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– – Ultimate Guide to WhitePaper – –

Chapter 1: Why Should you care about WhitePaper

For CopyWriters
For Marketers and Business

Chapter 3: Is Creating White Papers Easy?

Chapter 4: Does it Need Working Experience B2B Copywriting?

Chapter 5: Reasons Why White Papers have Such Huge Demand

Chapter 6: How to Get the Most of Whitepaper Investment?

Chapter 7: What to do before Writing Whitepaper?

Define Target Audience
Interview the Clients
Research
Structuring White Paper

Chapter 8: Other Tips and suggestions

Chapter 9: How to Promote Sharing?

Why should you care about WhitePaper?

1. For CopyWriters!

When it comes to copywriting, we often end up with common marketplaces like health, financial, self-help and nonprofit. You can also carve a great living as an expert at a unique domain. Several copywriters start writing auto-responder copy as a very fulfilling and profitable niche.

Currently, we are going to discuss yet another niche opportunity of the same kind – white paper writing. It takes around 30 to 50 hours to write a white paper, according to the amount of research required and complexity of the topic.

Typically, the cost of writing a white paper is around $2500 for each white paper. The figure rises as per the skills of a marketer. When you exceed your fourth white paper, you may ask for $4000 per paper. After a year, you may charge up to $5000 for each white paper. The more you do, better and faster you can get with it. You can write at least 3 to 4 white papers per month.

2. For Marketers & Business!

Whitepapers are the best solution to introduce latest technology innovations and products. It is the best tool to consult businesses to gain business. It can assist influencers or decision-makers to decide and implement a specific solution.

Along with driving sales and creating leads, they are used to promote a company along with its services and products. In addition, it can aid in developing credibility in the market and establish the company as a leader.

In order to get started with WhitePaper Marketing, here’s the quick overview of what’s needed and whitepaper marketplace.

About Whitepaper

A whitepaper is actually a document that both persuade and educates. It triggers the issue and provides a solution. It is a content marketing solution used extensively in a B2B market.

The length of whitepapers is around 5 to 10 pages. You have to get viewpoints considering the problems and solutions in creating a whitepaper as a content marketing consultant.

Is Creating White Papers Easy?

Despite the potential of making huge money, whitepaper writing is something which takes a lot of effort. You should be a part investigator and part writer. It is very important to do research on the job.

You will be spending most of your time digging up the facts and scanning through the data. You also have to be comfortable interviewing the experts both inside and out. You should have the ability to ask right questions to reveal the answer. You have to write in informal, easy style. But it should be an informational document with a more objective view.

Does It Need Working Experience in B2B Copywriting?

Though it is not always important, it is strongly needed. You have to write a copy which can connect with the audience. If you have experience in B2B copywriting, you can easily understand the B2B requirements of your client. The Direct Marketing Association reports that B2B companies annually spend around $55 billion on Business-to-business marketing. It is a $6 trillion industry these days. When people learn to copywriter, they initially consider B2C (Business-to-Customer) segment. So, for the B2B industry it is difficult to find an experienced copywriter.

Reasons Why White Papers Have such Huge Demand

According to a B2B Magazine research, around 1/3^rd of the budget of the marketer is spent on content creation and half of it on white papers. There are currently 240,000 B2B companies operating in the US alone, with a workforce of around 50 employees.

The simple reason behind so much demand is that they are used by the companies to work more efficiently. According to an Eccolo Media study, whitepapers are moderately or very influential for 84% of businesses in their buying decisions. According to 77% of businesses, they read more than one white paper earlier this year to make business decisions.

White papers are also found to be very important for marketing. Around 89% of businesses share white papers with others.

How to Get the Most of Whitepaper Investment?

