Similarly, as a business-to-business marketer, you must develop sales-winning relationships with your prospective customers before you can expect them to say “yes” to your sales proposals.

Before they’ll accept what you’re offering, prospects must clearly understand what they’ll gain from choosing your company and its products or services. They need to believe that what you’re marketing will help them achieve their goals, and they must trust your company to deliver on its promises.

Getting to that point requires making the right offers or calls-to-action for each stage of your prospect’s buying process, from awareness and inquiry to consideration to purchase.

For example, if you’ve just identified a prospective customer-let’s call it the “first date” stage of the sales cycle-you’d offer educational materials such as case studies, white papers, how-to articles and decision-maker kits. At this point, most prospects aren’t ready to meet with salespeople, but they’re comfortable requesting information that they may use for later decision making.

In the “middle date” stage, consider offering self-assessment tools, in-depth white papers and webinars. Such materials and presentations require more time and effort from potential customers, but they’re also more closely linked to each prospect’s specific situation, which helps with building a sales-winning relationship.

When you know each other well, it’s time to make offers or calls-to-action which are designed to move prospects toward choosing your company. For instance: Invite them to all-day seminars delving into implementation details. Offer demos or low-cost or needs assessments. Or ask whether your salespeople can meet with their decision makers to present customized proposals or quotations.

One more possibility for this ready-to-buy stage: Consider making “buy now” deals offering discounts or additional products or services bundled in for a lower cost.

What if you don’t know where prospects are in their buying cycles? In that case, make offers appropriate for every stage and let people select the ones they want.

As you think about building sales-winning relationships with prospects, keep in mind these points about offers and calls-to-action:

They must be genuinely enticing. The best offers are often educational in nature, geared to helping people make good buying decisions. Titles containing phrases such as “How to …” or “10 Ways to …” tend to be most effective.

They should be “self-qualifying.” Who, other than a qualified prospect, would really be interested in a white paper about your company’s solutions? On the other hand, many people-including some who will never turn into qualified, sales-ready leads-will gladly accept an offer with a giveaway such as an MP3 player or a digital picture frame.

They must move the buying process forward. This requires directly (and satisfactorily) addressing your prospects’ key questions and concerns.

So how do you put together your offers and calls-to-action?

Use what you’ve got. Review your existing information; repackage or update it as needed.

Lean on your suppliers. Visit their websites and search for white papers, analyst reports, brochures, checklists, evaluation guides and other materials that you can use as offers in your marketing. Also look for relevant information in your suppliers’ brochures, web pages and newsletters that you can use as content when developing new offers from scratch.

Leverage your expertise. Write a white paper, special report or case study that helps your prospective customers understand the benefits of your products or services. If you are pressed for time or lack confidence in your own writing skills, consider hiring a writer to interview you and capture your thoughts in writing for you.

Making the right offers at the right time can go a long way toward helpfully guiding prospects through the stages of their buying cycles. Along the way, you’ll build strong, valuable relationships with your customers; relationships that will give you a real advantage over your competitors when it’s time to close the sale.

About the Author: M. H. “Mac” McIntosh is a business-to-business marketing consultant and an expert on the subject of sales leads. His services focus on helping his clients use marketing to cost-effectively and efficiently generate more qualified, sales-ready leads, and drive more new business sales. For more information about Mac and his sales lead consulting services, please visit www.sales-lead-experts.com.

If the reader scans a few pages of a white paper and decides he’s not interested in the topic, the marketer is left with personal data that’s essentially useless. But there’s a new technology that can prevent this from happening.

It’s called “in-document forms” and, combined with a new way of analyzing data provided by readers, it departs from the current trend of using a long list of registration questions to generate sales leads.

Lack of Qualified Leads
“The registration forms that marketers use on landing pages rarely generate qualified sales leads,” says Pat Weilmeier, Director of Marketing and Communications for Docmetrics (www.docmetrics.com), a web-based application from Vitrium Systems that lets marketers embed in-document forms in PDFs, collects data on how people engage in white-paper content and generates real-time reports.

“Leads obtained with these methods aren’t providing the information that marketers really need. With web registration forms, you have no visibility of the reader after the white paper is downloaded. In fact, once the reader gets the PDF of the document, the marketer doesn’t even know if they’ve opened it.”

Sales reps can become frustrated with these “leads” because when they follow up, many people they contact didn’t open the white paper, haven’t read it, or aren’t interested in the product.

A Different Approach
A white paper configured with in-document forms takes a different approach:

* Instead of making readers fill out a long registration form, they can download the document without registering.

