Product:WhitePaper
From david hegarty authoring services
Contents |
Writing white papers
...nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill.
They wanted a hole.
Therefore, if you want to sell drills, you should deliver information about making holes...
Perry S. Marshall
The purpose of a white paper is to promote a company's expertise, a product or a service while it educates. In some cases, a secondary goal is to provide reference material.
In this sense a white paper fills the gap between brochures and technology book publishing (which can typically lag the technology by between 9 and 12 months).
A white paper should be about quick, accurate information, not an academic treatise. 8 to 10 pages is probably about as long as it should be.
A white paper is also an opportunity to use permission-, rather than interruption-marketing. This means establishing a dialog with potential clients.
This means building credibility without hype, and explaining technology without selling.
Audiences
The primary audience tends to be prospective customers. The goal here is to establish the need that is being satisfied by the solution. In the extreme case this is for early adopters, who also need to get familiar with a new technology.
Secondary audiences include existing customers, internal colleagues, the general public, internal management, colleagues in industry, analysts or journalists.
The reader's main motivation is to gather information to make a decision. The company's main motivation is to generate sales leads (by offering the white paper on a web page that requires registration - though there is a trade-off here with the ability of the white paper to garner mind share).
Further purposes include educating customers, as a selling tool, to educate the sales force or partners, to educate the media and journalists, to offer as content to various outlets, to redefine a market space, to gain mind share, or to keep up with competitors.
A white paper needs to target its audience clearly. Depending on the audiences to be addressed, it may be worth producing different versions of the one white paper. These could be different in terms of the breadth and depth of information, as well as the length of the text.
Because a good white paper tends to get passed around (and up), an executive summary is important.
Reader's goals
Understanding these elements can help you structure the content to guide your reader best:
- Readers start with a vision, something they want to achieve.
This is most often an answer to a problem they are facing, which is best addressed by a white paper that addresses concepts or business needs.
Marketing hype is particularly unwelcome in this kind of white paper. This is about building mind share and credibility as a vendor.- Technology guide, with the value and positioning of a new technology.
- Position paper
- Thought leader, to establish the vendor's credentials
- Next they start planning what their solution could look like.
This is best addressed by a more technical white paper.- Business benefits
- Competitive review
- Evaluator's guide
From this point of view, white papers should be "You"-documents and not "we"-documents.
Persuasive elements
These can help to overcome the readers scepticism and establish prestige and authority. Persuasive elements should be the 'meat' of the paper, which stop the reading skimming (a product of their scepticism) and get the reader reading.
These elements of the content also need to be reinforced by a suitably sober appearance, and using a title that pitches content, not products.
Problems
Discussing problems and their implications
- Reaffirms readers concerns
- Reveals aspects the reader had not considered
Ideally this shows the reader that you understand their concerns, and establishes a degree of objectivity.
The problems need to be tied into a common thread, a single, high-level problem.
Naturally, in terms of a product-based white paper the problems should be relevant to the solution you intend to propose.
Trends
Identifying trends that need to be mastered (preferably with the help of your product/solution) should again should establish your objectivity.
It is important that figures in this section should be backed up by 3rd party sources.
History
This can form the bridge between the problem and the solution.
Again this adds credibility, it also may present an opportunity to position your competitors as outdated, and to introduce new technologies (as evidenced by your solution).
Complementary pieces
Given the persuasive nature of white papers, the obvious extension is the case study, which demonstrates the theory put into practice.
Sources
Gordon Graham, How to use white papers to grow a healthy crop of leads: 20 tips from Bitpipe and KnowledgeStorm; www.softwareceo.com
Gordon Graham and Manuel Gordon, The State of the White Paper 2004; www.gordonandgordon.com
Michael A. Stelzner, How to create a persuasive white paper; intercom, June 2007
Russel Willerton, Writing White Papers in Hight-tech Industries: Perspectives from the Field; Technical Communication, Volume 54, Number 2, May 2007
An interview with Gordon Graham. Author of Writing Marketing Materials for High-Tech Firms; www.softwaremarketsolution.com
