How Can a White Paper Support Sales and Marketing?Written by Christine Taylor
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3)Get specific on product benefits. This section combines with technology section and includes ways that product meets challenge. You can also use this section to contrast your approach with other technologies, especially if your product is innovative. We all know sad fate of disruptive technologies, but readers do want to know what your product does differently, how it does it, and why it does it better. 4)Push a positive return on investment. ROI has always been a big deal, and with reason. If you have great hard cost numbers, terrific – don’t hesitate to use them. Longer white papers have room for graphs and charts, but even shorter ones can refer to positive ROI. Newer ROI analysis methods factor in “soft costs” – employee time, improved infrastructure, etc. – so don’t hesitate to talk about those too. 5)Add some case studies. Actual case studies with actual customers are ideal, but if you can’t mention customer names (common in financial world), it’s fine to speak more generally. “A Fortune 100 finance company recently deployed…” 6)Conclude with how great your product is and contact information. Here’s where you can use marketing mottoes, just keep it to 1-2 paragraphs. And include your contact information!Well-written white papers have lots of good uses. Here’s a run-down: •Sell a product – its ultimate purpose, of course •Differentiate product from competitors •Place company in leadership role •Promote bylined author as a subject matter expert. (Which they should be, even if a professional writer actually wrote thing.) •Help journalists research their stories (note: journalists are not helped by sales brochures) There’s a lot that goes into creating a useful white paper. For your next project, consider hiring an experienced writer to create a marketing white paper that just keeps on selling. Talk about good ROI! Christine Taylor Keyword Writing P.O. Box 3499 Wrightwood, CA 92397
Call Christine Taylor today at 760-249-6071 or e-mail her at chris@keywordcopy.com, and start that white paper selling!
| | WARMING UP: TEN EXERCISES FOR FICTION WRITERSWritten by Dr. Erika Dreifus
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3. Make lists of character's "favorites": books, movies, foods, etc. Be specific. 4. What does character do on a typical Wednesday? A Sunday? Provide a sample datebook entry if you wish (or if character would keep a datebook!). 5. Who is love of this character's life? 6. Have someone else propose a toast in this character's honor. 7. What languages does character speak, read, or write? Write a scene in which s/he overhears a conversation in an unfamiliar language. 8. Describe an illness character (or someone close to character) has suffered. 9. How would this character spend an ideal vacation? (Perhaps sketch out an itinerary.) 10. What one question is this character most afraid of being asked—and how would s/he answer it?Even if particular scenes or details that first emerge don't seem relevant or don't survive into story or novel manuscript, you won't have misspent your time. Such information deepens your knowledge of your character(s), which can lead to richer writing later on. And you've been writing, rather than confronting that empty screen or page. Warm-ups work in multiple ways for writers, too. © Copyright 2004 Erika Dreifus. All rights reserved. Article reprint permission is granted provided that entire article--including "About Author" information--remains intact and unaltered. Please send a copy of reprint to erikadrei@yahoo.com .
Dr. Erika Dreifus is a writer and writing instructor in Massachusetts. She edits the free monthly newsletter, "The Practicing Writer," and is the author of "The Practicing Writer's Primer on Low-Residency MFA Programs" and "The Practicing Writer's Directory of Paying Short Story Markets." Visit her website at http://www.practicing-writer.com .
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