White paper can better be seen as important collateral that can help in generating leads for your business. Though, the main purpose of white paper is to help a company generate sales, still it should not be misinterpreted with any kind of sales brochure. Unlike sales brochure, the purpose of white paper is not to sell rather educate potential customers; giving them good solutions on solving their business problems effectively. Let’s have a look on few of the points to write compelling white papers that are sure to give a boost on the marketing efforts of your business:
1. Start with knowing your audience: To begin with, it is very important to determine prospective customers. There might be different roles of these customers in their respective organizations and you need to know their type before writing a white paper. For instance, Business White papers could be meant for CEO’s whereas Technology WP is useful for CTO.
2. Understanding the purpose: As stated in the beginning of this document, the main purpose of a WP is to educate your potential customer and telling the best solution for their business related problems. In that manner, you are preparing a White Paper to motivate your customer to take action. Here you need to take care you should try to motivate and not force to sell anything. By that way, you step into the position of a partner, which in turn helps you enjoy more trust and credibility, thereby allowing you win the confidence and trust of your customer directly.
3. Keep central message in your mind: Once the task of audience determination is done along with its purpose, now you should think of the central message. You should try to find out what exactly is the bottom line message of your White paper that you are trying to concentrate on. For instance, you may write White Paper talking about: (a) Important trend’s implication in the industry of the client, (b) describing the functionality of the solution and the manner in which it could solve the business problems, (c) demonstrating thought leadership by suggesting a new method of doing any task, (d) showcasing the implementation of your proposed solution and is benefits, (e) comparing your solution which the solution proposed by your competitor. Considering these points, you will be able to ascertain the central message of your White Paper.
4. Ascertaining the type of White Paper: After you are done with the central message, now you need to know the type of WP that could suit your message effectively. WP’s are typically of 5 types: (a) Functionality description White paper, (b) WP related to industry trends, (c) Proof solution WP, (d) WP eliminating competitor’s competition, (e) Thought Leadership WP. It is important to ascertain the type since each of these types has their own structure with different writing styles.
5. Preparing an outline: The message flow is determined by the WP’s outline. Basically table of content is termed as outline. If the outlines are effectively developed, they result in pursuing customer go through the next section with good impact. Also, it is essential to bear in mind, all prospective customers may not go through the complete WP and so it is important that each section is developed carefully. This will help in making sense without any support of other section.
6. Finalize the content: Once you have the table of content, next step is to think about your content. You are required to find out the headings and start writing points against them.
7. Start with writing content of your White Paper: Now, you are ready to start a compelling White Paper, wherein you persuade, excite and even motivate your prospective customer. Here it is important to talk about facts, without criticizing competition. Again, your purpose is to educate and not sell.
8. Chapter headings’ localization: The chapter headings need to be interesting. For instance, heading “Improve sales by good White Paper” is better heading than “Sales Improvement”.
9. Giving meaningful title to your WP: A meaningful title is a soul of the document. It must contain a statement that readers are willing to read.
10. External information: It is good to add external information like the quotes of the customer, product reviews of the external sources, quantifiable benefit statements and research agencies’ performance data. These all result in adding credibility to the WP.
11. Mark the closing with Call to Action: It is mandatory to have call to action at the end of the WP. If the information is good enough, prospective customers are more likely to inquire more and this will convert into a lead for business.
12. Get Review, publish it and start sharing: As soon as the White Paper is ready, you need to get an expert’s review on it. It is really important that are no Spelling and Grammar errors and it follows a compelling tone. Now publish it, and propagate it through mails and other sources.
If you wish to get White Papers developed from experts feel free to get in touch. Remember, if you are not doing marketing properly, then you are leaving the chance for your competitors to eat away your market. Hurry before you lose customers!