White Papers For Your Company

White papers are a unique solution to a marketing challenge:

• Are you looking for a new way to promote your company?
• You have a product but need to have an information launch before you sell the product?

An interesting and well-written white paper can sometimes do a better job of promoting your business than ads, emails, cold calling, and other methods of marketing.

A white paper is a combination of a technical treatise and a newspaper-style article. It has the purpose of informing your readers about a problem, the issues around the problem, and some of the solutions.

When it is properly written, a white paper can also transform the readers into prospects- i.e. potential clients.

One of the major reasons why it is so effective in the marketing world is because white papers are associated much more with technical treatises and so people generally see them as information documents as opposed to sales letters.

Therefore this is a great marketing weapon in a world where people are sick and tired of being salespitched to death. The white paper can “fly under the radar” of people who press “delete” or drag to the trash at the first indication of any sort of sales pitch, simply because they are looking at this as information and not as a sales pitch.

A well-written paper needs to hold a delicate balance between:

• the emotional language to strike a chord with the reader, and
• the very sterile but necessary technical background information and descriptions to properly inform your readers of the situation or problem behind your product or service.

Then as part of the solution your product or service can be quietly slipped in. Or the white paper very smoothly brings about the most “natural” conclusion which is to use your product or services.

There is a natural sequence to creating an effective white paper:

1. Research your business, profession, or product that you wish to let others know about that will be the topic of the white paper.
2. Gather together all the relevant information to provide the necessary content for the white paper.
3. Write the document according to the standards of white papers- i.e. what most people expect from a them, leading the reader through various stages of understanding, and in very subtle way conclude with a call to action at the end- pick up the phone, check out a website, etc.
4. Establish different ways to effectively market your white paper, online or offline, to build up interest that will lead to sales. Examples include snail mailings, Pay-per-click marketing, and emails.

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