White Paper Pundit

Well another year has come and gone and we await the start of both a new year and a new decade. It’s amazing how fast the last one has passed. They say the older you get the faster that time passes you by. So far that old saying seems to be coming true.

The commercial white paper medium has seen its share of changes in this past year, mostly due to the advent and growth of Social Media. This coming year will continue to bring a new set of changes to the white paper medium, and in an effort to get a jump on some of them, I offer you this partial list of predictions for 2010:

1. Design will become a competitive differentiator

There have been many ways to differentiate your white paper in the past. Writing style, market expertise, technical knowledge, and competitive awareness have all been used as ways to differentiate one offering from another. Design has yet to establish itself as unique differentiator, and many market innovators will embrace this as a unique way of distancing themselves from the spate of plain, text-only white papers that continue to flood the commercial marketplace.

2. All-text white papers will continue to bring diminishing returns

2010 will mark a new beginning of the demise of the all-text white paper format. As baby boomers retire from the workforce and are replaced by GenX and GenY decision makers that have grown up on the Internet, these out-dated formats will no longer be acceptable to this younger business audience. Their comfort with rich media will force marketers to integrate more colorful designs, a greater integration with Social Media, and explore alternative media such as YouTube to promote them.

3. The need to generate ROI will cause marketers to reconsider their previous price focus

The recession of the past year has spawned a plethora of cheaply produced, short length (2-4 page) white papers that many marketers are realizing has brought few high quality leads, and an equally dismal ROI. In this coming year, marketers will realize that high value educational content, not heavy handed sales pitches, are what customers are truly seeking from white papers. As a result many will find new ways to build back the effective educational content that has been lacking in the past few years.

4. The popularity with Executive Summaries will continue to grow

Executive Summaries continue to be requested by marketers in and effort to appeal to their time-challenged business readers. This trend will continue in this coming year, and many white paper marketers that have “poo-pooed” the tactic in the past, will finally embrace it as an essential way to engage new readers while addressing their need to quickly obtain critical bottom-line, solution-oriented information.

5. Hard copy white paper printing will finally come to an end

Ten years ago, the primary way that enterprises distributed white papers was to print them by the hundreds and distribute them via mail or in person via trade shows, presentations, and one-on-one meetings. This expensive approach has been embraced by fewer and fewer companies over the past decade with the advent and acceptance of Adobe Acrobat PDF technology. In 2010, enterprises that have embraced the ‘hard-copy’ approach in the past will finally put an end to this practice due to the exorbitant costs that are associated with it.

Whether you agree or disagree with my predictions for 2010, one thing is certain. We will continue to see dramatic changes with white papers, and you can count on this blog to provide you with a fresh perspective on each one as it takes place. As always, I look forward to your comments and suggestions during this coming year.

Best wishes for a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 26th, 2009 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Industry Insights, Misc. Rantings, Social Media, WP Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.