You probably would have come across number whitepapers in your lifetime. We all know that Whitepapers are intended to be utilized a marketing instrument especially to engage the consumer or customer with (hopefully) relevant information which will help to make up their mind in the whole purchase process.
What I want to discuss is that there are good whitepapers and there are bad whitepapers. The proof is in the pudding, meaning it’s the content! Over the last few years, I have written number of them for clients. Based on my experience here are 3 tips which will enable you to some engaging content for your target audience:
- Interview industry leaders with a good LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn is a great tool to get some really good contacts who can be interviewed. You might find many internal candidates too! So the trick is that you need to plan this. For sure, you need to prepare your interview questions but considering each question as a section of a whitepaper. Next is to conduct and record the interview. You can do it over the phone, over skype/zoom, or even catch up for a coffee. I would probably stick to five to six questions. Once done you can switch the transcript into a whitepaper.
If you want to go one step further, interview about five thought leaders on the identical topic. This will give you some good insights and also provide you with several quotes.
- Contact the sales team
Sometimes we forget about what we have. Meaning, your sales and customer service team have a wealth of knowledge, use this. Regularly you will find them answering common questions from lots of prospects. I would probably sit with a handful and collect the top 10 FAQs and how they respond to these. Document them and you will find some good content to make up a few whitepapers.
Points to note:
Just to reiterate, the idea of a whitepaper is to promote a certain product, service, technology or methodology, and to stimulate buyers’ interest and justify their decisions.
It is true that your website, flyers and other marketing materials might be impressive and include your regular sales pitches, a whitepaper, on the other hand, should be designed to offer convincing and realistic suggestions that your offerings are superior and/or your method of resolving an issue well accepted by the industry.
There has been a lot of discussion as to how long should your whitepaper be. I would suggest that your whitepapers should be around 2500 to 3000 words in length. Keep in mind that whitepapers that are written in an academic style give it a serious look which will probably please the prospective client.
Chintan is the Founder and Editor of Loyalty & Customers.
