When Do You Need a White Paper?

The white paper is a powerful and versatile marketing tool. Just about every company that offers a B2B product or service can benefit from having one. If you’re the marketing manager or VP of sales for a B2B company, you may wonder if you should be using white papers.

If you are considering writing a white paper or hiring a writer, there are three key questions that you must ask about your company:

• Am I selling something new?

• Am I selling something complex?

• Am I selling something expensive?

If you can answer “Yes” to at least one of these questions, your company probably needs a white paper.

Am I selling something new?

Breakthrough technologies are hard to research.

If your company is the proprietor of a breakthrough technology, there won’t be any articles in trade magazines or in any books about it. There won’t be websites to visit, forums to consult, or trade associations to promote it.

This is a golden opportunity for a white paper to educate the market about your offering.

For example, in 2008, when Bitcoin introduced cryptocurrency to the world, a group of people going by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper, explaining a new architecture for distributed databases. This white paper set off a whole industry and had an enduring impact on the world.

Today, writers only define cryptocurrency in general terms, assuming most readers are familiar with the concept.

There are lots of resources for learning about it, whether that’s in articles, books, forums, and websites.

Nobody published white papers solely to explain cryptocurrency anymore. But, if your offering is still new to the market, then by all means, write an industry-defining white paper about it.

Am I selling something complex?

Prospective buyers need help to understand complex offerings.

If the benefits of your product, service, technology, or methodology are not obvious just from looking at it, then you should write a white paper.

Prospects sometimes struggle to grasp the core function of your product or service—especially complex ones.

For example, if you’re selling cloud computing software, it probably needs some explaining to the average user. A technical white paper would translate unfamiliar jargon into tangible benefits for the user.

Due to its perception as an influential, fact-driven medium, white papers are the ideal tool for educating prospects. These documents are fact-driven and contain useful information based on expert opinions and ironclad logic.

By explaining your product, service, technology, or methodology in an informative manner, you can educate prospects on how your solution will make their lives easier.

Am I selling something expensive?

Decision makers need extra assurance when they buy something expensive.

When a company is considering an expensive purchase, its decision makers probably involve upper management and possibly a committee selected from several departments.

Since everybody will have questions, a white paper becomes an effective way to deliver a vendor's “best answers” straight into the boardroom.

When hiring the wrong consulting firm or buying the wrong system can be a career-limiting problem, executives are cautious and they watch their pennies. Before they are ready to commit a high fee for your offering, these buyers must be absolute certain of the value that your offering provides.

For some hardware, software, and services, the typical sale can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even if your white paper only generates a few new customers, you’re still getting a great return on your investment.

To Sum it up

If you are considering a white paper, ask the following questions about your company’s offering:

• Is it new?

• Is it complex?

• Is it expensive?

If you can answer “Yes” to one of these questions, your company can benefit from using white papers. If you can answer “Yes” to two or more of these questions, your company definitely needs white papers.

If your company operates in sectors like IoT, SaaS, or Blockchain, your competitors almost certainly have white papers of their own. Also, your prospects will be expecting them. If you’re a consultant, having a white paper differentiate you from competitors in the marketplace.

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