Sharon's Marketing Missive

Yes, I admit it. I’m weird. I’m a copywriter who loves writing whitepapers. Is it because I spend too much time alone and my mind is warped? Is it the wet Seattle weather? Or maybe my hours spent as an SEO copywriter has damaged my perspective?

Nah. It’s none of those things. I enjoy working on whitepapers because they are such great sales tools, and because they give me as a copywriter the chance to really delve into the customer’s mindset.

I just got off the phone with one of my favorite copywriting clients. We are about to do three whitepapers around a new product launch, so this morning’s call was to get me ramped up. But we don’t spend all our time talking about how the product can do A, B and C. No, I as the copywriter want to know what to say based not on the product’s capabilities (what it can do) but rather based on the customer’s worldview (what do they want).

I get to learn about, and write to, their pain points, desires, daily frustrations and wish lists in a way I can’t do when a copywriter for ads or direct mail pieces.

The benefit for you as the marketer is the appeal of the whitepaper because it’s customer centric. The potential customer who downloads your whitepaper is pretty sure he or she is going to get mostly factual, useful information, not a 5-page sales pitch. That’s a feel good in your favor as the company they might buy from!

And crazy as I might sound, I think whitepapers are easy to write! They are straightforward and objective. They don’t require clever turns of phrase or picturesque verbosity. They are what they are.

I’ve also written enough whitepapers, and studied information about writing whitepapers, to have a structure I use pretty much every time. That’s how straightforward it is.

Plus they can be about a variety of topics. I started out writing whitepapers for high tech only, but over the years We Know Words copywriters have even written whitepapers for the corporate travel industry, and we wrote a series of banner ads and landing pages for a whitepaper written for the HR industry.

Whitepapers. They rock. For the copywriter and the customer both. Are you using them as part of your marketing mix?

To see a bit more about whitepapers written by We Know Words copywriters, go to http://weknowwords.com/whitepapers.htm.

Hmmm… I love them so much, my next blog topic might just be on how whitepapers help you date your prospects and customers!