Create Whitepaper as Your Content Marketing Strategy – Make sure your whitepaper fulfills the following objectives –

Gaining leadership in an aspect which matches with the direction of your products.
Dealing with the major pain points of a specific persona.
Owning popular search on Google
Exceeding the audience needs in buying cycle

Optimize Repurpose and Reuse of Content – Creating high quality and relevant whitepaper is a non-trivial task. Just creating it, is not enough. You need to promote the company, get it behind a landing page, and move towards another major project. Using the content marketing framework is the best way to get the most your bucks on whitepaper.

Market Yourself – After investing all your effort and time to create a white paper, you have to put your effort in its promotion. You should optimize the content to drive traffic. Connect with all your external and internal teams to enter into all the possible promotion channels, including newsletters, social media, search engine marketing, and email programs, cross-promotion along with other assets. You can align with field marketing, social media, digital marketing, agency partners and marketing communications.

Measure ROI – You will never know the Returns on Investment until it is measured. There are several marketing platforms that can measure leads generated, social shares, leads crossed, pipeline exceeded, pipeline generated and revenue influenced.

What to Do Before Writing Whitepaper?

1. Define Target Audience

You should know your target audience before writing a compelling white paper. Know all the potential readers beforehand. Usually, their needs are also very important.

Suppose it’s about writing any accounting program, a CEO will need to know whether it can improve ROI and an Accounting Manager will want to find out whether it has great tech support and easy to understand.

2. Interview the Clients

Ask the best and responsible people in your client company to interview. Ask for the names that may help you speak with. Do your research online to find out who can help you and be interested to discuss the Topic with you.

3. Research

Search for other white papers, analyst reports, case studies, and industry articles. Check out the white papers, competition’s site, and news releases.

4. Structuring White Paper

Read on to complete each section of your whitepaper. Take a deep insight on each area given below –\Whether a white paper is exceptional or so-so depends upon the title. Take your time crafting the title so well that it can grab the attention of your readers and make them read and share it.

Review these questions while brainstorming to prepare for the title –
- What are the major needs, pain points, and interests you should address?
- What is your target niche?
- Why your audience should read your whitepaper?
- What are the major search terms you want to target?
Bold title to grab attention – Make sure your title represents what your audience will actually get. Focus on the needs of your audiences, not your own will. Skip buzzwords and stick to easy and clear language, unless it’s a highly technical niche. Stick to standards but don’t lose the opportunity to make your whitepaper stand out.
Make it SEO friendly – Use tools like Google Keywords Planner to find out the most searched phrases and words. Your title should be short and to the point. Take your time to create more meaningful, shorter title.
Analyze the Successful Titles in Your Industry – Find out which kinds of titles have seen most success, i.e. from the competitors, through social shares and Google search ranking. Also, assess the aspects that made them stand apart.

It gives yet another way for you to grab the attention of the readers and convince them to read your whitepaper. Like the title, you also have to take time making a concise, clear and to-the-point abstract.

Write abstract after completing the whitepaper.
Create your abstract in a direct structure, and add most attractive findings, recommendations, and insights.
Keep it simple and short, i.e. up to 150 to 250 words.
Add Call to Action link to the complete white paper and save as PDF.
Ask someone, especially those who have keen eye for detail and who knows your audience very well, to read your abstract and review.

After creating the attractive abstract and title, your readers can easily get into your story. Basically, the introduction is another level from the abstract. It is the way to introduce your readers to the issue, pain or need which is the basis of the whitepaper and relevant solution. All you need to grab the attention of your audience and lure them to read more.

Within a just first sentence, you need to grab your visitor’s attention. Be sure to make the best first impression. Use a bold or controversial statement.
Set up the need, problem or main points up front.
Provide extra detail in the abstract but don’t get into more detail. Save specifics for further sections.
Indicate objectives of white paper and what is to be added in given aspects. Your audience can go through your thought process when you provide structure or map in the introduction.

Make an outline before the beginning of writing process and it can take form as the table of contents. With this outline, you can get a map and the trails to stay on the actual path to meet the objectives. This way, you can ensure that your content and messaging are correct and information flows with ease.

