There are lots of different ways to communicate your value to your customers. There are the obvious product marketing pieces, of course – data sheets and brochures and what-not. The good and bad news about those is that they have “marketing” written all over them.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with marketing. Heck, I did it for… well, too many years. But engineers also have something of a love-hate relationship with marketing, and they certainly like to use it as a punching bag. The unfortunate side effect of that is that they view “marketing” pieces somewhat warily.
This is where technical articles and whitepapers stand out. Done well, both take on a less breathless, salesy tone. They talk facts and they get to issues that engineers or other stakeholders care about. They articulate messages consistent with what the more obvious marketing or sales pieces say, but they do so in a way that’s, well, less pushy. Instead of shouting from the rooftops, they present technology and let the reader decide. If you’ve done a good job (and if the messages pass the smell test), then you will guide them to a fortuitous decision.
Articles and whitepapers are different, however. Articles are typically refereed by editors. I should take a second to caution that many editors and writers now practice “pay for play,” meaning “you pay me and I’ll write or publish whatever you want me to.” This has actually tainted the overall business, since it’s not always obvious which pieces are “honest” and which are simply marketing in disguise.
But a well-edited and well-curated article will address a technical issue and discuss solutions, one of which will presumably be your product. You can probably write lots of articles about different technical aspects, tying them all back to your product. But you typically can’t be too obvious about pushing a product – it has to be subtle. That sometimes drives aggressive marketers nuts, but readers appreciate it.
Whitepapers, by contrast, are your own piece, so you can be overt with your messages. And yet, there’s something, oh, stately about the whitepaper. In their purest form, whitepapers are supposed to be treatises on some topic, with a veneer of neutrality. If you push too hard on the sales message, people will dismiss it as an advertisement rather than as a serious document. The best of them speak not only to your technology or product, but for an entire industry segment, and they get people talking.
Balanced properly, a whitepaper anticipates the questions that the target reader will be asking. It might be a managerial message regarding return on investment. It might be a technical background piece intended to comfort technicians doing due diligence before buying. Heck, it might just be a way to answer all the questions that your sales folks are hearing so that they can stop answering questions and move into the closure phase.
Whatever the motivation, whitepapers are generally expected to be serious in tone. I recommend plain English just because that’s easier to read, but sometimes a more formal style gives the piece that extra bit of elegance.
And, unlike articles, you probably won’t be writing a lot of whitepapers. One good whitepaper then allows the spin-off of lots of other pieces, so it’s worth doing a thorough job of it. I know that, in my editorial role, I appreciate having a whitepaper to go to that will help me understand something new. It also means that I don’t have to bother people with as many questions, freeing up time for everyone.
So if you’ve got a specific message or two that underpin your business and deserve a serious treatment, make sure that you’ve got a whitepaper or two available. They can sometimes take longer to write, but if you don’t have that time, use someone like me to help you get them out. For such a fundamental piece, it’s worth doing and worth doing well.