TURN
WHITE
PAPERS
INTO
GREEN
DOLLARS
HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS VALUABLE MARKETING TOOL
BY MICHAEL J. DOWLING
f you’re like most professional
speakers, you face a daunting
challenge: How to market your
services and land more speaking
engagements, without coming across as
pushy and unprofessional.
These days, more than ever, people
are tired of sales pitches. Turn on
the TV and you’re confronted with
a half-dozen commercials every 30
minutes. Go online and you have to
wade through a deluge of ads. The
time-tested sales approach of presenting a proposition and asking for
the order will always be with us. But
because we’re all being asked to buy
so many things, it’s becoming less and
less effective.
So, what’s a speaker to do? How can
you promote your speaking services in
a professional manner that gets noticed
and gets results? How can you differentiate yourself so that you stand above
the crowd?
WHITE PAPERS TO
THE RESCUE!
One solution is to market your services using white papers. A white paper
puts you in the position of giving rather
than asking. It allows you to be a help
instead of a nuisance. It portrays you as
an advocate rather than an adversary.
The use of white papers is growing
at an exponential rate. In 2001, a
Google search on the phrase white
paper returned a mere 1 million
responses. Today a similar search gener-
ates more than 400 million hits.
WHAT ARE WHITE PAPERS?
Typically five to 10 pages in
length, white papers offer valuable
