White papers are the academically-inclined older cousins to blog posts. Despite lending a vessel to showcase your business’s expertise, specificity, and credibility, this high-conversion tool is often underestimated. This type of long-form content allows businesses to demonstrate a deep understanding of a complex industry topic. They’re also great for ongoing efforts to share recent developments and trends. But if your business isn’t leveraging white papers, these are the bottom-line-boosting benefits you could be missing.

White Papers Enhance Your Business Credibility and Authority

Establishing credibility in your industry is a big stone in your marketing crown. The better your business’ knowledge and authority on an industry subject, the more your customers will trust your brand. The more trust you build with your prospects, the more brand awareness you build and leads you generate.

There’s a White Paper Strategy for Every Business Model

You might think that white papers are better suited for technical fields, scientific industries, or healthcare. But a white paper is a goldmine for any business model. And you can develop a white paper strategy that fits your goals using some of the various types of white paper structures.

Create your company white paper strategy in any of these directions:

• Original research analysis presents the results of a company research study (such as an internal review or a customer survey.)
• How-to’s or walkthroughs of a specific issue or problem your company offering can solve.
• Problem-solution style helps highlight your company’s solutions or approaches to common industry problems.
• Trend reports develop industry discussions and ignite conversations about your industry, with your brand as the thought leader.

They Help Establish Your Company as a Thought Leader

Your company’s position as a thought leader means you’re a primary source of insight and information within an industry. White papers will show your strong working knowledge of industry research, issues, and techniques, which creates enhanced customer loyalty. High-quality white papers also offer valuable analysis of industry topics, issues, and needs, allowing your company to publicize research-backed insights and solutions.

A Platform for Original Research

These long-form content assets can also be a vehicle to integrate original research or case studies online. Publishing original research is particularly helpful for B2B content to support discussions and present novel and data-driven strategies. The Content Marketing Institute found that 51% of B2B marketers used eBooks and white papers last year. They grab an audience’s attention in a sea of duplicate content noise from lower-quality content posts and help your company gain a competitive edge as a subject authority.

Support and Direct Your Business Strategy

Business strategies need some degree of fluidity, but sometimes fluidity needs to turn into a solid pivot point. Showcasing new technologies, products, or methods within white papers opens up doorways to shift content and communication focus more sharply compared to other types of content while still staying true to branding. White papers act like a guiding framework in this capacity for building new messaging and communications strategies or introducing new products.

Fill Any Knowledge Gaps and Scale Your Content

Companies can use white papers to fill audiences’ knowledge gaps while helping scale online content production. Information that doesn’t quite fit into a blog series or needs more in-depth curation than an email can be effectively shared in a white paper format. 

Filling knowledge gaps can look a bit like this:

• Informing stakeholders about new product developments or market shifts.
• Introducing a new product concept as a research-backed solution to an industry problem.
• Act as a teaser for larger company campaigns.

Be an Industry Beacon – Stand Out!

White papers increase brand awareness and overall visibility for your company. The detailed nature of a white paper reinforces the value your company offers to the industry space. It helps differentiate your company from the competition by serving nuanced and unique perspectives, insights, and solutions. Engaging the audience with in-depth information also reinforces customer loyalty and helps convert new leads already researching the topic.

Essential for Targeted Marketing and Sales Support

White papers can have an air of exclusivity to them and can even be used as a standalone marketing tool. Some ways to use white papers more aggressively in a marketing strategy include:

• Build an email list by offering an exclusive white paper to those who sign up or download your assets.
• Contract with other companies to offer your white papers to supplement industry webinars or CEU opportunities.
• Long-form, keyword-rich white paper content on your company website improves search rankings.
• Support your sales teams with white papers as persuasive sales tools.
• Answer industry-specific questions to increase organic traffic to your website.

What Makes a Great White Paper?

Including white papers in your content and marketing strategies is one thing, but ensuring this content is captivating, informative, and thoroughly researched is another. White papers often contain information from academic-style articles, including peer-reviewed research publications. Depending on the industry, translating complicated concepts to something more digestible is crucial in this content development.

Key differences in white papers vs. other content:

• They’re naturally authoritative, and the tone is often more objective, informative, and persuasive than friendly or casual.
• They often include more data, statistics, and uncommon information.
• They’re typically over 1,500 words in length to accommodate the in-depth nature of the featured topics.

Just Let Dez Write Your Company White Papers

White papers are an often overlooked type of content that could be missing from your lineup. But we can help! Let us help you leverage the many benefits, including in-depth insights, boosted SEO, and industry thought leadership.

Let’s chat, and then Just Let Dez Write It.