If you are launching a new product, can white papers help? If so, what is more appropriate, a technical white paper or a business-benefits focused paper?

This is the essence of a question asked by Tracy Williams.

Tracy, this is a great question.

First, let me explain that a white paper is really an excellent tool to use as part of a product launch. This is especially true if you are launching something that is new to your industry.

Let me answer this question by telling you a story.

Motorola—the cell phone division—asked me to help them launch their international push-to-talk technology with a white paper. This was a few years back when Nextel was synonymous with push-to-talk.

Interestingly, it was Motorola that owned the radio network and made the phones that enabled this technology for Nextel.

Anyway, Motorola asked me to help them put a paper together that was targeted at the media to help describe the advantages to this International, borderless technology.

It allowed, for example, people in Canada to talk to folks in Peru with the push of a button.

We decided to describe the business case in the paper and show how businesses could benefit from this instant communication.

We DID NOT go into the technology and how it works. WHY? Because this was too new to folks and they first needed to be sold on the idea before they were interested in how it worked.

By the way, if you want to see that paper, check it out here.

So, to your question… Typically it makes more sense to launch out of the gate with a business-benefits paper and follow later with a more technical white paper.

I would like to hear from others on this. What has been your experience?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 10:33 am and is filed under Marketing, Writing White Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.