Savvy B2B Marketing

Company and Title would prevent technical enthusiasts from downloading the white paper. The white paper should be selling the next conversion. It should sort out the technical enthusiasts from the economic buyer.

Being that this whitepaper would be the first one anyone downloads, it is too soon in the purchase cycle to call them or for them to have questions.

Get their participation in a permission campaign, aka newsletter, and include successive surveys in each newsletter. Do not disqualify anyone. Instead, offer different content and paths to each identifiable stakeholder in your marketing or in the purchase process.

You could use session maintenance like cookies and content management ids to preserve continuity across touchpoint contacts until they provide registration information.

The main issue here is that no matter what tricks you come up with they will not make up for content that the prospect does not perceive as valuable. You end up trying to dance around how to get something of value (contact info) for something of little perceived value (whitepaper). While both options above make sense, they are about as good as you are going to get given the offer.

Although I agree with most of David's comments, I would point out that any contact is an opportunity to engage and qualify the prospect. What's wrong with following up with a courtesy email making sure they received it (and to check their spam filter if they haven't)? It gives you the chance to ask a simple probing question like "Have you established project requirements for your XYZ project, or no? We have accumulated requirements from dozens of customers and combined them into a master check list that is available electronically." You'll be amazed at how many people who "aren't interested" want that list. It is the start of a fruitful sales conversation and you would have missed it in the nurturing cycle.

Dale: When done well, I don't see either of these two approaches as tricks. I like the first approach because it is very clear what will happen when you register, and the second method is nice because it provides a way for the content to go viral yet it still gives interested parties a way to stay connected.

Also, I completely agree that the initial email I was sent after I downloaded the paper is a great idea. It lets the prospect continue the conversation if he or she sees fit. I'm all about nurturing leads because, as you suggest just because someone isn't ready to buy now doesn't mean that they won't want to buy at a future time.

Jonathan: Great question and one that crossed my mind. I am going to do some digging, and I'll let you know what I find out. I would venture to guess that the people who selected the option to get a phone call is very small, especially considering that the offer was a white paper, but I'll see what I can find out.

Um. . . I meant Good find.