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What Is a White Paper? [FAQs]

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What Is a White Paper? [FAQs]

The definition of a whitepaper varies heavily from industry to industry, which can be a little confusing for marketers looking to create one for their business.

The old-school definition comes from politics, where it means a legislative document explaining and supporting a particular political solution.

In tech, a whitepaper usually describes a theory behind a new piece of technology. Even a business whitepaper can serve a variety of uses and audiences — some more product-focused than others. And although it is put together like an ebook, the two are written quite differently.

→ Download Now: 36 Free Ebook Templates

We’re here to arm you with the best definition of a whitepaper in the context of business and what to do (and not do) as you create one. This article covers: 

What Is a Whitepaper?

A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution.

Marketers create whitepapers to educate their audience about a particular issue, or explain and promote a particular methodology. They’re advanced problem-solving guides. Typically, whitepapers require at least an email address for download (usually they require information more than that), making them great for capturing leads.

What Isn’t a Whitepaper?

A product pitch.

Although Investopedia defines a whitepaper as “an informational document issued by a company to promote or highlight the features of a solution, product, or service,” be warned that overtly shilling your own stuff could turn off your readers.

The goal of a whitepaper is to inform and persuade based on facts and evidence, not tell the world why people need to buy your product right now.

How Are Whitepapers Different From Blog Posts and Ebooks?

Speaking of what a whitepaper isn’t … if you’re looking for a quick and interactive way to present your value to the industry, a whitepaper is not your only option. There are also ebooks and blog posts — both of which have various differences from a whitepaper.

What really set these products apart are the size, appearance, and time commitment of each one. Whereas writing blog posts and ebooks can take anywhere between a few hours and a few weeks, a good whitepaper can take between a few weeks and a few months to write and polish. They’re less flashy, much more serious in tone, and more heavily researched than blog posts and ebooks.

Let me show you a comparison. The set below is one of our own ebook templates (which you can get for free here). It’s a thorough but simple read:

Cover of a free ebook template offered by HubSpot  Page from a free ebook template offered by HubSpot

Now, here is a whitepaper based on our latest research on emerging tech for small to mid-sized businesses (a great report — see the web version here). You can see how much detail whitepapers can go into, both in text and in its images:

hubspot research whitepaper cover that reads: "a practical approach to emerging tech for smbs"   hubspot research whitepaper internal page that is about why blockchain mattersImages via HubSpot Research [PDF]

Ebooks and whitepapers can start on the same template. But ultimately, whitepapers are the academic papers of marketing content. Readers expect a high degree of expertise backed by solid research that is fully documented by references.

Ebooks, on the other hand, are often extensions of a subject you cover regularly on a blog. They can come out of diligent research, but they appeal to a wider audience when unpacking a business subject.

You can imagine this makes them kind of boring in comparison — truthfully, most people don’t actually want to read whitepapers, but they do it anyway to build their knowledge of an operation they need more insight on before making their next move.

For this reason, they tend to be particularly detailed and informative, authoritative, and written by industry experts. And these qualities can make some decision makers feel better about a future purchase.

What Makes a Good Whitepaper?

Technically, there are no minimum requirements for whitepapers. Anyone can call anything a whitepaper — this doesn’t mean you should, though. Without some boundaries on what is and what isn’t a whitepaper, we risk confusing our audience and losing credibility. Here’s what an A+ whitepaper looks like:

  • Length: No fewer than six pages, including illustrations, charts, and references. Can be upwards of 50 if the topic requires that much detail. (Chances are, it won’t.)
  • Structure: There is usually a title page, table of contents, short executive summary (optional but helpful), introduction, several pages educating the reader about the problem, several pages hypothesizing a solution, several pages offering an example of a company that used that solution to achieve results, and a conclusion.
  • Density: Denser than an ebook. Whitepapers aren’t usually easy to skim — in fact, readers usually need to read them over more than once to get every morsel of information out of it.
  • Format: PDF in portrait orientation (8.5″ by 11″).
  • Style: Professional, serious, well written, and well edited. I’d recommend hiring a graphic designer to design page layout, images, fonts, and colors as well.

