Contents

1. Set realistic objectives for your white paper
2. Map your paper to the buying journey
3. White papers for ABM: a different buyer journey
4. Choose your tone of voice
5. Finalise your messaging before starting
6. Write a detailed brief
7. Stay on target with a project timeline
8. Capture information with interviews
9. The importance of an outline
10. Draft and review the text
11. Design the final document
12. Distribute and promote your paper
13. Why Futurity Media

1. Set realistic objectives for your white paper

You must set clear marketing objectives for your white paper – and stick to them. They are the backbone of success and will help you keep your paper on track.

Start with your audience: you’ll be targeting various levels of reader with differing job roles, who will have different degrees of influence on the purchasing decision. CFOs and CEOs may prefer visual white papers for an overall picture, whereas a techie reader will probably want more detail. Also consider who they work for: enterprise buyers, the channel, independent consultants, or vertical industries – who would be interested in how a generic solution like SD-WAN is relevant to their sector.

Ask yourself what you want to achieve with the paper, then tailor it to your audience and deliver information that is useful for them. That means understanding your audience’s challenges and demands, and then setting your paper out to solve one or more of their problems.

Once you’ve established your audience and their pain points, then you can start to think about what you want to achieve. For example, this might be actionable advice that your reader can take after reading the paper. This should include a call to action to read more content assets you have developed.

2. Map your paper to the buying journey

The primary purpose of marketing content is to facilitate sales, which means that content assets should be mapped to the buyer journey. This is traditionally thought of as a sales funnel, which leads the buyer from research and nurtures them through to buying your product or service.

At the top of the funnel is awareness, which is where you highlight a business challenge and the prospect of a technological solution. In the middle of the funnel is consideration where buyers assess whether you are a credible provider of these solutions. At the bottom of the funnel is decision, where they have established your credibility, engaged with your account teams and need final proof that you are the best fit for them.

In general, white papers are top of funnel content. They can educate your readers on how a certain type of technology can meet a business challenge, for example. Of course, not all readers of awareness assets are potential customers: they could also be competitors, journalists, prospective employees or even students. White papers can also work in the consideration phase in the shape of buying guides, which can outline different technology options, for example.

If your paper is part of a continuing campaign, how does it fit in with other collaterals? Your white paper should work in combination with other assets such as case studies and brochures. And what is your desired outcome: awareness-raising, link to another piece of content, or email capture?

3. White papers for ABM: a different buyer journey

Account-based marketing requires a slightly different approach to the traditional sales funnel because you are starting off with small number of targeted readers.

Account-based marketing (ABM) doesn’t use the traditional sales funnel approach, because only specifically identified companies go into the funnel. White paper content is still valuable, but instead of being focused on attracting and qualifying leads, marketing needs to align closely with sales and identify specific content to nurture these targets until they convert into clients.

This means that white papers for ABM can be hyper-targeted for a specific readership. For example, an ABM campaign targeting financial services companies shouldn’t just address the business challenges of that industry. It can actually directly address the challenges faced by your specific targets. These can be identified through desk research and interviews with account managers. The end goal is a white paper customised for each individual target, even if the core content remains largely the same.

4. Choose your tone of voice

Tone of voice is a key part of your brand and steers how you interact with customers. It needs to be consistent across all the assets that you produce, including white papers.

If you don’t have documented tone of voice and brand guidelines, then you should put these in place before writing your white paper. Tone of voice is an important part of how you communicate as an organization and this needs to be reflected in all the content assets that you develop. Do you want it to be contemporary or traditional? Fun and informative? Or practical and educational?

Your tone of voice should include guidelines on vocabulary, grammar and writing practices. The latter should cover length of sentences, what form or address you use with the reader and content structure. And you will need to decide on a style guide that covers questions such as capitalization, preferred words and punctuation.

While the idea is to keep your tone of voice consistent across all content formats, there should be scope to vary it across different types. For example, blogs might be direct address – as it’s the writer speaking directly to you, whereas you might want to adopt a more formal tone in a white paper. In all cases, however, it vital to focus on clarity and ensure that your content is concise. No one wants to read jargon or waffle.

5. Finalise your messaging before starting

Your white paper is an opportunity to get your marketing messages across in an authoritative document. Ensure they are in place for the topic before starting.

White papers provide an opportunity to shape the story around a technology or business challenge to suit your company’s strategy and position. Therefore, it is important that you settle on your marketing messages before starting any white paper project. This is particularly important if many different stakeholders are involved in the white paper process, so that all of them are aligned with the required messaging in advance.

Take time to create a message house before you start the white paper writing process proper. It will give your copywriter the tools they need to get your message across accurately and compellingly in the paper. Without one, the white paper process will take longer as different stakeholders might disagree with each other’s position in the review editing process. This could lead to unplanned rewrites to reflect a new position.

6. Write a detailed brief

White papers are extensive documents written over a fairly long period. A detailed brief will ensure that the final document meets your requirements.

White papers are long reads and can be complex to write, with many different concepts to cover. Writing a brief ensures that the key messages, structure and concepts you want to get across are documented in advance. This way you can check that the delivered draft is what was agreed.

The brief should include the target length, audience, guidelines on tone of voice, level of technical detail, key messages to highlight and the objective of the paper. It should also include references to relevant third-party research along with any internal messaging, presentations and existing content that would be useful in the writing process. This brief should be agreed in advance of the project.

7. Stay on target with a project timeline

White papers involve many different stakeholders. An agreed project timeline will ensure that the white paper stays on track for delivery.

