One-Pagers that Don't Suck
I’ve been seeing LinkedIn posts lately railing against the old content standby — the “one-pager.” Typically, a single (or sometimes 2 or 3) page PDF file that summarizes or highlights aspects of your offering. Sales people usually demand it, marketing hates it.
Marketing people hate it because they claim it’s untrackable and just a stagnant copy of what is on the website. They would rather have prospects go through their ideal funnel of clicking through product pages on the website where a better brand experience can happen with videos, slide stories, self-serve demos, etc… and they can track time on page, user behavior, etc…
So hey Marketers — you ever hear the phrase:
“Meet your prospects where they are”?”
There is a REASON WHY your sales team — and your prospects are requesting the derided one-pager. Ever stop to ASK that question? Ever stop to ask the question HOW a simple one-pager can be and frequently IS more effective at generating QUALIFIED leads than your website?
I agree with you that the website is inherently a much richer and (usually) more influential prospect brand experience than a PDF sheet. Have you TESTED your assertion that you should take away the one-pagers from your sales team and tell them to use website URLs instead? I have — and it didn’t go well. And guess what else — your prospects brand experience is more important than your KPIs so don’t try to shove them into a funnel that isn’t natural to their existing behavior.
Let me unpack this for you — some of my learnings from having glorious successes and some miserable failures… er, I mean: learning opportunities.
Thing ONE: Wrap your head around that in B2B marketing you are selling to a BUYING GROUP of stakeholders — anywhere from 3 to maybe 8 individuals who all have different responsibilities within your prospect company and all have different concerns.
EXAMPLE: If you are selling a SaaS Project Management solution, the prospect Chief Information Officer is going to want to see how your solution sits in “MY network.” Does it have API connections to existing infrastructure? What are your security certifications? The VP of Operations is going to want to know how your product is going to fit in with or change current workflow processes. The Human Resources/Skill Development Director is going to want to know what your product training, onboarding and support services are. The Chief Financial Officer would like to know if this investment has positive ROI, i.e. maybe they won’t need to hire that Project Manager position if your solution creates project management efficiencies (have a case study to demonstrate that?) This is why typical B2B/ABM/High-Ticket sales take around 3 - 12 months.
Thing TWO: Your job — Rockstar Marketer that you are — is to keep that BUYING GROUP engaged with your brand and address any stakeholders’ concerns while they are comparing your solution to your competition’s and trying to get consensus on a buying decision. No small task. Your job is also to identify who the “DEAL KILLERS” are in your Buying Group and who your “CHAMPIONS” are. EXAMPLE: A CIO may not think your solution has a robust security profile, and is recommending to the Buying Group team/stakeholders that they shop around for a more secure solution (deal-killer). AND/OR — The Chief Marketing Officer may assert that his team will not have to hire a Project Manager if they go with your solution (deal champion.)
The lowly one-pager can be one of the most
powerful weapons in your content arsenal.
Sample of a Non-Sucking One-Pager
Thing THREE: KNOW THIS: Some people in your target Buying Group are going to be good/persuasive communicators with the others in the group and some are not. Some may come to your website and understand your benefits and try to persuade the other stakeholders to check out your solution and other stakeholders are going to be too busy to do that or may have a look and then forget about it by the end of the week. Why do you think any of these Buying Group stakeholders are asking for a one-pager from your sales folks?
Your sales team knows the dynamics of how your Buying Group communicates and their idiosyncrasies. They also know that a branded and informative PDF sheet can get bandied about through email from one stakeholder to another over the course of weeks and months. And that is exactly the SUPERPOWER of the one-pager.
If one Buying Group stakeholder (the higher up the food chain the better) emails your one-pager to another — or better yet several — team members in the Group, your credibility just shot through the roof as one of the top contenders under consideration. Your sheet may get pushed aside for a couple MONTHS until after a quarterly budget meeting and then SPRING BACK TO LIFE as it is re-considered. And there is NOTHING MORE POWERFUL than to have your sheet proliferate throughout the company through email/slack/OneDrive folders as different stakeholders make comments and pass it around — they are selling themselves on your solution — help them do it.
Does this dynamic happen with weblinks?
In my experience, it does not.
I don’t know exactly why but some guesses — the links get pushed to the bottom of email chains and people are too busy/distracted to dig for them, the links get corrupted as they are copied pasted — which demands more brainwork than just forwarding a file, the links don’t go to content that is relevant to the specific Buying Group persona…
WHY THEY ARE ASKING FOR A ONE-PAGER: Your Buying Group wants a FOCUSED and IMMEDIATE overview/summary/detail of what your solution offers. They do not want to have to click through website marketing fluff, or have to search through pages and clicks within clicks for clear, direct information they are looking for. USE THE ONE-PAGER TO DELIVER WHAT THEY WANT. HELP YOUR SALES TEAM HAVE GOOD CONVERSATIONS.
ENGAGE THE SUPERPOWER OF THE ONE-PAGER: Not only does the experience of a one-pager not have to suck, you can make it a powerful lead generation and conversion asset/tool/weapon. (Weapon and as in slaying your competition).
Sample of a Non-Sucking One-Pager
PDF sheets can be made INTERACTIVE to behave as if they were a mini-website. I use Adobe InDesign Buttons & Forms features to design PDFs that deliver benefits and features and are engaging for each persona of the Buying Group. Direct your graphic designers to this dude’s channel.
Consider having a one-pager (or content within the one-pager) for each persona in your Buying Group. Yes, that means one with network diagrams and security certificates for the CIO, one that focuses on cost efficiencies for the CFO, one that focuses on overall benefits summary for CEO/VP or general audience…. Your sheets can deliver exactly the same messaging as your site — repetition is a good thing.
Have a Solution Brief that is similar to a product/solution landing page that gives an OVERVIEW of your solution. TIP FROM THE TRENCHES: On every promo email that goes out, no matter what the main promotion of the email is, have a P.S. at the bottom with a link to your Solution Brief “Don’t have time to explore our site? Here’s a quick Solution Brief overview of our services.” I have had EXCELLENT results with this tactic — having prospects download the one-pager even ones who did NOT click on the blog, event, webinar, whatever the main promo was in the email.
Use the one-pager as a DIRECTORY: Your sheet could have basic introductory information about your company and then have buttons that serve as a menu/links to help prospects get to different product/industry/persona-focused web pages.
I hear marketers bemoan “PDFs are not trackable” — yes they are: Use UTM codes for the links in your sheet — you’ll be able to see where web traffic is coming from — “Learn More” buttons on your sheets and from which sheet.