Whitepaper Examples for Lead Generation

So, if whitepapers are so boring, why do marketers create them? Well, they’re a great resource for your prospects and sales team, and they help you build credibility and trust with your readers. Also, people who choose to download whitepapers often are further into the customer buying cycle.

With that in mind, here are two use cases for a whitepaper:

A Technical Case Study

It’s been said that case studies, like ebooks, are very different from whitepapers. However, some case studies are long enough that they’re best packaged as whitepapers themselves.

A case study is essentially the story of a customer’s success reaching a goal as a result of their partnership with another party. This success is best conveyed through certain metrics the customer has agreed to be measured on. And depending on how technical or complex the service is that they received, the more research and detail other potential customers will want to see as they continue their buyer’s journey.

Therefore, case study-based whitepapers can be a terrific way of demonstrating thought leadership on a dense concept through a real-world example of how this concept helped someone else succeed.

A Reference Guide

Imagine you work for a company that sells kitchen cleaning equipment to restaurants and you write a whitepaper about the maintenance and inspection of commercial kitchens.

That whitepaper is probably chock full of information about legal requirements for exhaust systems, cooking equipment, and cleanliness documentation that could put even the biggest kitchen maintenance enthusiast to sleep if read cover-to-cover.

But it also serves as an incredibly useful reference for restaurant owners who want to know how to maintain their kitchens to pass inspection. Once they know how clean they need to keep their kitchens, they’ll likely buy some expensive cleaning equipment from you because they see you as a helpful, detail-oriented, credible source.

Many people create whitepapers for this purpose — a resource that their leads can take with them to become better at their trade. Ideally, the better they become, the more qualified they are to work with the organization that gave them the whitepaper.

Now that you know the purpose of whitepapers and how they differ from ebooks, it’s time to get started in creating your own. With the above best practices in mind, here’s the approach you can take to produce an excellent whitepaper for your audience: 

1. Identify your audience’s pain. 

While you’re a subject matter expert in a unique position to provide content, you must consider your audience and what is going on in their lives. By creating a whitepaper that addresses (and solves) for their needs, you’ll better be able to generate demand for your whitepaper. 

To do this, consider creating a buyer persona. This activity will help you put yourself in their shoes. Then, you’ll want to consider what kind of information would attract them, how they’d use the information, and how it would solve their pain or problem. 

2. Do your research. 

Whitepapers are informational in nature, and you’ll want to determine how to provide information your audience can’t get elsewhere. You can do that by:

  • Running an original study/survey
  • Putting together unique case studies
  • Detailing a unique process or project

If you’re unable to do your own research, try drawing statistics from government and/or survey organizations and analyzing them in a unique way (and make sure you cite your sources).  

3. Create an outline. 

Because whitepapers are long-form in nature, an outline can help organize your thoughts. Consider sketching out your topic in the following format: 

  1. Introduction and Synopsis – Introducing the topic of the whitepaper, explaining why it’s important (from the standpoint of the audience), and what the whitepaper sets to do, convey, or solve. 
  2. Overview – Defining some some of the key terms you intend to use, detailing the variables or parameters involved, and summarizing what you’ll discuss. 
  3. Body – Laying out all the key points and highlights you’ll hit. 
  4. Conclusion – Explaining the key take-aways from the body and any action items the reader should take.

4. Put pen to paper and flesh out your outline. 

Using an informational and fact-based tone, begin expanding on the ideas you have by using the outline as a guide. In addition, each paragraph should contribute to the overall goal of the piece. 

5. Use imagery to support your points. 

Because whitepapers go deep on research and analysis, visuals such as charts, graphs, and tables can help you present information in a visually interesting way and make the paper easier to read. 

6. Get feedback. 

It’s critical to present the best write-up you can for your readers. The higher quality it is, the more authority you’ll have in your audience’s eyes. Get feedback from someone you trust to catch typos or other issues with readability. 