* After reading a few pages of a white paper, the reader comes to a page with a few registration questions. Answering the questions gives him or her access to more pages. This pattern continues throughout the document.

* As the reader fills in his or her brief responses, the data is relayed to a company (such as Docmetrics) that sends detailed, real-time reports about readers to the marketer.

“This system gives the marketer data as the reader is engaged in the content of the paper,” adds Weilmeier, “and when a reader passes the document to other people in the company, the system provides data on those people as well.

“Also, the data is very specific. It tells the marketer if the reader read the entire document or only part of it. It tells whether he stopped at a certain page for while or moved quickly through the document and it tells the total time he spent reading it.”

The data that marketers get from in-document forms helps them decide on the length and content of white papers and which combinations of copy and graphics appeal to readers most.

Unique Benefits
In-document forms and the data they provide give white paper marketers these important benefits:

* Marketers get data on how people “consume” content as opposed to limited information from landing-page registration forms.

* The fact that marketers can survey readers in real time as they read a white paper provides richer, more accurate information.

* Data received from reader behavior allows marketers to optimize the content and formatting of their white papers.

In-document forms work because they create a fair exchange of value. As a reader receives value from the content of the paper, she’s willing to give value to the marketer by providing accurate, helpful answers to questions.

The bottom line for marketers: A much better chance of getting highly qualified sales leads.

When a search engine ad sends a potential customer to a landing page, the page should dish up a sample of the paper’s content. Many marketers make the mistake of not giving the reader a taste of what’s to come.

“Not all landing pages are created equal,” explains Michael Stelzner, author of Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged. “Some pages consist of nothing more than a one-sentence description of the white paper’s content and a form to fill out to gain access to the paper.”

Provide Valuable Content
You may have suffered through this annoying sequence of events: You spend time registering for a white paper solely because of its title and a few lines of copy on the landing page. After reading a few paragraphs of the paper, you’re disappointed because the content is of no interest to you.

Then, to make matters worse, your phone rings-it’s the company that advertised the white paper following up with you.

“The best landing pages let you avoid this situation by providing some valuable content from the paper,” says Stelzner. “If the reader is interested enough to read the sample content, when they register they get a paper they want to have and you’ve got a qualified sales lead.”

Tips on Providing Content
Stelzner says that by providing sample content for your white paper, you:

* Improve lead quality-only readers who are truly interested in your white paper (and your product) will read through the sample copy and register for the paper.

* Increase the likelihood that people will complete the registration form with accurate information.

* Create a keyword-rich page for search engines.

How do you create this type of landing page? “Start by using the Google Keyword Tool to determine which keywords best describe your white paper topic,” advises business-to-business marketing communications and SEO copywriting expert Dianna Huff (www.dhcommunications.com).

“Then write a 100-150 word, keyword-rich, compelling abstract that details the challenges prospects face and how your white paper addresses those challenges.”

Stelzner adds, “You should make the copy on the landing page look like an article that extends below the bottom of the computer screen. Once the reader has scrolled down and is hooked by your content, you require registration to access the rest of the paper.”

Proven Strategy
Stelzner’s strategy has proven to be successful. When he recently tested this type of landing page copy, 17% of readers completed the registration form; 63% also registered for his online newsletter; and 24% stayed on the page for one or more minutes.

When it’s time to create your white-paper landing page:

* Make your copy compelling and describe the reader’s challenges and how your paper addresses them.

* Find search-engine keywords that match the paper’s content and include them on your page.

* Write the copy in article form to capture the readers’ interest and make them scroll down to register.

Don’t leave prospective customers hungry. Use your landing page to give them a taste of the valuable information that you serve up in your white paper. They’ll benefit from new knowledge and you’ll gain qualified leads and improved sales.

The 10-year-old company, (www.iag.biz) based in New Castle, Delaware, specializes in defining and managing the software needs of its clients. A couple of years ago, IAG’s marketing group realized it didn’t have enough quality leads to increase revenue for its Business Requirements consulting service.

“We weren’t generating enough leads for this product,” explains Keith Ellis, vice president of IAG. “Our website brought in some business and we had opportunities through our existing relationships and marketing database, but we weren’t creating enough opportunity to grow this part of the business as much as we wanted.”

Revamping the Program
Ellis decided to remedy the situation by revamping IAG’s white paper program. To make the program more successful, the company needed to reach senior-level prospects at companies of a certain size in certain industries. The prospects had to be buyers of technology solutions.

