White Papers: A Key Piece of Your Content Marketing, Especially Offline

I'm working on a white paper for one of my long term clients. I had a flash back: it reminded me of my first journalism assignment when I was a cub reporter for the San Diego Union Tribune. That was 50 years ago! I feel like I've come full circle back to my first job and first love: writing about people.

If you don't have a white paper you can use for your marketing, think about doing this. My client has plenty of web pages up and does a superb e-newsletter (I know this because I help him with his!)

But as he says, "My clients are CEOs and high-level directors of companies. They don't spend much time online. I need something tangible, printed, that I can leave behind after a meeting, or send to them before."

He's an executive coach who needs to impress the top leaders who give the go-ahead to corporate coaching programs.

Maybe you're in a field where the smart people are doing research online, but could be if they hire or buy your programs, there will be a face-to-face meeting. This is why it's essential to have something printed like a white paper to leave behind, that can get passed around to other influential stakeholders.

A couple of years ago I did a teleseminar on how to write a white paper. (In a minute, I'll give you the link to download the transcript). There's a lot to it. It's like a combination of interviews, background research in your industry, and persuasive stories and is a key piece of your content marketing.

The key is to find a good writer to do the work, preferably one with experience and knowledge in your industry. Fortunately, I was working as an executive coach at one point in my career and my background in psychology helps.

The first thing I did was to do a Google search for white papers about executive coaching. Find out what others have written about the field. In this field, there are a lot of published papers already, many of them seriously covering the topic from soup to nuts. Very few of them were easy to read, or written in a way that was interesting. This inspired me to not write like that.

The problem with writing a paper designed to persuade is that you don't have specific knowledge of who your reading audience is, just a vague assumption that they're in the field and are very busy professionals. Using that assumption, you must make your writing concise and to the point. Don't waste anybody's time.

Most white papers about executive coaching have been written by academics: they're full of research and references to the "literature." They go way into the background, the who, what and why the coaching field has developed. While they may be full of facts, there is little to appeal to emotions.

Busy executives want the bottom line. They don't care about the research literature as much as they care about stories from real people who experience coaching and companies who get bottom line profitable results.

I followed this outline:

1. Grab the readers' attention using a negative story of a typical problem
2. Stimulate desire using positive stories of really good results
3. Reinforce with reasons: facts, statistics, and logic
4. Close with an appeal to heart as well as head

I used stories from my client's own experiences to illustrate clearly what it is they do, and what kinds of results they get. There are plenty of quotes from their clients. I wrote it in a neutral tone, much like a newspaper interview so that it does not read like marketing hype.

In white papers I've read in other fields there is often too much "marketing speak," too much that is complimentary, which destroys credibility. There's not enough appeal to "what's in it for the reader," and nothing to address possible objections that readers' will be thinking.

Maybe companies should hire more journalists to write their white papers, rather than give the task to their marketing people.

What do you think? Do you see a white paper as being an important content marketing piece to have? What do you send or leave behind?

Want to know more about writing white papers? Read these posts...

A while back when I was doing teleseminars as The Blog Squad, I interviewed Michael Stelzner, who wrote the book on how to write white papers. You can get the transcript here:

Download WhitePaperTranscript

Download Freelance-white-papers MP3

Comments

[Jenny Pilley]

Thanks for this Patsi. I'll take a look at the information you've provided to research white papers in more detail. The four tips you use will help many people when writing this type of literature. Thanks for the advice!

[Ambal Balakrishnan]

Patsi: Great post on using white papers for content marketing. Many reports(http://www.writingwhitepapers.com/blog/category/statistics/) have proven that white papers are great tools not only to show thought leadership but also to educate customers and generate leads.

[Jonathan Kranz]

Agreed, Patsi, that having a print version of your white paper or ebook is a great idea. Here's one reason why:

We usually think of the papers as a way to build credibility and attract new, qualified prospects. (And that's true.)

But a number of my ebook clients report a different and even more wonderful kind of experience -- they shared a print copy of the book/paper with fence-sitters, hot prospects who were close to the close, but somehow not yet ready to commit. In several cases, the quality of the book -- and the commitment represented by creating one -- served as the clincher, the thing that pushed prospects off the fence and into the field of paying customers.

This, in itself, is an excellent reason to have a stack of print copies (on quality stock) on hand...

[John Fox]

@Patsi, @Jonathan, great posts... couldn't agree more.

For most CEO's, Tangibility = Credibility. PDFs are fine for those seeking immediate gratification (think: Kindle), but a printed document (on quality paper... as Jonathan mentioned) increases perceived value.

And while we marketers tend to use the terms "White Paper" and "eBook" synonymously, B2B buyers don't. Both are effective marketing tools, but each has their own place in the buying cycle.

Recent research (TechTarget's May 2009 B2B Buyer Study) ranks the most effective marketing tactics/methods for reaching B2B buyers in each of 3 buying stages (Awareness, Evaluation, Decision). White Papers and eBooks are on the list, but their rank depends upon the buying stage.

The report is lengthy (and a little confusing), so I posted my summary analysis to bottom-line it for everyone:

Here's the link:
http://marketing-playbook.com/sales-marketing-strategy/b2b-buyer-research-which-online-methods-when

John Fox
http://www.marketing-playbook.com

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