After the project kick-off, one of the most important elements to agree on is the project timeline. White papers typically take a minimum of 6-8 weeks from kick-off to final PDF delivery and involve many different stakeholders in the interview, writing, design and review processes. The final delivery date will also need to fit in with any overall campaign planning, so sometimes it is better to work backwards from that date – and include some contingency.

You’ll need to get your stakeholders to commit to interview slots. These are often subject to change as your spokespeople are busy people with customer responsibilities and other work projects. They will also need to be involved in the review process along with any senior staff responsible for final sign off.

Meeting the milestones in the agreed project timeline will ensure the white paper is delivered on time. It also gives stakeholders an indication of when they will be required to review documents or speak to writers, so they can plan for it in advance. Check out our timeline graphic here.

8. Capture information with interviews

Expert interviews are at the heart of a successful white paper. Both writer and interviewee need to be prepared to get the most out of the time.

At their heart, white papers are a way to capture your organization’s expertise and harness it for marketing purposes. Therefore, choosing the right interviewees is fundamental to the success of the paper. In our experience, some of the best interviewees for white papers are pre-sales consultants, who are experienced in addressing customer challenges. But they can come from across the organization depending on the topic.

Brief both your spokespeople and your writer about the interview process. The writer will need to do their research on the topic and prepare an initial list of questions. These should be validated and shared in advance with the interviewee. This will allow the expert to be prepared and will help the interview flow.

Typically, interviews are best done on the phone to accommodate international interviewees. They will usually take an hour and its best to keep them as a single spokesperson at a time. Please ensure you record the call. The total number of interviews will depend on the topic, but three is usually enough. Too many will add complexity, increase the time needed for the interviews and extend the review process.

9. The importance of an outline

An outline summarizes the structure and key elements of the paper. It captures the information provided by the interviewees and is an opportunity to review progress.

The first step after the interviews is to produce an outline of the paper, which will list the key points and structure of the paper. The outline is an important step that will allows the writer to structure the content captured in the interviews into a coherent white paper. The outline contains bullet points, which identifies what content goes into which section. It is not an early draft, rather a list of headings and subheadings.

The outline creation stage is a good time to identify any missing content and schedule any further interviews if required to capture it. This could involve getting a new interviewee involved. Reviewing the outline will also allow you to approve any changes from the original brief, which have been asked for by the interviewees. Making these changes at this point will prevent longer delays further along the writing process.

10. Draft and review the text

Allow up to three drafting and revision cycles to sign off the text of the white paper before starting the design.

The drafting and reviewing process is iterative. After you have agreed the outline, the writer will write the first draft of the white paper. This will follow the agreed structure, contain all the key points, and include an indication of page numbering and additional elements such as sidebars, pull quotes and box outs.

Versioning is always a potential issue in white papers that have a large number of stakeholders. To prevent problems, the reviewing process should be consolidated on the client side, ideally using the Word revision functionality to mark up the document directly. This is the best way to ensure that no revisions are overlooked. Ideally a single point of contact will manage the review process and liaise with the writer. If different documents are marked up by different stakeholders, there is a possibility that some comments are contradictory or refer to text that has been changed in another version.

Based on the comments and amends provided in the marked-up draft, the writer will produce a second draft that will go through the same review process. This process will continue until the text draft has been signed off and it can be submitted to the design process. We plan for around two to three drafting cycles.

11. Design the final document

The final step is designing the document, incorporating approved imagery and using your brand style.

Design is a key part of white paper creation. A boring design can be a real turnoff for your readership and lead to your paper not being read. Use good signposting throughout and break the text up with box outs, side bars and other elements. You will also need to decide which format to use. For example, if the paper is primarily for online viewing then a landscape ebook style is best.

In addition, the white paper design needs to follow brand guidelines on font use, imagery and colours. Having clear guidelines on photographic use makes it possible to use stock photography, while still keeping a consistent look and feel. If you don’t have brand guidelines already in place for white papers, we can help you put one together.

Again, the review process is iterative. Our design team will create an initial PDF draft for review. The client team should circulate the PDF to gather consolidated comments, marked up directly on the PDF using the commenting functionality. We expect to have two to three rounds of  these changes before producing the final versions – either online only, or online and print.

12. Distribute and promote your paper

Once you have your finished white paper, the journey continues with distribution and promotion. This ensures your paper will be seen by your target audience.

White papers are often produced as part of a campaign along with other assets such as brochures, case studies and fact sheets. Typically, this will be done via email marketing using prospect and customer lists and could include additional activities such as webinars or other events. For the latter, the white paper can be used as a post-event takeaway. Most organizations will use lead scoring to validate these leads, which is based around a buyer journey of downloads.

Attracting new readers will require a distribution strategy that includes digital advertising, such as via Google AdWords, Facebook and LinkedIn. Your target audience will dictate what approach works best. For example, with AdWords you can target and refine specific searches so that you capture readers actively looking to solve the business challenges you cover in your white paper.

Why Futurity Media

We have 20 years of experience writing white papers and ebooks for leading technology companies. Our in-house team of B2B writers create compelling content that educates and persuades diverse audiences, even for the most complex topics. 

• Standalone white papers or multi-asset campaigns
• Hyper-targeted to support account based marketing campaigns
• Wide range of technology knowledge, including cybersecurity, AI, cloud, 5G, IoT, digital workplace, and SASE
• Knowledge of digital transformation in multiple industries, including finance, retail, manufacturing and natural resources
• Multidisciplinary team of designers and web developers to offer you a one-stop shop

Contact us to find out more about our white paper program at [email protected]