s not the case with an e-book that you can read at any time of the day or night.
But now the e-book is becoming such a relatively common phenomenon, that there’s a push to find the next great product for creating B2B leads. So what’s next?
For a while, infographics had their moment in the sun. And, in fact, they’re still enormously popular because they are just so sharable. Who can resist sharing a visually stunning infographic? But they simply can’t be created in high enough volume before they start looking like a gimmick.
Or what about the podcast? The podcast series is particularly effective at working through challenge after challenge. And, similar to the original intent of the whitepaper, they are great for proving domain expertise. The only drawback, of course, is that it’s a lot harder to find a great podcaster to record a session than it is
to find a great writer for a whitepaper.
The key, though, is to find some form of content that can be packaged up such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. That’s why case studies work well. It’s probably asking too much for someone to read a 20-page case study of a company they’ve never heard of, but not so much to read a set of 4-5 different case studies of different companies sharing common problems.
So the next time you’re thinking of ways to generate more B2B leads, try to think beyond the whitepaper! There’s plenty more content out there that can be packaged up and offered to potential buyers.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.