Marketers often wonder how many white papers their company should publish. How many are really “enough”?
The correct answer, of course, is “it depends”. One of my clients asks me to write a white paper every time their sales force faces a serious objection. The more objections, the more papers.
But isn’t there a more scientific method? Yes there are. And here is a checklist of questions to help you find the answer to the question “How many white papers are enough?”
1. Experience: How many articles has the company published? If the answer is none, they should probably do one or two to learn about the process.
2. Market segments: How many markets does the company cover? You will likely need at least one new document for each major market from time to time. Segments can be defined by vertical markets, such as education, finance, retail, airlines, etc. Segments can also be defined by size, such as small business or Fortune 500, and by transaction volume, SKU, or employees. You can also define segments by the number of different product lines offered or by the role of the prospects, for example financial, technical or commercial.
3. Problems solved: How many business or technical problems does the company solve? Do you need a role for each? Sometimes each “problem” has a separate product line with its own marketing team; in this case, treat each as a separate company.
4. Competition: Does the company have aggressive competitors that publish many special reports? The scope and pace of competition is a factor.
5. Budget: How many white papers can the company afford to effectively publish and promote? If the company only has the budget for one per quarter, four a year may be “enough.”
A sample company
As you can see, there is no precise formula for calculating how many white papers a company really needs. Let’s look at a sample company, called Contextualistics. Let’s say Contextualistics is a software startup with a smarter way to scan natural languages like English.
The company is looking for partners to integrate its language processor into search engines, help systems and virtual people. The marketing manager wants to use special reports to gain recognition and generate leads. So how many documents does Contextualistics need? To find the answer, let’s review our questions.
1. Experience – No one in the company has ever created a white paper before, so they should probably start slowly with one or two, then review what they learned before moving on to more special reports.
2. Market segments: Contextualistics needs clients that do search engines and online help. (Virtual people will come later.) Are these two segments so different that they each need their own role? Let’s say yes, then the company needs two (or one “cloned” into two versions).
3. Solved problems: the language processor really solves a big problem, making machines understand natural language. So we can stay in two roles.
4. Competition: The company has a couple of competitors with a white paper each. So two will be fine to start with.
5. Budget: The marketing director can get the budget for two white papers in the next three months.
So Contextualistics has your answer: for now, two articles will be “enough.” After that, the company can review the results and review this exercise for the next period.
A larger company with more aggressive competitors may clearly need more than two white papers. For example, a medium-sized company with three major markets might want a report for each market every quarter. In this case, 12 articles a year is “enough.”
A Fortune 500 company is likely to have many product managers, each of whom wants white papers for their products. For a company this large, the answer is “as many as all the product managers want and can budget for.”
So how many technical documents does your company need?