Here’s how to get the ideal starting point –

Don’t Skip the Outline – It is the very first step. Never skip the process of making an outline. It takes time and delays the process of writing. But it can save a lot of your time in the long run and have a better end product.
Fulfill Your Audience Needs – It is important to create a white paper based on the interests, needs and major points of the readers. Consider the non-egoistic approach to creating your content.
Connect with Team to Create Outline – As the key to create a white paper, it is important to modify your course instead of changing direction after writing the paper. Add the team members as part of the review and development of outline.
Plan on Revisions – It is very iterative to create an outline. Be sure to modify the design in the process.
Make it Flexible – Though the outline is supposed to be the blueprint or map of the whitepaper, be sure to make it flexible so you can adjust the outline once you start writing.
Map out subsections and sections – Break up your text into various sections, such as subheads and section headers in each section. It improves readability and your reader can easily skim along the document and read sections more easily.

Problem/Background

In this section, you have to give an overview of the whitepaper. You can expand more on overview and define the problem or background.

Here’s what you can answer here –

What are the key challenges for individuals and companies?
What’s going on in the market these days? What are current trends?
What are the main things and problems, or needs?
How addressing such main things, problems or needs may benefit you? By answering this question, your readers will be able to understand the solution and keep reading it.
What can models and/or frameworks be used to enhance understanding of the readers?
What can data points help support the questions?

The Solutions

In this section, you can get into the specifics of possible solutions.

Introduce the possible solutions, with a clear framework or model, and clear definition.
A detailed description of each aspect of the solution – Use the required subcategories to attract readers to draw unique boundaries between several aspects of the solution. With the help of subcategories, your audience can easily absorb the content and go through your thought process.
Be specific to the benefits of solutions – Mention how it impacts your audience specifically.
Target solutions to various segments to improve the relevancy of your content.
Provide real world and specific examples to justify the solution. You can give another way to connect with various segments of the audience. You should provide cases based on three different personas of buyers.
Create table and figure as a specific sheet to help your readers visualize the solution. With the help of this sheet, you can help your readers.

Verdict

So you have been told what you want to share in the introduction, abstract, outline and what you want to tell in problem and solution sections.

In conclusion, you can summarize the objectives of your white paper, review the problem, and highlight the solutions and how it can help your audience. Be specific about how it can address your problem. Then, you have to finish it off using a bold statement, such as how they can find out new solutions themselves, chances for future solutions, and where they can get other resources and information.

Other Resources

Here, you have to provide the list of resources available to your audience. It may have resources sourced from the white paper.

Other Tips & Suggestions

Coloring/Formatting – Create a consistent theme based on your logo color. Use more attractive colors for section headers. Use a shade of gray or a softer version for the subheading. Use the same colors in all the highlighted elements of white paper like Graphs, Charts, or Figures.
Editing/Grammar – Your whitepaper should undergo various quality checks by using various editors. Once your white paper is downloaded by someone, making further edits doesn’t make sense. Correct grammar and spelling beforehand to secure the credibility of your organization.
Ethical Curation – Follow the best and ethical practices to curate content. Take only a small part of the content to link back to the original source and add your own annotation.

How to Promote Sharing?

White papers are used most probably as a way to attract people to register for the newsletter of your company. For doing this, a landing page is also required to represent another opportunity. To promote sharing, some businesses may offer it as a free download on their blog or website.

Keep looking for new opportunities – The demand for appealing a well-curated white paper outperforms the availability of freelance copywriters and white paper specialists. Therefore, White Paper Writers are an exclusive community. They might charge and cost you a lot more than a normal piece of Content but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

At Growth Pixel, we can help grow your clientele by creating an attractive white paper for you. We are the leading content marketing company in India specializing in digital marketing and online selling services. As a content marketing agency, we can help you grow your business and promote your products with whitepaper writing solutions.

Ultimate Guide for Preparing a White Paper