Mobile traffic is ever-increasing. If you decide to produce your white paper as a PDF , you risk excluding this vast segment of your audience. It's a design mistake that will cost you views and conversions.
See examples of responsive white papers. Because in-depth white papers contain lots of text and visuals, as well as supplementary information like footnotes, figures, logos and copyright info, the danger is that your design becomes cluttered. Clutter accumulates before you realize it.
You may choose a clean layout and color scheme, to begin with, but as you continue to add content, things can get crowded.
Often, you must make tough choices about what not to include to strike the right balance between completeness and readability.
Good design makes bold choices and prioritizes important information. These choices and priorities affect layout, placement, color, font size, page order and more.
Use these design elements to create emphasis on vital pieces of information. But be careful. Bold fonts and color schemes are in. Of course, all that might change tomorrow. But still, a great way to get inspiration when you're just starting is to take a look at what design trends are currently popular.
U2's frontman, Bono, sings "every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief. Good designers are always drawing inspiration from other designers. The best way to create a successful design is to spend a lot of time looking at what others are doing successfully.
Use Evernote , or a bookmarking service to save white papers and other exceptional designs that you encounter for future reference. Dribbble and Behance are two networks where great designers share their latest work.
While trends may inspire you, it's more important to align your design with your audience and your subject matter. Your design should support and strengthen your topic. The colors and typography should be consistent with what you're writing about, the tone you've chosen, and the audience you've defined.
Writing a white paper for a funeral parlor? Hot-pink headlines might be a bad choice. Taking color psychology into account can help you achieve the look and feel you're after. A big part of the battle is knowing the search terms that will get you the knowledge you need. Luckily, good primers on basic graphic design are abundant.
After doing a bit of reading, start creating. This is the best way to improve and create well designed white papers. At Foleon, we pride ourselves on providing a tool that makes creating responsive digital white papers easy, even for those with no prior graphic design experience.
Choosing a tool like this, which takes the guesswork out of design, will shorten the time it takes for you to produce great white papers. There is a vast ecosystem of tools out there, each of which is geared toward a different purpose and skillset. The right one will enable you as both a designer and a writer.
See how you can scale engaging content creation. For most companies, lead generation and growing lists of contacts for the sales and marketing teams are important activities. Attracting visitors to your site and offering them something of value in exchange for their contact information is a proven method for filling the top of your funnel.
But for this type of inbound marketing to work, two things are needed: exceptional content that visitors are eager to acquire, and a method for gating or walling off that content behind a form. Many brands skip the first part and move straight to the second. They quickly produce something mediocre and put it behind a form.
The quality of your gated content serves as an indicator of the quality of your brand will affect your ability to turn prospects into customers down the road. So how do white papers fit into your b2b content marketing funnel?
They may act either as lead generation tools themselves or can be used to direct readers to other parts of a website that captures lead information. Walling expert content off behind a form designed to capture personal details is one of the most common techniques for generating leads. Gated content is any content that a reader cannot access until after they input some personal information, such as their name and email address.
White papers and eBooks are two of the most common types of content used for this purpose. Typically, a company will create a landing page that includes a description — and perhaps a preview — of what information readers can expect to find inside.
The landing page will include a form for visitors to enter their personal information and thus gain access. After entering the required information, visitors are either presented with a download button or receive the gated content in their inbox.
While gating your best content is great for lead generation, there are some drawbacks as well. Walling off your white paper will mean it gets read by fewer people as not everyone is willing to give away their contact details. An open-access white paper will be read by a wider audience.
Gating it behind a form, however, will prevent search engines from indexing it. If the latter is more important, then gating is a great option. This can give you the best of both worlds by allowing your white paper to reach a wider audience while still retaining the ability to generate leads.
Semi-gating gives readers a taste of your white paper without requiring them to give up any info. You can, for example, make the first few pages of your white paper open access, and then make visitors fill in a form to read more.
This works well because digital content is so abundant and brands must offer more for free or risk visitors turning elsewhere. Allow your white paper to reach a wider audience while still retaining the ability to generate leads. Offering more content for free also builds trust and brand loyalty among your readers.
Semi-gating can help reach a wider audience, build trust and loyalty, increase lead quality, and still help you capture the contact information you need. Friction is anything that causes the sales process to slow down.
It can be caused by a multitude of things including poor design, confusing navigation, subpar copy, too many form fields, and more. Your ability to generate leads with a gated white paper will largely depend on how much friction is involved. Asking for more information than you really need is one common and unnecessary source of friction that can lead to losing potential readers.
The entire field of conversion rate optimization is geared toward removing friction — or making user interactions easier. CRO specialists make forms simpler, navigation more intuitive, and design CTAs that are more likely to be clicked. Optimizing your landing page for conversions is a vital part of any lead generation campaign.
But the reality is, asking for personal information will always be an obstacle for a large number of people. So the key here is to make the process easy and noninvasive as possible.
