How to write a white paper that will help you sell

With content creation becoming increasingly important, white papers are something that you’ve perhaps been considering writing to help promote a product or service that you offer.

A good white paper can convince a customer that you are aware of the problems they face, have an ideal business or consumer solution, show you are a thought leader and help to sell more products and services.

They can also be a great exercise in writing long copy, particularly if you’re looking to expand and diversify the types of content you’re sending out. We recently launched a series of our own white papers, but here are some steps you can go through to come up with your very own white paper for your business.

Executive Summary Like a lot of long content, a high number of people will read the intro and either skip to the end or stop reading altogether, so it’s vital that you outline a genuine problem that is of concern to your core target market, and encourage them to continue reading.

Your executive summary should tell the story of your whitepaper and the areas you intend to cover. Give them the overall problem that your whitepaper addresses, some key facts, and how the product you sell can help with solving that problem.

However, be careful not to wax lyrical about your brand yet, that will come later. Tell them about the product or service type first. For example, if you’re selling office chairs that prevent back pain, don’t tell the reader about your own version yet, tell them the benefits of investing in back pain preventing office chairs in general.

Problem definition Start by outlining the specific problem that you can solve for your customers. There has to be a clear topic and line of argument for your whitepaper, otherwise there is no point starting.

Go back to basics and think about what your product or service does, what problem does it solve and why people would buy it in the first place. Use wider talking points to draw the reader in and explain exactly what the issue is.

You might want to use stats to prove your points. For example, if you are making health food products you might start by quoting local or national obesity levels to truly frame the issue and give people reason to continue reading.

Your intro must entice the reader to discover more. Be careful to outline all the problems that your product or service solves so that later you can highlight every USP and unique feature that you have.

High-level solution Once you have fully explained the problem, it is time to introduce the reader to the solution. However, don’t start selling yet (the selling part is coming, I promise). In this section, carefully explain that by investing in the product or service type that you provide, the reader can solve their problem.

Taking our previous examples of office chairs that help prevent back pain or health foods, our key arguments in the high-level solution will explain that good office chairs can fight back pain and reduce the amount of employee claims, or effective dieting help someone change their diet to lose weight.

At this stage, you're still trying to convince people to consider buying anything, so don't try and close the deal yet. Imagine that your customer is just browsing or walking past your shop - they're not inside it yet. The aim of this part of the whitepaper is to get them to stop browsing and get them inside the store so you can start to sell your product to them.

In a competitive market place, you first need to convince people to stop "just browsing" before you start selling to them Your solution Ok, they're inside - now you can start selling. Fully outline all the key features and benefits of your own brand and product to the reader to convince them that of all the choices available, you are the best.

However, avoid empty claims and superlatives – you need to show them why yours is the best, not just tell them. Carefully address each point you made in the problem definition and explain how your product or service solves each one of them.

Differentiate yourself from your competitors here too, and highlight USPs to demonstrate that you are ideally placed to help solve the problems that you highlighted earlier. If you have stats to prove the effectiveness of your product, use them here; if not, thoroughly solve the customer’s problem by showing what you can do for them.

The conclusion Many readers will skip straight to this part, so it’s important that you cover all the key points, stats and arguments that you have raised, as well as the benefits and key features that make your product or service stand out from the crowd.

One of the best pieces of advice I got for this segment of a white paper was to write the summary as if it were a standalone document. Cover the best parts of all the other sections you have written and roll them into this area. You might want to consider a call to action or incentive for the reader at this point as well, so that once they are done reading, you actually get them to sign up or buy something. White papers as part of your content marketing strategy

There has never been a sharper focus on content as part of a marketing strategy than right now, and as a result, different types of content, like white papers, are becoming more and more important. White papers can easily be used as effective and genuine content for SEO, PR, branding and sales perspectives, meaning that they are both useful and versatile.

Have you ever written a white paper?
What do you think are the key benefits of content such as this?

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