White papers

A very neat article from web guru Peter Marshal!
There's more than one way to skin a cat. And
in the case of using information to attract new
customers, any method of packaging that information
is game. And it doesn't have to be a 'White
Paper.'

Today I'm going to give you some alternate ideas.

First, in some industries, 'White Paper' is
a bit cliche. There are some other terms I've
found useful, and in fact my course has a list of
43 alternative words you can use. Here's a half-
dozen:

-Advisory
-Application Guide
-Pocket Guide
-Buzzword Guide
-Comparison Chart
-Slide Chart

Let me tell you a story about slide charts.

There are several companies that specialize
in making slide charts for illustrating data in
simple, interesting formats. If you've got
a table of various kinds of data that needs
to be organized in a simple way, a slide chart
might be just the thing.

About 5 years ago a company I worked for
made one of these charts and handed it out
at a trade show. I won't bore you with the
technical details, but basically it was a
pocket guide that pulled together the essential
details of ten different competing standards
on a single 'gizmo' that could fit in your
pocket.

Bottom line: It cleared up confusion and
gave people simplified information that would
otherwise be very confusing.

This thing was a *runaway success.* People
were handing it out all over the show, even
other booths. And the phone rang for
months afterward. It got written up in a
dozen magazines, and that little chart generated
recognition and business for us for 2 years!

I did the same thing again with a client
late last year and they're using it now to
generate hundreds of sales leads on their
website each month, for about $3.00 each.
The neat part is, people keep this thing in
their desks and refer to it later.

Other ideas: You can create software
programs, cost calculators, toolkits
and ROI calculators, and if they really
solve an important problem, people will
keep them, value them, and value YOU.

Make no mistake -- problem solving
information is 'currency' in the 21st century.
It will attract new customers to you like nothing else.