7. Invest in the formatting and design. 

While it’s not necessary to get too flashy with it, color, layout, and imagery goes a long way to make your whitepaper appealing. 

Whitepaper Examples

To provide even more inspiration, here are modern examples of whitepapers that are emblematic of great whitepaper execution (and why):

1. Not Another State of Marketing Report, HubSpot

HubSpot does an amazing job every year compiling data from experts and partners to convey modern trends in the marketing landscape. This is useful for marketers because they can use the statistics to create marketing and sales content as well as learn from the macro shifts that are happening in the industry. The whitepaper presents this information with attractive graphs and short editorial summaries along with links to more in-depth articles on each topic.

hubspot whitepaper example: "not another state of marketing report" cover for 2020

Image Source

2. It’s Not You, It’s My Data, Custora

Custora created this whitepaper about customer churn, why it’s important, and how to prevent it. What makes this ebook great is that it promises concrete value to the reader (revenue savings from preventing attrition) backed by a wealth of data and actionable advice. Even better, the whitepaper is modern and attractive, so the reading experience is pleasant. This helps the reader consume the long-form content without friction.

custora whitepaper example: "it's not you, it's my data" cover that reads "leveraging customer analytics to build a scalable customer churn prevention system"

Image Source

3. Google Cloud’s AI Adoption Framework, Google

This whitepaper leverages Google’s authority to persuade the reader into adopting AI. By providing a methodology in the beginning, Google aims to give the reader the tools to think through the power of AI as it can be applied to their business. Then, the whitepaper dives into more technical information for advanced readers.

google whitepaper example: cover that reads "google cloud's AI adoption framework"

Image Source

4. Employees and Cybersecurity, Excedeo

Excedo aims to educate about the security risks that employees may unknowingly pose to businesses when improperly trained. The whitepaper advocates about the types of internal IT policies and training that are essential in today’s world.

excedo whitepaper example: first page that reads "employees and cyber security" and an introduction to the topic

Image Source

Whitepapers have a long history, and their uses have continued to change. Be sure to decide whether or not a whitepaper will actually serve your audience before spending the months-long process to produce it. Sometimes, an ebook will do just fine. On the other hand, long-form educational content has a place in your content strategy.

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Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Salesforce, Google partner on local commerce

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Salesforce, Google partner on local commerce

Salesforce has announced an integration between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Google Merchant Center to help merchants highlight the availability of products in stores. The move builds on Salesforce data that suggests both the widespread use of online search in advance of brick and mortar store visits, and an increased likelihood of shopping trips when consumers can see that a store has an item in stock.

Using this new integration, merchants using Commerce Cloud will be able to turn local inventory data into local product listings on Google Search and Google Maps and in the Shopping tab.

Why we care. The distinction between digital and real-world commerce continues to collapse. Those online shopping behaviors that exploded during the pandemic will be with us for the foreseeable future, but it doesn’t mean store visits are a thing of the past.

Rather, consumers are looking for seamless connections between an online product discovery experience and in-person purchases. This integration seeks to support that aim at a granular local level.

The Salesforce data that supports the move can be found here.

Embedding commerce in discovery. The integration also braids together online discovery and the commerce experience. Just as many merchants now seek to provide a frictionless transition from finding a product online to making a digital purchase, this sees the opportunity to link discovery with in-person shopping.

This move pairs with the recent announcement of Salesforce’s Einstein GPT for Commerce that combines proprietary and generative AI models with real-time data such as customer demographic data and shopping history, to automate and tailor shopper recommendations in Commerce Cloud.

Dig deeper: A roundup of the latest AI-powered marketing technology releases


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About the author

Kim Davis

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space.

He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020.

Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.

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What Is AIO? The New Model Revolutionizing Content & Predictions About AI

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What Is AIO? The New Model Revolutionizing Content & Predictions About AI

In 1936, the creator of Turing Machines predicted that a machine would one day be able to think like a human, if not even outperform the human. 

It’s 2023, and we’re officially here.

82% of marketers believe that AI will be the future of marketing—in fact, many of them already believe AI writes better than a human (Capterra study).