Ellis turned to a long-time supplier, technology-research firm Technology Evaluating Centers (TEC) of Quebec, Canada (www.technologyevaluation.com), to provide highly qualified sales leads for the program.

“We told TEC that we wanted to syndicate our white papers to ideal prospects and we needed highly qualified sales leads,” says Ellis. “The people registered with TEC—people who have technology-evaluation needs—are precisely our target market.”

After Ellis briefed TEC on the ideal prospects for its white paper, Getting Consensus on Business Requirements, TEC sent spreadsheets to IAG every week with qualified leads. As IAG’s marketing team uploaded the leads into the company’s CRM system, they flagged names they didn’t want and returned them to TEC to be replaced.

After the white paper was emailed to prospects, IAG’s marketing group followed up by phone. For this step in the program, Ellis prepared his sales team to efficiently call the increased volume of leads.

A Winning Program
The revamped white paper program achieved cost-effective results for IAG: “One of every four prospects provided by TEC who downloaded our white paper became a quality sales opportunity,” says Ellis. “We spent $30,000 for the TEC program and we realized $600,000 in sales from it. Whenever you end up with a 5% cost of marketing, you’ve got a winning program.”

No matter how informative or compelling your white paper is, if it doesn’t get into the right people’s hands, you’re not going to make sales. Evaluate your lead-generation program to find out if your leads are getting results or if weak leads are making your sales reps waste their time.

“To structure a successful white paper program, you need to be very clear about who your target market is and use only leads that are proven to be in that market,” concludes Ellis. “It’s also vitally important to be able to handle the all-important follow-up to those leads.”

According to Peter Bowerman, one of the nation’s top freelance writers, an expert writer/designer team gives clients what they’re really looking for. “Clients don’t want just a writer,” Bowerman explains. “They want you to be the expert who solves their problem.

“They want you to step into their world and quickly get up to speed on their project. While big companies likely have the design angle covered, many love the idea of bringing in a graphic designer to manage the whole thing from start to finish. This ’solution selling’ is especially appealing to smaller companies that don’t have substantial in-house creative resources.”

Work Smarter
Offering your team’s complete services helps clients, but how does it help the writer? Bowerman, author of the bestsellers The Well-Fed Writer and The Well-Fed Writer: Back for Seconds (www.wellfedwriter.com), says you can earn more by working smarter, not harder: ” Designers you work with may find work for themselves that brings work to you, the writer of the team, as well. You end up with projects that you didn’t have to work hard to get.

“And since the designer handles the production aspects of the piece from start to finish, the project is very simple for the writer—you just do the writing and the designer takes it from there.”

Bowerman adds that unlike relationships with writing clients, which tend to come and go, partnerships with designers can continue for a long time. He cites his productive, 14-year relationship with a top designer as a prime example.

Be Careful
If you intend to pursue this type of partnership, Bowerman advises to use tried-and-true networking techniques (search on Google, attend networking meetings, compare notes with other writers), but proceed with caution.

“Take your time when considering this relationship,” he says. “Look for a designer who is competent and has good references. Having a good personal connection with the designer is a must—you have to work well together.”

“If you get a good partnership going and you’re considering starting a two-person agency, you might not get the benefits you’re hoping for. Usually, there’s not much additional value to that-it’s better for both parties to do their own thing and collaborate when the right projects come along.”

Partnerships Are Possible
Forging a stable, productive partnership isn’t easy. Many good designers already have favorite writers and finding a designer whose personality meshes well with yours takes time. But Bowerman says if you’re an excellent writer and professional in every way, you’ve got a great chance of creating partnerships that will satisfy your clients and give your business a lift.

It also helps if you can deliver the goods. “If you’re creative in your thinking and your writing can make a designer’s work stand out so that it’s even more powerful,” Bowerman says, “what designer wouldn’t want to work with you?”

After giving it more thought, I came to the conclusion that if I offered a class in the Art of the Interview, I would really be covering a lot of survival territory, since it’s my belief that the skills of an interviewer encompass a broad range of talents. You must be able to converse like a talk show host, think like a writer, understand subtext like a psychiatrist, have an ear like a musician, be able to select the best parts like a book editor, and know how to put it together like a playwright.

A week later, I met with Pacino again. I told him I had accepted UCLA’s offer to teach a class limited to 15 students and that I had come up with an idea for him.

“There’s an organization called The Friends of English,” I told him. “They do fundraisers and give scholarships to English graduate students. Why not come and show selections from your personal films Looking for Richard, The Local Stigmatic, and Chinese Coffee and talk about the process of turning plays into films?

