White pages are formal, nonfiction documents designed to show authority on a topic. White page marketing is the use of white pages to build credibility for your company with the goal of gaining the trust of potential customers.
White Page Marketing Basics
A white page is an authoritative report or guide designed to educate or persuade the reader on a particular topic. White pages can range from a single page to hundreds of pages and are traditionally used in two spheres: government and business-to-business marketing. White pages are solutions-oriented with a basic organizational format that first outlines a problem and then proposes a solution.
When using a white page for marketing purposes, the page should focus on a product or service your company offers. For example, a social media marketing company might release a white page on the return on investment social media marketing produces for small businesses. The white page would first outline the problem -- the difficulty of accurately measuring the returns of social media marketing -- and then outline how the company is a solution to that problem with a particular product or service.
Free White Page
Offering your white pages for free is one way to expose potential customers to what your company has to offer. Offer your white page as a free download on your company's website or present the information from the white page in the form of an infographic. Infographics, or infographs, are online representations of information, statistics or data in the form of graphs, images or visual display. Because infographs are usually presented as single image files, they are easy to share online.
Information Exchange White Page
Collecting information from a potential customer in exchange for a white page is another way to market using white pages. When people visit your website, you can request that they complete a short survey or subscribe to your email list in order to receive your free white page. By requiring an information exchange, you can collect the necessary information from people to see if your product or service would be appropriate for them and also have a means of following up with them. Use email marketing services like Mailchimp or Aweber to insert contact forms into your website and auto-deliver the white page to people who complete the form.
Paid White Page
Charge for white pages as an additional revenue stream for your business as well as a marketing device. Create affiliate programs around your paid white pages. Affiliate programs are programs that enable customers to earn rewards for promoting your products or services to their audiences. For example, if you sell a white page that outlines how to create a social media marketing strategy for small businesses and allow customers who purchased the guide to join an affiliate program to earn 25 percent of sales directly achieved from them, customers will have an incentive to market your white page for you. Use programs like Infusionsoft, Ejunkie or Office Autopilot to create affiliate programs for your white pages.
Tivi Jones has been writing and editing since 2006. She has worked with print and digital magazine publishers such as Bauer Publishings and book publishers like Sourcebooks, Inc. Jones holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and entrepreneurship from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has been in the marketing and business development consulting field for more than nine years.
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