Well, with ChatGPT flying past 100 million users in just two months…we’re living in the future.

AI is revolutionizing the way we work, think, and create. 

I joined Content at Scale as the VP of Marketing this January in a bold move of ‘adapting or die’ for my career in content—one month in, what I’m seeing, learning, and facilitating for marketers and teams is blowing my mind. Let’s talk about it.

Reduce Content Overhead Costs and Frustrations by 5x-25x With the AIO Model

It’s now the Stone Age to sit at your computer and drum up 2,500 words for an SEO post from a blank slate.

Seriously.

1679645854 863 What Is AIO The New Model Revolutionizing Content Predictions

When you can generate long-form SEO content (2,500 words or more) that’s fully original and well-written inside of five minutes or less, you’ll never want to go back. 

On average, I’m seeing a 5-25x reduction in associated content creation costs (which is mind-boggling!), and a time savings of 5-10x. (My full-time writer at Content Hacker went from 7 hours per post to one hour per post after we adapted this model.)

Here’s the AIO model I’ve built out reflecting the difference of what you can do in your business and marketing by replacing the human blank-slate writing with AI blank-slate writing, based on hundreds upon hundreds of use cases from Content at Scale clients:

1679645854 917 What Is AIO The New Model Revolutionizing Content Predictions

“AIO”, Artificial Intelligence Optimization, is the term I’ve created to properly define the new way we’re seeing hundreds of marketers and teams create content:

  • Artificial Intelligence as the baseline writer (replacing the human writer and blank slate)
  • The human writer as an optimizer of the AI baseline content

And—it’s working.

With the time and money savings, it’s an absolute no-brainer to switch to AI as the baseline.

The Human Process Involved In AIO

While we see AI perfectly capable of writing an entire 2,500 word blog from scratch, with a single keyword and one-sentence prompt:

What Is AIO The New Model Revolutionizing Content Predictions

We also see the need for the human optimization process pre-publish more necessary than ever.

Without your unique story (or client case studies/testimonials) woven in, the human touch of adding statistics, double-checking facts and cutting the fluff; AI-written content simply won’t stand out. It won’t set you apart in the content sea; it won’t drive customers and loyal fans in droves to your email list. So, the human touch is necessary.

My C.R.A.F.T. framework within AIO defines the steps writers should take to make the AI content more human and personalized once you take it from AI and get it ready to publish (from AI to O):

1.     Cut the fluff

2.     Review, edit, optimize

3.     Add images, visuals, media

4.     Fact-check

5.     Trust-build with personal story, tone, links

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Humans are needed for the optimization side, and for that human touch that must be applied to the content AI generates. Content itself will never be a fully automated, 100% AI process; but AI can remove hours and hours of painstaking work from the content creation pipeline, which will save countless amounts of energy and dollars in the coming months and years when marketers adapt in full force.

 Predictions About the Future of Content & AI

This year, Capterra surveyed almost 200 marketers using AI in their marketing. 82% of them said that the content written by AI was just as good if not better than human-generated content.

One of the first Generative AI experts in the world, Nina Schick (founder of Tamang Ventures, and creator of Substack project ‘The Era of Generative AI’), has told Yahoo Finance Live that she believes ChatGPT will completely revamp how digital content is created, and by 2025, software built with ChatGPT will enable us to reach 90% of all online content now being generated by AI. She said: “ChatGPT has really captured the public imagination in an extremely compelling way, but I think in a few months’ time, ChatGPT is just going to be seen as another tool powered by this new form of AI, known as generative AI,” she said.

Google Trends shows a HUGE jump in interest and traffic around the term “ChatGPT:”

What Is AIO The New Model Revolutionizing Content Predictions.webp

Search traffic shows that the interest in AI is the highest it has ever been. The previous peak was in January 2012:

1679645855 976 What Is AIO The New Model Revolutionizing Content Predictions.webp

375 million jobs obsolete in the next ten years. In the next three years, it’s predicted that 120 million workers around the globe will need to be retrained and re-skilled for this new world.

