Should You Put a $ Sign on Your White Papers?
We all know that white papers are free documents, often used for lead generation purposes.
However, should we call them a report and place a dollar value on them to help improve their perceived value?
That is precisely what my friend and white paper peer Bob Bly recently suggested. Here’s what he actually said:
In the June 2008 edition of Target Marketing, Bob Bly wrote:
Does what you call your bait piece really matter? I think it does, because calling it a report or guide creates a perception of greater value—after all, thousands of publishers actually sell special reports and booklets for prices ranging from $3 to $40 or more.I often put a dollar price for the guide or report in the upper right corner of the front cover, which strengthens the perception that the freebie has value; I don’t think this would be credible on a document labeled a white paper.
I’m wondering what you think about this?
Do you think for a business audience this would work or make sense?
Comments
I don't know. On one hand, I think that readers are too smart for this. On the other, I believe there is a psychological que in attaching the price tag. If the paper is long enough and has the right educational content, you could package it as an eBook. That might be more likely to carry a pricetag and it would be more credible. We did this on www.theb2blead.com with our Funnelnomics book. Check it out and let me know what you think: http://www.reachforce.com/funnelnomics/
Posted by: Pam O'Neal | September 24, 2008 11:14 AM
I think putting a price tag on a white paper is a bad marketing decision.
Customers expect marketing deliverables, such as brochures to be free.
To charge a fee for a white paper will severely diminish its potential audience and work against an organization's efforts to get a solution message out to the largest audience possible.
Jonathan Kantor
White Paper Pundit Blog
Posted by: Jonathan Kantor | September 25, 2008 07:02 PM
This is an interesting question that I'm going to be answer myself through some testing, except instead of white-papers, I'm going to be offering online training courses using an online system I've developing called BrainBank (http://48hrlaunch.wordpress.com/what-is-brain-bank/).
My bet is that setting a price on the courses will lead to higher quality leads... but there is only one way to find out: testing.
I'm planning on sending traffic from Google Adwords ads to two courses (the same course... one free and another that has a price).
I'm going to track how many users sign-up and how many turn into customers.
Let me know if you come up with any insights on how to improve this experiment.
~ mel
Posted by: Melvin Ram | September 27, 2008 10:15 PM