 Are you walking the fine line between information and advertising?
Whitepapers can be very helpful. They can inform potential clients—while cementing your reputation as an expert in your field. They can get passed around, shared, and even “go viral” in their own humble way. They can also stagnate on your website. What’s the difference between the good ones and the also-rans? Let’s take a look. Be greedy. This is a harder-hitting—but perhaps easier to grasp—version of our omnipresent “empathize with the audience” mandate. Put yourself in their shoes. What information are you trying to get? Why would you search for a whitepaper in the first place? The reasons are simple. You’re interested in learning about a similar organization in a similar dilemma, and how they overcame it. It’s a way of learning best practice. Note the word dilemma above. That’s key. Once you can latch onto that, you’re on your way to crafting a killer whitepaper. Which gets back to our “Be greedy” subhead. If you put yourself in the place of your target audience, you’re living the life of someone who needs good information fast, and every false click, dead end, and advertising fluff stands in your way. “What’s in it for me? I need information now!” That’s the kind of “greedy” we’re talking about. It’s not about you. Sure, your firm came to the rescue of some client in distress and saved the day. But the reader won’t empathize with you. They’ll empathize with your client. So portray all the initial daunting challenges from their perspective, not yours. Be detailed. Describe all their prior attempts, their almost-successes, and their failures. If you can paint a compelling picture of the situation, your reader will stay with you for the entire whitepaper—which you can’t assume otherwise. And that’s important, because you won’t sell until you get to the close. Tell a story. What was the path that this client took? What was their challenge when you worked with them? What were the steps you took to help them? Why? Don’t make the ending—or for that matter, any part of the story—feel like a foregone conclusion. Every decision that was made was important. But it was also suspenseful. Any wrong decisions could have been costly. What were the stakes? As you can hopefully appreciate, your whitepaper’s tale is more exciting than you probably expected. Avoid platitudes. “Costs were reduced and efficiencies were improved.” Snooze. Every whitepaper will make the same claim. Differentiation lies in the details. Keep it short. We’ve seen 30-page whitepapers. Has anyone read them besides their author? Doubtful. Again, if you keep the “greedy” bias in mind, it will help you contain the length of the piece to a reasonable, single sitting. Craft your CTA with care. By its very name—“whitepaper,” and not “advertorial” or “promotional brochure”—it’s supposedly not an overt sell-piece. That’s a conceit that everyone more or less buys into it. But don’t regard it as a constraint. See it as an opportunity. If you can humbly position your firm as the story’s savior, you’ll get a lot more respect—and business—than you would via chest-pounding. Respect the venue. If you turn off your reader with a hard-sell call-to-action (CTA), you may never get him or her back. Consider using a cost-effective outside resource. Following the above best-practice guidelines will maximize your odds of success. But if the prospect seems daunting, consider feeding your thought-leading ideas to an expert writing source, and freeing up more of your time for core activities. Fortunately for you, we have the unique combination of consulting, marketing, and creative skills which have let us help independent consultants and boutique agencies to boost their billing for more than 15 years. Best of all, we’re fast, efficient, and surprisingly affordable, given the value we provide. Contact us right now and let’s talk about growing your business as quickly and productively as possible.
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