“Would you be willing to come to one of the classes and let the students interview you?” “Sure,” he said. “I can walk in unexpectedly. Surprise them. See how they handle it.”

On my first day of class I was pleased to learn that all 15 students not only knew who Pacino was, but they had seen the Godfather films, Scarface, Dog Day Afternoon, Scent of a Woman, and The Devil’s Advocate. They had no idea about his love of the theater, however, which was perfect. There was the excitement and anticipation of the known, and room to learn.

I told them that the following week Pacino would appear at the Fowler Museum auditorium on campus and that I would reserve the front two rows for them. Their assignment was to prepare at least 15 questions they’d like to ask him. We would meet in the classroom for an hour before his appearance and go over their questions.

And that’s what we did. “All right,” I said, “I’m Al Pacino. Ask me your questions.” I went around the room and listened to some of the most convoluted questions I’ve ever heard.

“You appeared in a lot of well-known movies. You played a mafia don and a drug kingpin, a gay bank robber and an honest undercover cop, you’ve been the devil and a people’s lawyer, you’ve played an over-the-top cartoon character and a blind man who could drive a Ferrari and dance the tango. What I want to know is…”

“Cut all of that out,” I interrupted. “He knows what he did, just get to the point. Don’t put him to sleep.”

“What young actor would you like to see play Michael Corleone in a remake of The Godfather?”

“NOOOOOO!” I shouted. “You don’t ask Al Pacino who he’d like to see replace him in the seminal role of his career.”

On it went. I listened to forty or fifty questions, told them why they were too long, too obtuse, too easy to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ too awkwardly worded. And then the door opened and Pacino stuck his head in and said, “Am I in the right place?”

“You sure are,” I said and smiled, as eyes nearly popped out of a half dozen students’ heads. We didn’t have much time before the evening at the Fowler was to begin, so I made no introduction, other than, “Here’s Al. Let’s get started.”

Lawrence Grobel: This is a class where they are learning to ask questions, without having to come up with answers! Every class you ever take, you need to have answers. Not this one.

Pacino: That’s what we say in acting all the time. When we’re working on a play we say, ‘Ask the question.’ You don’t have to answer it, just ask it.

About the Author: Lawrence Grobel has been referred to as the Mozart of interviewers. He authored the bestselling book, The Art of the Interview: Lessons from a Master of the Craft and eight other books. Lawrence has written for The New York Times, Newsday and Writer’s Digest.

Two freelance white paper writers gave us their advice. Jonathan Kantor of the Appum Group stresses making your company stand out from the rest. “I call it ‘unique differentiation.’ The freelance writing business is very competitive. You must find a unique corner or differentiator that will separate you from everyone else.

“It could be price. It could be timeliness. It could be a unique look and feel to your work. Figure out how you’re going to differentiate yourself in a crowded market and exploit that capability.”

Gordon Graham, who has created white papers for companies of all sizes in many industries, advises to hone in on companies that need your services most.

“White papers are mainly B2B, not B2C,” Graham says. “So they’re not required for simple consumer products.

“The best markets for freelance white papers are technical sectors such as software, hardware, medical technology and any other sector in which companies are selling something new, expensive and complex. Those areas have the best potential for a white paper business that is looking to grow.”

Better Writing Brings Business Growth
Improving your skills is another way to build your business. Delivering high-quality work that adds value to a client’s business will make companies seek you out.

“To improve writing skills, I tell writers to think like a lawyer and write like a journalist,” says Graham. “Do research to build an open-and-shut case using irrefutable evidence, statistics, quotes from industry experts and success stories, then write it as clear as a bell so busy people ‘get it’ quickly.”

According to Kantor, a sure way to improve your work involves what you do before you begin writing. “Before you start a white paper project, do as much research as possible to understand the client’s business,” he says. “This will reduce the amount of hand-holding the company must do. They won’t have to spend as much time communicating technical and company information to you.”

Protect Yourself
How about the nuts-and-bolts of running your business? In times of frustration, we’ve all asked ourselves, “How can I make my business more efficient?”

Kantor says having a contract that clearly spells out your services helps projects go more smoothly. “One of the most difficult challenges is putting together a contract that covers all the bases. A freelance writer deals with a wide variety of customers with many different needs. The contract I’ve developed gives clients some flexibility while clearly defining my pricing, time frame, payment terms and everything else involved in working with a new client. It creates a win-win situation for everyone involved.”

