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By Michael Stelzner
 The world is flooded with messages that are competing for the attention of readers. Recently, the white paper has emerged as a compelling tool that attracts and persuades people like no other resource.
Sought-after to aid customers in the decision-making process, used to persuade key executives within a company or simply presented to summarise a suggested course of action, white papers are unmatched in their ability to attract readers.
Should producing white papers be on your radar? If you are focused on business-to-business interactions or need to persuade key individuals, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
What is a white paper?
White papers are crossbreeds of magazine articles and corporate brochures. They blend the informative and authoritative content of an article with the persuasive elements of a company brochure.
White papers are used to help educate and influence business prospects. They prevail in the technology world and are rapidly catching on in the financial services, healthcare, insurance and other business-to-business marketplaces.
What makes white papers so attractive?
In 2001, a Google search on the phrase 'white papers' returned a healthy 1 million responses. Only five years later, the same search resulted in more than 335 million listings! This enormous growth demonstrates the popularity of white papers.
White papers help people make decisions, especially in the information technology world. Consider recent research that found an astonishing 70 percent of information technology professionals rely on white papers to make purchasing decisions in the U.S. (ITtoolbox, July 19, 2006).
Because they are pulled into the company by prospective customers, white papers have the ability to linger and travel around the business, persuading along the way. It's not uncommon for a well- written white paper to travel across the desks of dozens of people in a single company.
If you are not leveraging the power of these documents, you are missing an incredible opportunity. If you are using white papers, are they being read?
The following are seven actionable tips to help you produce compelling white papers:
Tip 1: Identify your ideal reader
Are you writing to a project manager within your company, a prospective customer's chief technical officer or an engineer? Identify your ideal reader with precision. Pinpointing the ideal reader will help you develop an outline, mature your writing and guide discussions when things get off track.
Some questions to answer before you write include:
- In what industry does this person work?
- What is the title of this person?
- How technical is the reader?
- What are his or her job responsibilities?
- How familiar is the topic to the ideal reader?
Tip 2: Focus on your reader's needs
There are really only two ways to write white papers: by focusing on your self-interests or by concentrating on the interests of your readers. The self-interest approach focuses exclusively on a product, service or solution by expounding on its benefits, features and implications. While effective in some circumstances, this approach is best left for something other than a white paper.
Alternatively, focusing on your readers can be effectively accomplished by leading with the problems your solution overcomes, rather than the actual solution itself. To many people, this seems counterintuitive, but it really is just the opposite.
By focusing on the challenges, or pain points, experienced by the reader and talking about the problems caused by those pains, you are establishing credibility with the reader.
Tip 3: Adopt a soft-sell approach
White papers are usually written to help sell a product, service or idea. However, unlike other sales tools, such as brochures and datasheets, white papers should avoid the hard-sell.
White papers are the longest documents in the sales arsenal. Reading them is a time-consuming process for prospects. Thus, it is important to provide readers a valid reason to stay with your documents. The first hint of 'salesmanship' will trigger most people to abandon a white paper. Alternatively, if you adopt a softer sales approach, it is more likely readers will stick around.
Leading with problems or needs faced by your readers is a great way to adopt a soft-sell approach.
Tip 4: Discuss problems before solutions
Your natural instinct might be to immediately begin writing about your product or process. However, think about your reader. Why should he or she give your document the time it demands? Are you addressing something your reader can immediately relate to?
Try starting with a discussion of problems or needs that currently exist when your solution is absent. Concentrating on your readers and their pain points is an excellent way to draw them into your white paper.
Why? First, people do not like to be sold to. Discussing challenges helps your white paper appear to be something useful. Secondly, if the reader can relate to the issues you identify in your white paper, they might think, 'These guys understand what I am going through'. The result is often greater credibility.
When talking about problems, think about how they impact people, processes and quality.
Tip 5: Talk about your solution generically
To avoid the impression of salesmanship, try introducing the solution generically. For example, rather than 'FedEx Express', how about 'overnight air transit'? Talking about generic solutions is a way to educate readers. If your product or idea is so new or unique that a generic category does not exist, craft a new category.
A real-world example is electronic paper. Briefly, e-paper is a new display technology that simply produces black and white output. Some smart folks decided to call it 'e-paper' because it is very thin and does not require a constant stream of power. Even though the technology was first developed in the 1970s, it was not until Sony introduced an e-paper reader in 2006 that the 'category' has been defined as 'new'.
Tip 6: You have only three seconds. Use them wisely
Have you ever come across a white paper that bores you? Did you read the entire piece? The reality is that you have a lot less time to get your points across then you realise.
Readers generally live up to a marketing rule known as the '3-30-3 rule'.
It goes like this. You have three seconds to draw in any given reader. If you tickle the interest of readers in the first three seconds, they will allocate another 30 seconds to read further. If your message is very relevant and interesting, the reader will spend three more minutes with your white paper.
The title takes up the first three seconds. The opening paragraphs occupy the next 30 seconds.
Thus, the first few words of your paper will make or break its success. Get to the point quickly and focus on the ideal reader. Remember that most people are skim readers. You can make the paper more readable by including many shorter subsections, callouts, tables and illustrations.
Tip 7: Conclude with a call to action
The result of a well-written white paper is often a persuaded reader. However, most white papers fall short of their ultimate goal because they lack an actionable concluding suggestion -- known as a 'call to action' -- that can guide the reader toward the goal.
The very last words of your white paper should ask a reader to take a well-thought-out and intentional action. Providing a clear next step will help the reader enter into your sales cycle, provide him or her more information or accomplish just about any other task you wish.
The call must be clear, provide an advantage for acting and explicitly state how the reader should take the next step. The possible action suggestions are many, including:
- Scheduling an appointment
- Visiting a website
- Calling a sales representative
- Offering access to special content
- Providing a coupon or discount
Be sure to give your readers clear instructions on the very last line of your white paper.
Keep these tips handy for when you write your own white papers. Once you've mastered them, you'll be able to communicate your business goals and reward customers with a valuable resource.
Related links:
By Michael Stelzner
Michael A. Stelzner is the author of "Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged" <http://www.writingwhitepapers.com/book/>,
has written nearly 100 white papers for big names such as Microsoft,
HP, Factiva, SAP, FedEx and Monster and is the executive editor of the
20,000-reader WhitePaperSource Newsletter. Check out Michael's blog at
<http://www.writingwhitepapers.com/blog/>.
FUMSI articles by Michael Stelzner »
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