What is a white paper

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.