Graham reminds white paper writers of something only experience teaches: “Many white papers are started, but not every one is finished. Sometimes clients get distracted by other priorities. Sometimes the white paper sponsor leaves the company before the paper is done. Freelance writers who want their business to grow must look out for themselves financially. Require at least half of your fee up front. This payment gives you some security and tends to focus the client’s energy. Since they made that much of an investment in the project, they will want to get it finished.”

Listen to the experts. Find a way to stand out from your competition, market to companies that need your services most, research companies before you write for them, and protect your business interests. Do these things and before long you’ll move off that plateau and climb higher than ever.

Okay so far.

Then the next day, he calls and says, “Sorry, but your price is just too high.”

What do you do?

You could, of course, simply walk away from the opportunity. And you would be justified to do so, especially if you feel you have quoted a fair price.

However, there is another option.

Negotiate.

Does that word scare you? It shouldn’t. Negotiation is simply a process of discussing options with your client, and coming up with pricing and terms that will work for both of you.

Here’s how I do it:

When a client says that my price is more than he or she expected to pay, I respond with something like: “Okay. I respect that you have a budget. Can we discuss some options that may allow us to continue to work together?”

The client will almost always say, “Sure.” Then I’m off to the races.

My next question usually is, “How much were you hoping to pay for the copywriting?”

This puts the ball firmly in the client’s court. If my quote is $2,500 and he says his budget is $2,000, then we’re not that far apart.

Now here’s the secret. I never lower my price just to get the job. (Negotiation is, after all, inherently give and take.) Instead, I make an offer based on a change in the project scope or terms.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

* Offer to get the job done earlier than the deadline. Many clients are willing to pay my price in exchange for receiving the copy earlier than scheduled. It takes a lot of pressure off them.

* Offer a discount for paying my price up front. This strategy works well for me. I offer the client a 10% discount if they pay me in advance. The client gets the savings, and I get my money before I write a word of copy! (Special thanks to consulting legend Alan Weiss for this great idea.)

* Offer a lower fee in exchange for a longer deadline. I only offer this arrangement to clients when my schedule is tight. It’s worth it to me to earn a little less on a project if I have more time to complete it.

* Ask about upcoming projects, then offer a volume discount. If I’m asked to write a sales letter, and the client has two more letters planned for the future, I’ll offer him a special price for all three.

* Offer to throw in a little extra work for free. For example, if I’m writing a case study, I might offer to write a short email or ezine ad that promotes it for no additional charge. This only takes me an extra hour or so, but is very valuable to the client.

Isn’t it easier just to lower your price and take the job? Of course it is. But you’ll be teaching your clients that they can always get your services at a cut-rate. Getting paid less than you deserve is a miserable way to work.

Don’t be afraid to negotiate. Trust me. You’ll get more work, better fees, and more importantly, greater respect from clients.

Editor’s note: Steve will be teaching a teleclass entitled, “Pricing Your Services as a Freelance Writer (Earning What You’re Worth!).” Click here for more information about this upcoming class.

About the Author: Steve Slaunwhite is an award-winning copywriter and coach. He is editor of ForCopywritersOnly!. He has been a full-time freelance copywriter for more than a decade. He writes for Hewlett-Packard, UPS, Rogers Publishing, Mitsubishi, USi Interworking, Symantec, Hoover’s Business Information and dozens of other great clients.

There’s some romance in there somewhere.

The trouble is, for most commercial writers, messy working practices translate into inefficient use of time. Find a writer who has a messy workspace, and you’ll also find a writer who doesn’t have efficient working practices. At its simplest level, a messy environment makes it hard to find the information we need for a particular assignment.

But there is a bigger problem here.

Regardless of whether you like working in a messy environment, your brain doesn’t. It doesn’t like it at all. Writers ask me why they constantly feel distracted and unable to focus sharply on the task in front of them. They ask me why they have trouble starting on a new assignment.

They are confused by their inability to sit down and work through a project from start to finish without procrastinating.

My answer is always based on a single premise: If you don’t get organized yourself, your subconscious mind will try to compensate. And while your subconscious mind is busy compensating, you’ll find it very hard to stay focused on anything for very long. You may not “hear” what your mind is saying, but the background noise inside your head is loud enough to disrupt your thinking as you work.

Frank’s subconscious mind may be saying:

“Geez, I hope Frank hasn’t forgotten he has a call with John at 3:00.”

“Hey, Frank! Before you write any more, don’t forget that Doris said she’d be sending you some updated figures this morning!”

