Five FAQs about Whitepapers
Investopedia defines a whitepaper as "an informational document issued by a company to promote or highlight the features of a solution, product, or service,"
A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution. They're advanced problem-solving guides. The goal of a whitepaper is to inform and persuade based on facts and evidence, not tell the world why people need to buy your product/service right now. They are academic papers of marketing content. Readers expect a high degree of expertise backed by solid research that is fully documented by references.
Many people create whitepapers as a resource that their customers and prospective clients can use to become better equipped and knowledgeable about their industry and the more likely they are to work with the organization that gave them the whitepaper.
What Is a Whitepaper Not?
A product pitch.
How Are Whitepapers Different From Blog Posts and eBooks?
Writing blog posts and eBooks can take anywhere between a few hours and a few weeks - a good whitepaper can take between a few weeks and a few months to write and polish. They're much more serious in tone, and more heavily researched than blog posts and eBooks.
How Do You Create a Whitepaper?
There are no minimum requirements for whitepapers. Here's what a fantastic whitepaper looks like:
Length: No fewer than six pages, including illustrations, charts, and references. Can be upwards of 50 if the topic requires that much detail. (Chances are, it won't.)
Structure: There is usually a title page, table of contents, short executive summary (optional but helpful), introduction, several pages educating the reader about the problem, several pages hypothesizing a solution, several pages offering an example of a company that used that solution to achieve results, and a conclusion.
Density: Denser than an eBook. Whitepapers aren't usually easy to skim -- in fact, readers usually need to read them over more than once to get every morsel of information out of it.
Format: PDF in portrait orientation (8.5" by 11").
Style: Professional, serious, well written, and well-edited. Hiring a graphic designer to design page layout, images, fonts, and colors can really help.
Whitepapers for Lead Generation
So, if whitepapers are so boring, why do marketers create them? They help to build credibility and trust with your readers. People who choose to download whitepapers are often quite far into the customer buying cycle so you can obtain better quality of inquiries.
Whitepapers have a long history and their uses have continued to change. And sometimes, an eBook is the better way to share your in-depth content online. Either way, this is the kind of work the team here at EMARI love - direct message me for some of our latest examples. They're not as expensive to create as you think! Want to find out more? Let’s get started