A white paper is usually a 5-15 page document used to educate industry customers about your company, its products or services. It lets the reader know why they should choose you and your company and that you have the products or knowledge to solve their problems, current and future. A white paper should explain what you are good at and cement your position in the market place. It should let them know what makes you stand out from the competition. And
finally, the opportunities you can provide potential customers and the costs they might incur if they do not consider you.
When done well, a White Paper is a powerful sales marketing tool.

A White Paper is NOT

• a thinly disguised product brochure
• a sales letter
• a sales pitch
• a document to teach your customer about every feature or bell or whistle in your product.

What to keep in mind when writing a white paper is that nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill, they wanted a hole. Therefore, if you sell drills, you should give them information on making holes, not about drills! Let them know you know your product and why you offer it.

That’s the core idea. Now how you can use white papers to promote your business.

It only alludes to those things to make the reader curious enough to talk to you.

Example:

You have developed a system or product that can migrate all of the information from a database on one computer system to a different database format on a different system, this can be an extremely complex and time-consuming process. In this scenario you would publish a paper issues involved in doing this: Preparation, Compatibility, and Structure, all the things that the management team would have to consider when working out timescales, cost and impact on sales of such a move.

This white paper should teach the customer how to do those things themselves, but in the process, should also demonstrate how complex it is. They see you have the expertise and give you the contract. As one of the points stated earlier, it was not a sales pitch; you actually told them how to do it. But you got the sale.

When you give information like this in your white papers you are seen as a problem solver not a salesman, and your credibility as a quality source of information grows. And you will not get the door slammed in your face when you try to talk to that person in the future.

Study your audience

The Cardinal Sin in all business writing is to be Boring! So you have to start with something that will interest the reader, your audience. The cimoany financier needs to know why he should spend his money with your company when another is offering a similar product for half the price. The development engineer is interested in the price, just if it will serve his purpose.

You need to know who is going to read the document and why, what is on their mind. Once you know that just answer their question and you have them hooked.

Structure and style

The structure of the document should rarely change. Define the problem, address the problem and then tell the reader what to next. The style has to be not only readable but a compelling read. Be wary of using metaphors or humour if there is a chance of the white paper being read by readers of nationalities other than your own, they might not understand it or worse still they might find the comments offensive.
If you have any third-party (not customer quotes) evidence that can support the claims you are making in the white paper use them.

And don’t forget the summary, use it wisely and include a “Call to action” for the reader