“Frank, think about it. The job you’re working on now isn’t due for 6 days. And you still haven’t finished that other job that’s due tomorrow.” And so on.

You have two choices. Get organized, or live with the noise of your subconscious mind trying to get you organized instead. If you choose the latter route, you have a problem. Because when you leave it to your subconscious, all you get is noise and disruption. You don’t really get any coherent plan or structure.

The key to writing well and efficiently is to write with a clear, quiet mind. And the only way to get a clear, quiet mind is to organize your work and your workspace down to the very last detail.

You need to have a comprehensive work schedule laid out. You must have an up-to-the-minute to-do list that you refer to and update several times a day. You must get all the information you need for a job before you get started. And you must allocate a block of time for each task that needs completing.

I say “you must,” and “you need to.” By this I mean you need to do these things if you want to be a highly productive and profitable writer. If you don’t want to work on getting organized, then you can be like most commercial writers… You can work at only a fraction of your productivity potential and lose money hand over fist.

About the Author: Nick Usborne is a 30-year veteran copywriter, author, speaker, trainer and coach. You can find his latest guide to helping writers become more productive at http://www.writingrituals.com/.

As any student of economics will tell you, when a product becomes commoditized, prices (and margins) fall. In response, syndication vendors are pulling out the stops to layer value-added services onto their programs and better differentiate themselves from their competitors. For example, some companies will offer to call leads for you, scoring and qualifying those prospects so (presumably) you’re not just dumping raw inquiries onto your sales force.

In this category of value-added services comes a new offering from NetLine, the company whose Lead Source program syndicates white papers and other advertiser content via www.Tradepub.com and a network of more than 4000 B2B websites.

NetLine’s new Second Touch service is, in essence, an automated lead nurturing program that delivers follow-up emails, at client-defined intervals, to prospects who download advertiser content from the Lead Source network. Superficially, the service might seem redundant to advertisers who have Eloqua, Market2Lead, Vtrenz, or another lead nurturing platform already in place, but for those who don’t, or perhaps for those who would rather not take the time to set up a separate offer track for white paper downloads, the service is a convenient, and potentially powerful, tool.

NetLine provides a simple email template that includes the advertiser’s logo, four call to action buttons (linking to offers that the client defines), and editable “contact me” or “price quote” buttons (to drive requests for immediate contact). When a prospect clicks one of the buttons, he or she is taken to a prepopulated registration form, and when that form is submitted, NetLine generates a real-time email alert to a selected client contact.

Second Touch is available from NetLine as an add-on for qualifying lead generation programs. The company says that the pricing is designed to make it feasible for a client to add Second Touch to all their offers, and includes an initial setup cost with a nominal charge for each additional offer.

NetLine claims that the service helps to identify and engage with hot prospects, shortens the selling cycle by generating quote requests and other immediate opportunities, drives prospects to relevant areas on the advertiser website, and stimulates further interest in additional products and services.

What I found particularly compelling about the email template that NetLine provides is that they recommend the first callto action button be a link to the very same content the prospect just downloaded. This seemed counterintuitive at first (why would I offer something the prospect just downloaded?), but upon further review it makes sense:

* Some prospects may complete the registration process but, due to technical issues or just plain distraction, fail to download, save, or print the content.

* Others may download the content but then put it aside and forget about it. Sending a link to the same content serves as a convenient reminder (especially for those, like me, who use their email inbox as a “to do” list).

* Sending a link to the same content offers a convenient way for the prospect to share the information with colleagues and peers (thereby increasing downloads).

Designing any kind of follow-up or lead nurturing strategy almost always involves the question “OK, what do I send them NOW?” In an inspired move, NetLine is saying that your follow-up communication doesn’t always have to be about another offer, more content, contacting a sales rep, or a “next step” in the selling process. Just possibly the best immediate follow-up is a courtesy message that simply serves to ensure the prospect was able to download the paper, and providing a convenient way to download the information again if needed. Brilliant.

My Assessment: Second Touch may not be for everyone, but it’s a convenient, effective way of ensuring prompt, effective follow-up to leads generated from content syndication.

About the Author: Howard J. Sewell is president of Connect Direct Inc. (CDI), a full-service agency specializing in demand generation for high-technology companies. Named one of the “Top 100 Agencies” for 2007 by BtoB Magazine, CDI maintains offices in Silicon Valley and Seattle. Howard also writes a blog, Direct Connections, on demand generation best practices. Full disclosure: Connect Direct is an authorized agency partner of NetLine.