With all this talk about white papers and their amazing power, I thought it would be instructional to talk about when NOT to use white papers.

That might seem odd coming from a blog that is full dedicated to the topic of writing and marketing white papers.

Why would I do such a thing?

Well, you may have heard this phrase. Don’t place a round peg in a square hole.

The fact is that a white paper is not the perfect solution all the time.

What follows are four situations/reasons to not do a white paper:

1. When selling simple or commodity products: If you are selling products such as nuts and bolts or envelopes, a white paper most likely is not a smart idea. These commodity products tend to be bought on price and the sales process is very basic. White papers are typically used in more complex sales cycles.
2. If consumers are your target: Generally consumers will not look to a white paper to help them with the buying process. This applies to consumer electronics, soft goods and so on. However, there are a few exceptions where white papers WILL work with consumers (think mortgage or financial services).
3. If prospects have ultra short attention spans: Lets face it, the white paper is the wordiest tool in your marketing quiver. If your readers cannot allocate 10 to 20 minutes to reading the paper, why do it?
4. If you cannot allocate 50+ hours to the project: WhitePaperSource recently interviewed 600 white paper writers and found that those who are not freelance writers spend 50 or more hours on average crafting a white paper. If you don’t have the time, then think about something else (or outsource).

Can you think of any other reasons NOT to do a white paper?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 8:04 am and is filed under 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.