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Essential Ingredients for Effective White Papers

This month’s issue is the second in a series about white papers. The first article discussed the different audiences and types of white papers. This issue discusses these critical topics:

For New Subscribers

Welcome to Focus Forward, the monthly newsletter of Tim Rosa Associates. If you like what you're reading, stay with us. Each issue of Focus Forward will feature a viewpoint on a critical customer topic. We'll focus on what's happening and what's coming down the line. These are issues that you've told us keep you up at night. Though we work with clients in the technology, healthcare, and financial services industries, we hope the newsletter will be informative to all.

Establishing Your White Paper’s Goals

There are many reasons why a company would write a white paper. Depending on your business goals, one or more of the following might make sense:

• To generate leads for the sales force as part of a print or e-mail direct marketing campaign or at trade shows and events by demonstrating the advantages of your product’s underlying technology, its value to potential customers, and how this technology surpasses competitive offerings.
• To position a solution in the market and advocate a standard or trend by explaining why this new paradigm delivers value to potential customers.
• To demonstrate thought leadership and present an aura of credibility and authority in your particular market.
• To educate the media and analyst communities by providing a background document for a press release, press conference, or other news initiative.

Setting the Tone

Quality white papers contain informative and persuasive information, addressing a particular need on the part of your audience. By contrast, promotional writing that focuses on the details of a product or service is more appropriate for a product brief, data sheet, or brochure.

The goal of a white paper is to lead readers to the conclusion that your product or service provides the optimal solution to their problems and is the best choice to meet their needs. To achieve this goal, you need to make your case with your readers’ pain in mind. Remember, your readers are looking for a solution that meets their needs. The more your white paper can demonstrate a deep understanding of their business and its challenges, the more compelling your solution will appear. If, on the other hand, your white paper focuses on your company, your solution, and your feature/solution set, readers will be less able to connect their concerns with your offering.

As you might guess, this is a difficult challenge. Here are some techniques we have used at Tim Rosa Associates to add substance to white papers:

• Provide a historical overview: In the technology world, it can be helpful to discuss what has caused the modern dilemma that your solution solves. We recently wrote a white paper for a leading developer of wireless handhelds. The white paper demonstrated how busy mobile professionals have moved beyond using wireless handhelds for just reading e-mail and now require real-time, wireless access to a host of applications used throughout the enterprise. Staying in touch with e-mail is no longer sufficient; companies require extended connectivity in all areas of their businesses.
• Offer advice on best practices: Many market segments offer more solutions than customers can keep track of. With information available in so many disparate sources, collecting and consolidating data can be very useful, but this is not enough. By analyzing the data and providing industry best practices in your white paper, you can offer objective recommendations that will both inform your prospects and demystify the options.
• Provide mini case studies: If your company has customers, you can include short success stories in the white paper. Depending on your audience, you can describe how specific customers faced a business challenge and how your solution addressed their needs. Or, you can include examples from specific industries where your solution works well. Customer-to-customer messaging is a powerful form of communication.

Getting Started

With your goals in mind and an understanding of key elements to include, you can get started developing your white paper. At this point, most organizations face their most daunting challenge: identifying available, knowledgeable content providers with the experience and talent to write for the intended audience, as well as available design and research staff members to support the project. For some organizations, a combination of in-house experts and in-house full-time writing personnel can successfully juggle the responsibilities of the paper with their “day jobs” to complete the white paper. In our experience, however, most cannot. We’ve seen costly marketing campaigns stopped in their tracks because in-house staff had to rally around efforts to close the quarter.

If the white paper is intended to generate revenue next quarter by quickly and persuasively making the case for your company’s solution, time is of the essence. For software companies, by example, the content providers for a paper are busy creating the next release of the product, and aren’t necessarily able to find 20 to 40 hours of free writing time. When Marketing purchases advertising space based on expectations that a white paper will be ready, the white paper must be delivered on time to ensure that marketing investments aren’t going to waste.

If your white paper is intended to position your product or service in the market, you need in-depth competitive information and market data to paint a landscape of the market for the reader. Your marketing and product management team should be able to put their hands on the information quickly, but may find it challenging to pull it together in a readable format that speaks to a line-of-business manager, C-level executive, or technical evaluator.

When establishing your firm or your executives as thought leaders, your organization must objectively identify key market drivers and customer challenges, allowing your executives to speak directly to your customers and prospects. Despite the importance of this white paper, most executives are busy with business strategy, travel, and press and sales efforts, leaving them little time to contribute to this effort.

Summary

Writing effective white papers is a skillful balancing act between providing information to readers and persuading them that your product or service is valuable. Done correctly, a white paper can both inform and convince the intended audience. To be successful, you must ask three basic questions—what are your primary goals for the white paper, what tone and approach will suit the needs of your audience, and what resources are available to you to get it done right, the first time. With these answers in hand, you increase your chances of creating a focused and effective white paper.

Resources

Learn More

Finding the right person or company to write a white paper is not a simple task. While it might seem that the best person to write your white paper is the engineer who developed the product from scratch or the product marketer who manages the team, they simply may not have the time or expertise You need to find a trusted partner with a deep pool of seasoned writers and a proven methodology to meet the challenges your company faces. At Tim Rosa Associates, we have written hundreds of white papers for clients in the technology, healthcare, and financial services markets. Leveraging our 3-D Process—define, develop, deliver—we can write a white paper from scratch in three weeks. And, through strategic relationships with key IT media companies, we can work with you to get more exposure for your white paper and generate new revenue for your company.

Thanks for reading,
 

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