Perception IS Reality

[Jason Anderson]

"How" you market yourself, your business, or your websites has a lot to do with your overall success.

For example, when marketing to professionals, instead of offering a "free report", you may want to offer a "white paper". It's the same darn thing but it comes across as more professional in some circles.

Perry Marshall does a great job with "white papers" and I talk about it on my newest blog post at The How To Project.

You can read the post here:

How To Write A White Paper

Feel free to talk about how using different teminology in your marketing can improve your visitors "perception" of you either here or as a comment on my blog post.

Thanks. Look forward to your comments.

[artwebster]

I find that the correct use of English can create a sorry barrier between people.

Looking around these forum boards, for example, the preponderance of 'wanna', 'could of', 'should of', 'would of', 'OMG' and other such usages would indicate that the dumbing down process is starting to bite and it may well be that 'white paper' is understood now but does it have longevity?

It would appear that the current drift is towards colloquialisms and, as they say, if you can't beat them, you might as well join 'em.

[xiaophil]

And Reality IS Perception.

I have noticed that some high-tech type industries such as engineering and IT tend to use "white paper".

Is it also possible that not having the word "free" may attract a more valuable prospect?

I would rather have a list of 500 buyers of a $5 "white paper" than a list of 10,000 downloaders of a "free report".

It would appear that the current drift is towards colloquialisms

Colloquialisms or just bad grammar?

I'm surprised at how many don't even bother using a simple spelling checker.

[Sandor Verebi]

Originally Posted by xiaophil

...Is it also possible that not having the word "free" may attract a more valuable prospect?

You hit the nail on it's head. Yes you can attract more valuable customers by avoiding the word 'free'. You can replace it by 'gratis'; 'for nothing'; 'at no cost'; 'for no charge' -- just name a few.

I would rather have a list of 500 buyers of a $5 "white paper" than a list of 10,000 downloaders of a "free report".

Agreed with your aboved statement. But if you are doing with your words well then a certain percent of them may be your paying customer later.

Cheers,

Sandor
___________
... coming

[Andyhenry]

Hi Jason,

You're right of course - whatever the objective reality of anything is - WE are subjective beings and have our own internal reality. Whether both things are aligned or not is not as relevant as the fact that right or wrong - we live in our version of reality and it's real to us, so it's the only one that matters.

I do a lot of work in high tech industries, both running my own companies and working for others to provide training, speak at seminars, run workshops etc. and the reality is much different to IM.

Where I might give away a free 'report', on my company websites I give away (or even sell) 'white papers' and 'case studies'.

In some of these niches I can sell a white paper for $1000 and people will happily pay it, whereas the same thing in the IM niche people would turn away at it for $47.

The big difference of course being that the people willing to pay decent money happily do it because they know how the information will help their business.

Many 'business' people have egos to look after and controlling information or making things sound more complicated to give the impression that they somehow are the gatekeepers to hidden value is all part of the world they live in, so you have to play at that level for them to do what you want. Since white papers are industry specific documents that outline some process or procedures that have meaning and value, they're seen as an important part of the requisite knowledge for that niche.

With IM just calling something a 'report' rather than an article can have a perceptual difference. The same goes for manifesto - because it's not ebook or article people consider it differently.

In reality - it's all smoke and mirrors and different people are attracted to different variations on the theme, but it's all a game and you can either play it or not, depending on your objectives.

I have little tolerance for playing games so I usually can't be bothered, but when it's as simple as just calling something a white paper because that's the expected terminology for that industry - you tend to do it instinctively.

Andy