The Report is just the start...
- adrian67545
- May 13
- 2 min read
Everyone loves to read a report, as long as they find it valuable.
Your boss wants to show it off and the sales team are happily emailing to their prospects (write them some key talking points) and clients.
You're probably exhausted.
Reports are hard work:
-topic consideration and content outlines
-insight gathering, quant and qual research, competitor reviews, market place predictions
-honing down to the key nuggets to pepper your pages
-copywriting and designing
-rounds and rounds of amends from everyone to the office pet
-agreeing the measures of success
-publishing and getting it into the right hands.
No wonder you're shattered, but have you exhausted all you can out of the report?
What we've found works well!
The Main report
-length is down to how much good stuff you have to share, but based on no scientific evidence, 20 to 50 pages is enough (remember when you see articles in the inflight magazine that says 2mins long), - you levitate to bite-size stuff.
-fill with infographics and bold, big stats - they become talking points and when you do get to the infographic cut down, there's one ready made for you
-accessibility of language. Who is your audience, how smart are they and what is their reading age? Tabloid papers are written to the reading ability of around 10 year olds, whereas the broadsheets, as they were known are aimed at a 14 year reading comprehension
The results:
Check out Payrix, on bringing their deep expertise on embedded payments
Vertical Cut downs
-starting with the main report as the basis, how can you easily adapt for key verticals you're servicing or targeting?
-same structure, different vertical. Aim to keep the flow the same e.g. objective, solution, results but make specific to the vertical. In this way, it will be quicker to write, but also keeps the verticals feeling as part of the same family.
The results:
2,624 report downloads and counting for OneAdvanced, with 1,279% ROI based on influenced pipeline
Start the tease early (aka buy yourself time while still finalising the report)
-from start to finish, that report will probably take you 8 to 12 weeks, from insight gathering the final approved design, this is not dead time
-why not start the intrigue early? As soon as you've agreed on those nuggets of insights to wrap content around in the report, why not use them?
-publish teaser posts, feature part of those nuggets only -you can run these for 6-8 weeks to keep building momentum for the big publish
The results:
For Worldpay's Generation pay report - 7.4m impressions and 3.75x click-through rate above LinkedIn's benchmark
Early lead-generation
-where are you sending the traffic from the 6-8 weeks of teasing?
-how about a landing page, where visitors can register for an early release of the report?
-to gate or not gate the report? Offering to share it as a pre-release to those registered, is quite compelling
-you're now keeping sales happy, with these leads to be followed up
The results:
Smiling sales teams - go try it for yourself and good luck. Or ask us if you need any help. adrian@bbpagency.com
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