An excellent way to do this is by reducing the number of form fields to the bare minimum and using mid-gating to ensure your ask is timely and yields immediate value for the reader: "Fill out this form to get access to the rest of this white paper, we've saved the best for last!
Create white papers and eBooks that integrate with your favorite CRM or marketing automation platform. Get started. So, after following the tips in this guide, you create an engaging, informative white paper that inspires readers to take action and deepen their relationship with your company.
Only, the traffic never comes… Where did you go wrong? You didn't think about your white paper distribution strategy. To get eyes on your white paper, you need to be smart not only about writing and design but distribution as well.
Distribution is all about identifying traction channels where your ideal customers consume content and making your white paper highly visible on those channels. Depending on the audience you defined in the beginning, some will be more relevant for you than others. People from all walks of life, and from all over the world, are on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Ensuring that you share your content regularly on these platforms will give you a solid base of promotion on which to build. But it's not enough to simply write a post and tweet it into the void. Try to find communities like Facebook and LinkedIn groups where your target audience is likely to congregate.
Search for relevant hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. Find subreddits relevant to your industry. These days, influencers — people with large, engaged followings on social media and newsletters — are better equipped to amplify your content than traditional journalists.
They play a growing role in shaping public opinion and even in setting business trends. Shares from an influencer can even help you land spots in major publications the way press releases used to.
Social media is the best place to find influencers in your vertical. When you investigate the best communities in which to promote your white paper, look for the content that people are already referencing and sharing.
These are the people whose voices can amplify your brand. Start by interacting with them. Begin a conversation, comment on their pieces with regularity, and give them feedback on their work. There are great tools, like Voila Norbert and ContactOut , to help you quickly track down email addresses.
After building enough rapport, try offering to collaborate on future white papers or other types of content. This process can take some time because your goal here is to build a relationship.
Eventually, you can ask an influencer to share your white paper. You might even consider quoting them in the white paper itself — anything that gives them an incentive to share your work is helpful. Pro tip: Try to find an expert in your white paper related subject and interview them.
It will add value to your white paper and you'll increase the chance that the expert shares your content with his or her extensive network. Email distribution has stood the test of time in this regard. It provides greater ROI than social , and it shows no signs of weakening.
If the purpose of your white paper is lead generation, email marketing will not be applicable. Allows for users to subscribe to newsletter or mailing lists to get updates from organizations or companies! An email signup form is a type of contact form that allows visitors to subscribe to a website's email list.
Collect your users' email addresses and easily generate leads. You can also get comments, questions, or suggestions from your customers. Multipurpose email signup form can be used to gather users' email addresses and users' consent to accept emails from the organization. Successful email marketing campaigns begin with a solid email list — and an email signup form can help you build one.
Integrate your email signup form with other services like Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox etc, and automatically send collected emails to those services as well. Just create a Jotform account and start creating a database of your clients' email and contact information. Lead generation forms are online forms businesses use to collect quality leads.
It allows your business to collect important contact details for leads, such as their email, phone number, and address.
Your sales team can then use this information to convert leads into paying customers. Just choose a free lead generation form template below, customize it, and embed it on your website. All info is stored securely in your Jotform account, and you can set up Jotform to automatically send the information to CRMs like HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and Salesforce Jotform is also available on Salesforce AppExchange.
Add your company logo, rearrange form fields, or change colors and background images for a personal touch. Jotform makes it easy to turn leads into customers fast by helping you automate your workflow with our free online lead generation forms.
Need a better way to organize your raffle? Sell raffle tickets online with a free Raffle Ticket Form. Easy to customize, embed, and share. A Sweepstakes Entry Form is an online form that is used to collect entries for a sweepstakes contest.
Raffle Participation Form provides you with the participants' contact information and the amount that they contribute. Gain more followers and likes by sharing good-quality photos of your work.
You can give this Social Media Photo Release Form to your clients allowing you to share the photos you've taken with them. A social media content request form is used by businesses to collect information about content they need from their social media managers or marketing team.
Customize and share online. A media release form is used when a company, organization, or individual is releasing information to the media. Get this template for free! It has side-by-side fields that is also mobile responsive. Light gradient green background makes the form simple and elegant looking.
Simple and practical, convenient to have it on the go! You can tailor the form towards your own organizational needs and styles.
A simple email form is a type of online form that allows users to send information via email. A referral form is an online form used to request referrals and provides the personal and contact information of both the referral and the referee. If you want to get referrals, you can use this free referral program template.
You can get more referrals and keep more existing customers by using this customer referral template.
This referral program form is the best form for the referral system. This program referral form template allows gathering clients' name, email and number and referral details such as referral name, email, number, and comments about the referral.
Use this Hospice Referral Form when referring a qualified patient to hospice care. This form contains all necessary fields that will make a smooth transition from one institution to another.
With this employee referral template, you can get referrals easily online and organize a referral program for your company. By this way, you can get to know your applicants more and the hiring process is sped up! Mobile-optimized Responsive Registration Form designed with a clear header that allows providing a short description of the workshop content, collects primary contact details, allows to make suggestions and add further comments.
