Get White Papers For Your Business From An Experienced Technology Writer

"Great follow-up, initiative in driving the project, met the deadline."

Sue Martenson
Public Relations Manager
Analog Devices

"Very knowledgeable, easy to communicate with, very proactive. I can't think of anything you could improve; everything went very well."

Tod Schiff
Field Applications Engineer
Analog Devices

TechPromo, November 2006

Marketing Newsletter For Technology Promotion

Education Grabs Eyeballs In A New Century

Plus This Quick Tip -
Make Time for Marketing… In Advance

What's one of your company's biggest marketing problems?

Fast changes in the marketing landscape you can't keep up with? Nobody to write the technical marketing pieces you need? An article or white paper from your competitor preempting your product? How about the CEO wondering why you haven't come up with that article or white paper to counter the one that's hijacked all the attention to your competitor's new product?

Classic interruption marketing methods are failing. You may not find statistics on this, but think about it - how likely are you to buy the latest router for your network from a salesman who wants to interrupt a staff meeting with your CEO? The guy won't get past the executive secretary, and you probably won't return his call, even if you need routers.

And what do you do when prospects come to you asking for more information? They don't want to read a sales brochure. They want something straightforward and meaty to educate them, and help them make the right choice. For you, that means a needs analysis, customer interviews, talking to your in-house technical experts, and writing an interesting five or six page piece to educate prospects. Anything that even smells like a sales pitch will end up in the trash.

Catchy titles and headlines are OK, even necessary on those pieces, if they hint at solutions for your prospects - and convince them to read on. It can discuss the market space and competing products, but the piece needs to show prospects how your product may be the best solution for their problem. It does this with facts - numbers about performance, throughput and reliability.

But you can't pull busy engineers away from technical work to write the piece. Your MarCom staff may be great at marketing and PR, but they lack the expertise your technical people have. You need someone with both technical and market writing backgrounds. Someone who's available to pull it off.

Then you face several questions:

Who are you writing to?
What do they need to know?
What motivates them?

Engineers want to know about installation and use. Will it solve their problem quickly, with all the features they need? They could get fired if it breaks too much, so they'll be asking about possible problems. Executives want to know likely installation schedules, expected production improvement, and the return on investment. And purchasing managers want great terms, on-time delivery, and job security from buying hassle-free products.

So you'll be writing at least three pieces, one for each audience. And you'll need a writer who knows the right questions to ask your technical experts to create it.

There's a strong persuasiveness to giving out useful, free information about the prospect's application, and using numbers to show how your product is the best solution. Prospects tend to buy from vendors who give them something unbiased and useful first.

(Excerpted from Successful Promotion With Technology Writing)

Mark Bohrer is a business writer and former engineer. He's based in Silicon Valley. Reach him at

Quick Tip

Seems basic, doesn't it? But between attending product shows, conferences, and writing releases, longer marketing pieces can slip through the cracks. It's a given that Cisco or some other huge customer will call during the busy season. Then you'll drop everything to prepare for what you think they'll want, they'll tell you something completely different when you meet, and you'll do the headless chicken routine again. It's easier to have longer articles or white papers ready in advance.

And it pays to identify your technical experts on the product ahead of time, so you know who to go to when the questions come. Sometimes the design guy is the only possibility, but the field applications people will be much more knowledgeable about real-world applications for customers. And they're used to questions.

So have those support pieces ready for the product release or major revision. If there's no time, second best is an up-to-date electronic Rolodex so you know who to call.

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