White Papers

Let's not waste time. Everyone knows white papers are made to persuade. Ok, sure, there are a few corporate writers out there who still think their primary purpose is to inform. And they're right, in a sense. But most experienced freelance writers (i.e. those not in house) agree that if it doesn't move along the sales process, it doesn't belong in your company's communications.

In fact, these days, white papers appear earlier in the sales process than ever. For this reason, the number of truly technical white papers is in decline. Either way, both technical and business-benefit white papers now place great importance on benefits, and secondary importance on features.

These days, with so much commerce taking place online, the majority of distribution of white papers is digital. In terms of reason why copywriting, business-benefit white papers offer a great opportunity to offer proof, credibility, positioning, and reason why early in the sales process. This begs a quick note on long form copy.

The perennial question of how long your copy should be hangs around simply because it is the wrong question. Persistence in selling is almost a proverb. So the copy should go on until you have the sale. Forever. Like a conversation that ebbs and flows.

When they had warehouses of men on old typewriters, letters were necessarily shorter. Then, it was discovered that 8 pages sold better than 4, 12 better than 8, and so on until they couldn't close the envelope.

The internet, aka the world's cheapest printing press, makes mass distribution of content cheap and easy (for now, and relatively). These are just media. They change. How people interact with them changes. Their credibility changes, etc.

This is where a lot of marketers miss the boat. Everyone bows down to the almighty headline. And for good reason. In space ads it's a make-or-break proposition.

In direct mail, however, format trumps headline. Generally, a magalog with a weaker headline will beat a #10 with a great headline/teaser copy/etc. And a newsletter format, when used to sell a newsletter subscription, will outpull the magalog in that case.

And the web? Long copy salesletters still work, but they were, frankly, designed for direct mail. And it so happens that they are not pulling as well in the middle of this decade as they did in the beginning. But people still need to be walked (or dragged) through the entire sales process. Which necessitates the communication of benefits, proof, reason why, etc.

What does this have to do with white papers? Used carefully (no one needs another junky free report), they can inform, educate, and qualify your prospect. They offer another avenue of getting your message into the hands of your prospect, without asking them to change their internet usage habits of scanning and clicking to scroll through a single page.

I'll be putting together some tips on how to write your own white papers, after a quick blog entry on affiliate marketing. You'll learn how to write white papers that fit into your marketing system, that serve a specific purpose, and that don't take the 40 odd hours to write that professional writers usually need to devote to them.