Capture more participants to attend your virtual workshop by using this Virtual Workshop Registration Form. You can easily use this template and customize it here in Jotform.
PayJunction Workshop Registration Form. Cooking WorkShop Registration Form PayPal Standard. A new client application and questionnaire form that asks from your potential customers their personal and contact information, business details, industry, company size, relevant files, goals, service they are applying for, etc.
A property inquiry form is used by real estate businesses to request more details regarding a potential property inquiry. Planning to open a hair salon or do you own a salon business?
Promote your services and get more customers appointments easily through this hairdresser appointment form. This hair salon form collects contact information and your clients can select service required, stylist, date, time.
A guest list form is a document used by event planners or organizers to track attendance at an event or gathering. The Book a Limo Form collects customer contact information, number of passengers, requested vehicle type, pickup date and time, pickup and drop off address, and further comments which allows an easy booking process.
Verify the authenticity of your vendors or suppliers by using this Vendor Information Form. This form template is very straightforward, complete, and can be accessed easily. The Airport Pickup Reservation Form allows customers to arrange a pickup service online through providing their contact information, airport and airline information, travel date and time, and special requests or comments if any.
Whether you need a customer profile template for word or a form you can use online, a short and simple form would always be preferable. This customer profile form will ask basic but important questions to your customers, which you can build into a catalog for future use.
The profile form template will ask basic info about the customer, their contact details, and that's basically it. Filling out the form would only take a minute or two but will come in handy should you need to get in touch with them.
The Lawn Care New Client Questionnaire allows generating leads with a detailed understanding of their gardening preferences, lawn care and landscaping taste. On a screen, people typically read between and words per minute.
Check the number of time readers spend on each page using this as a benchmark. Integrating analytics allows you to track where visitors come from and concentrate on the channels that provide results.
Adobe Creative Cloud Express comes in handy. To get started, you can look through its library of professionally created templates, then add your logo, branded colors, relevant photographs, and infographics to personalize your white paper.
Another useful tool for creating free white papers is Lucidpress. Each white paper template has a preview function, real-time collaboration directly in the canvas, and editable text and image. Best of all, the drag-and-drop tool is so simple to use that it can be done by anyone, including those who doubt their artistic abilities.
With Venngage , you can bring your research and insights to life with sophisticated, stylish white paper templates. It is user-friendly and comes with an intuitive interface that easily lets you add and rearrange the white paper content.
Create powerful white papers using pre-made templates for a range of industries. Case studies and white papers are the most effective methods for generating leads and establishing your company as a thought leader.
So, how can you use them to generate leads? Simply, you can gate your file with a form and require visitors to fill in the fields to access the white paper download. If you are a WordPress user, we have the perfect tool for you.
Download Monitor can be integrated with virtually all form builders, but it has custom-built extensions for two of them: Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms. The following tutorial will show you how to gate your white paper with Ninja Forms Lock extension to generate leads.
There are three fields on this form: Name, Email, and Message. You can use this form if it meets your needs, or you can edit it by deleting fields, adding new ones, or creating a new form.
I will use a short form, but you can add as many fields as you want. Download Monitor can assist you with any type of file you want to upload to your website. Before anything else, install and activate Download Monitor.
Here you can set up your white paper download. You can even add files from Google Drive and Amazon S3 cloud platform. If you want to ask visitors to fill out a Ninja form to download a file, you need to install and activate the Download Monitor Ninja Form Lock extension.
Look for Ninja Locked Download , check the box, and choose the form that gates the white paper download. The Ninja Forms extension for Download Monitor allows you to require users to fill in a Ninja Forms form before they gain access to a download. The file will only be accessible after the user has successfully completed the form submission.
You can easily use the shortcode directly to insert download links with text anchors, or if you want to, you can use the URL to create an anchor on a button.
In this case, you have two options:. You can style your download buttons to suit your needs — set the background colors, customize the border, select a font, a font color, and even font size.
Moreover, pair Download Monitor Ninja Forms Lock with our Email Notification extension and get immediately notified when a visitor completes the form. Using Download Monitor Ninja Form Lock extension will not only require visitors to fill in a form before they gain access to a download but will also make it possible to track your downloads and analyze your data.
It also provides a great reporting section where you can:. Gated content allows you to collect valuable information for qualifying leads and improve customer interactions. Adding a white paper download with restricted access to your landing page will help you gain both valuable information and potential customers.
Self-taught entrepreneur with a deep passion for learning, understanding human nature, and what drives businesses forward.
Get inspiration from these white paper examples for business, marketing, research, government, HR, plus top tips for designing white papers Create an interesting whitepaper/report (use PDF format); Build a beautiful whitepaper download form; Send the form to your audience; Collect email addresses Learn how to create a white paper with our easy step-by-step guide. We've also included design tips, examples and templates to help you get
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