6 Ways to Promote Your White Paper

We all know that white papers are a great way to explain an in-depth topic both expansively and thoroughly. Unfortunately, that deep dive mentality can really scare people off, and make it difficult to successfully promote this kind of content. Whatever is a company to do? Luckily, there are quite a few proven ways to ensure your white papers aren’t passed over in the sea of content being produced every day, including some you may not have thought to use before.

Promoted social posts

Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook all have the option to promote specific posts. Utilizing social media is a great way to get more impressions on your content, which if done correctly, will lead to more clicks and downloads. For more casual or top-of-funnel pieces, go for Facebook or Twitter. For more in-depth content, you might want to post on LinkedIn. Depending on the whitepaper you want to promote, you might want to choose a completely different platform.

Adwords

Most companies are already utilizing Google Adwords to place ads for their product or services. But did you know that you can create ads to promote your existing content too? This can be a great way to narrow down your promotion to the audience you really need or want. By choosing more specialized keywords, you can get your content in front of the people who are most likely to click through and download, and bonus- if it’s really highly specialized, the cost per click will likely be low!

Convert to SlideShare

Did you know that a SlideShare typically gets almost 75% of its views from embeds on other sites (including email)? An easy way to transition your white paper beyond its traditional borders is to convert it to a SlideShare. Distilling that same information down into slides can attract a new audience. As an added bonus, using visuals as the primary means of storytelling means your audience will remember the information you are trying to convey.

Host a webinar on the topic…and include the whitepaper as a bonus gift.

Research shows that between 20% and 40% of attendees turn into qualified leads. Breaking your white paper down into easily-digestible chunks and then giving a presentation on it is a guaranteed way to make sure your audience understands your message. Even better, though, is reiterating the topic by including not only a recording of the webinar but also the original white paper as a free download after the fact. Everyone loves a free gift!

Publish guest blog posts

Since you are an expert on your white paper topic, it should be relatively easy to write several blog posts about pieces of it, with a CTA to download the full paper at the end. Shop these around to various outlets where the message might be appreciated (try Medium, Hubspot, or Business to Community if you’re not sure where to start).

Direct email with a twist

A personalized email message will always catch the eye of the consumer. What is even better, though, is an email with something they’ve never seen or won’t expect inside. Utilizing reveal marketing to deliver your call to action will make your customers sit up and take notice. Reveal marketing uses 6 psychological principles that influence behavior to drive traffic to and clicks on your existing content. We use this quite a bit in our own marketing, as you can see in our example below:

If your white papers have distribution problems, just know that you’re not alone. Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to gain traffic and downloads with almost no additional time or effort. Utilize one of the above tools and watch your content analytics soar! Have you ever used one of these techniques to promote your existing content? What happened? Let me know in the comments!