Newer and better-paying jobs in AI will come on the scene, but they won’t replace the amount of jobs lost; so without retraining and reskilling, and learning how to adapt, average people will have difficulty finding new work.  

Are You Ready to Join the Future? 

I’m excited to see just how much AI will revolutionize human efficiency and optimization. 

We’re in new times.

Are you ready to join the future of marketing and learn about all things AI?

I know I am. 

See you on the other side!


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The New Digital World: Top 3 Key Takeaways from Opticon

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The New Digital World: Top 3 Key Takeaways from Opticon



Each year, I look forward to Opticon, where our global community of customers, partners, industry experts, academia, media, and digital leaders come together to explore the latest in digital.

 

This year, we brought everyone together in San Diego, in person for the first time since 2019. Over  three dynamic days, we enjoyed countless conversations envisioning a future of digital where experiences are created and optimized at the same time. 

 

Plenty of valuable learnings were shared, but I’ve highlighted my top three takeaways below.

 

  1. Change has become uncertain; we must be adaptive.

The world is moving faster than ever, and change is constant and chaotic. Today’s digital leaders must navigate uncertainty on nearly every level: economic upheaval, rapid cultural change, ever-escalating customer expectations, and a tight talent market. Digital leaders face challenges that make it difficult for consumers and brands to react and connect. 

 

But another element of change has profoundly changed over the past three years: change has become unpredictable, dramatically increasing the difficulty of creating the end-user experience. To not only stay the course but to grow in this unpredictable environment, you must put your organization on “adaptive footing” to account for quick changes. 

 

That’s why Optimizely is increasing digital team agility through automation and AI and building simpler, reliable systems of records. Think customizable AI workflow for content creation and approval processes, automation to sync updates across all destinations, and approved templates that can be integrated seamlessly for marketers to speed up production while maintaining governance. 

 

Keeping pace with the digital elite requires frictionless collaboration across teams, and there is no time to waste on clunky, inefficient workflows.

 

  1. A great customer experience requires a great practitioner experience. ​

Simplifying “work about work” helps teams not only ride the wave of change but prioritize their well-being. 

 

So many marketers feel overwhelmed by complexity, which is a real problem for creativity. You wouldn’t want your sports team playing exhausted or demoralized before the big game; the same goes for your team at work. 

 

When we surveyed global marketers, the top creative roadblocks included employee burnout and high turnover. Our research also revealed that 92% of global marketers believe dispersed teams caused by remote or hybrid work impacted their ability to develop ideas and execute campaigns, and 93% say their creative ideas were better before the pandemic. 

 

If the practitioner experience is suffering, your can bet that the customer experience is also suffering. We must ensure our teams are up for the challenge of keeping pace. 

 

Teams need a platform where they can effectively collaborate and communicate across internal silos inclusively, and where workflows are purpose-built to the needs across the content lifecycle. With this reality in mind, we built Optimizely’s Ddigital Eexperience Pplatform (DXP) — because inclusive, well-orchestrated collaboration leads to better outcomes for all.

 

  1. Marketers, developers, and product leaders have become part of the same digital team. 

Today’s customers are digitally adept and confident, and their brand expectations — and the stakes of meeting those expectations — are rising faster than ever before. 

 

According to recent research on customer expectations, 80% of customers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services, and 71% say they’ve made a purchase decision based on experience quality.

 

Being customer-centric is at the heart of any great digital experience. That’s why the digital team — comprised of marketers, developers, and product teams in our modern digital landscape — must work together to meet customer expectations and deliver optimized experiences. 

 

Consider marketers. With access to a slew of customer touchpoints and experimentation data, the marketing team is a critical resource for understanding customers’ wants and needs. Developers, product teams, and beyond should absolutely utilize this data to remove the guesswork and inform strategies, priorities, roadmaps, and decisions. 

 

By working together to inject data across silos, teams can have the insight needed to make the right decisions and create with confidence. 

 

Thank you to all who kindly shared their wisdom during this year’s Opticon. Stay tuned for information about next’s year Opticon, taking place October 10-12, 2023 back in San Diego!


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