This post is excerpted from my Udemy course on White Paper Copywriting.
If you want to earn a decent living as a freelance copywriter, you should take on assignments that pay the highest fees. One of those assignments is white papers.
To see how much money you can make writing white papers, just visit the website of Gordon Graham, The White Paper Guy. Gordon writes white papers for a living. He even wrote a best-selling book on how to write white papers. Gordon says you should expect to earn around $6,000 for writing a white paper.
Do the math, and you’ll discover that if you write one white paper a month at $6,000 a pop, you’ll earn $72,000 a year. Not shabby.
Let’s look at what white papers are, what they are for, and why they pay so well. We’ll start with a definition of what a white paper is.
What a white paper is
A white paper is an authoritative report that gives information or recommendations on an issue. Let’s parse that.
A white paper is AUTHORITATIVE. It is written by an organization, such as a government department or a business, that is either an authority on the subject or who wants to be perceived in the marketplace as an authority on the subject.
The facts, opinions, conclusions and recommendations expressed in white papers are typically backed by original research or statistics that the publisher has aggregated from dependable sources. These include charts, graphs, tables and other ways of visualizing data.
A white paper is an authoritative REPORT. Unlike a typical piece of promotional copy, such as an ad or a marketing brochure, a white paper reports on an issue. It describes a trend, or reports on a development, and presents its case in the form of a report.
A white paper is an authoritative report that gives INFORMATION OR RECOMMENDATIONS. Again, unlike the kind of copy that you typically write as a copywriter, a white paper is written to inform, not to sell. The goal of a white paper is to make recommendations, not to persuade someone to buy something.
Finally, a white paper is an authoritative report that gives information or recommendations on AN ISSUE. A white paper has one focus. It deals with one topic. It addresses one issue.
How white papers are different from typical copy
The major difference between a white paper and just about every other piece of promotional copy you’ll ever write is that white papers don’t promote a brand, a product or a service.
A good white paper is impartial. It neither promotes a particular company nor criticizes other companies. A good white paper is impartial, objective, unbiased.
Let me bring this definition to life with an example. Here is a white paper from the Ponemon Institute. You see that it’s called, Global Insights on Document Security.
Global insights. That’s information. Document security. That’s the single subject. It’s published by the Ponemon Institute, that’s the authority.
You’ll see that the white paper is organized like a typical report, with an introduction, key findings, and a conclusion, with recommendations.
Now that you know what white papers are, let’s look at how they’re used in marketing.
How white papers are used in marketing
White papers are a popular and powerful tool for marketers, particularly business-to-business content marketers. They position a company as a thought leader. They present useful and persuasive research that is of interest to a company’s prospect customers. For this reason, white papers are effective at generating leads.
The best way to appreciate why white papers are used in marketing is to understand where they appear in the buyer journey.
Every buyer takes a number of steps before buying a product or service. These steps make up what we call the buyer journey. The journey begins with awareness. Buyers realize that they have a need or a pain that they want to fix. They typically go online and start searching for information about their issue.
Once they understand their issue, they move to the next stage in the buyer journey: consideration. Here is where they discover the many ways that they can solve their challenge. At the end of this stage, they start to narrow down the suppliers or vendors or companies who can help them.
The last stage in the buyer journey is decision. Here, the buyer compares vendors, compares prices, compares terms and conditions, requests quotes, demos the product, and makes a purchase.
The goal of inbound marketers and content marketers is to attract these buyers at the earliest stages of the buyer journey. This is where white papers play their most vital role. That’s because buyers with a problem are looking for answers. And white papers help companies deliver those answers
White papers help buyers understand an issue, solve a problem or make a decision. White papers attract potential buyers to a company by offering authoritative answers to the buyers’ questions.
White papers attract buyers by informing, not by selling. They attract buyers by helping, not by hawking.
Effective white papers provide useful information that is valuable to readers, even if they don’t become customers. In other words, white papers deliver value.
White papers play four vital roles in marketing
Even though white papers are not intended to sell your products or services, they still play a role in marketing. Actually, white papers play four vital roles in marketing.
First, they position your company is an authority. Look around your industry, and any other industry, and you’ll discover that some brands are considered authorities on the industry, and others are not. These are the brands that publish authoritative white papers and eBooks. They’re the brands that host industry conferences, deliver keynote addresses, publish research reports. White papers help you position your company as an authority.
Second, white papers build trust with your audience. White papers prove to your readers that you’re reliable, experienced and expert in your field. And that trust pays off. When potential buyers search for information to help them understand a challenge they have, and they find your helpful white paper on that topic, they begin to trust you. And they are likely to return to you in the future.
Third, white papers generate leads. The 2017 Content Preferences Survey from DemandGen found that more than three quarters of survey respondents were willing to give their name and email address to a company in exchange for a white paper.
This means that, if you offer your website visitors a helpful, authoritative white paper on a topic that interests them, you are likely to generate leads.
The fourth and final way that white papers play a vital role in marketing is that they boost sales. The Eccolo Media B2B Technology Content Survey found that fifty percent of buyers reported having read a white paper before making a buying decision. Buyers prefer to purchase from vendors they trust and see as experts in their field.
Why writing white papers pays well
Now that you understand what white papers are and how they are used in marketing, you are likely starting to appreciate why they are one of the best-paying copywriting gigs.
White papers pay well for two main reasons. One, they generate results, and two, they are difficult to write. In copywriting, the more that you can prove that your copy generates results, the more you can charge for your copy. This is why you can charge more for writing a sales letter than you can charge for writing a brochure. This is why you can charge more for writing a Facebook ad, whose performance can be tied directly to sales, than you can for writing a blog post, whose performance can rarely be tied directly to a sale.
Because white papers are a tested and proven way to generate leads, they are valuable to marketers. They are valuable because they generate results. Marketers pay you well if you write white papers that generate results.
The second reason that white papers pay so well is that they are difficult to write. Generally speaking, the harder something is to do, the more you can charge for it. This is why brain surgeons are paid more than orthopaedic surgeons. It’s why airline pilots are paid more than taxi drivers. It’s why white paper writer writers are paid more than blog writers.
White papers are hard to write because they are lengthy, they require a lot of research, they typically require expertise in the subject matter (which takes time and money to obtain), and they go through a long and often torturous approval process before being published. White papers pay well because they are valuable. If you want to make yourself valuable to marketers, learn how to write effective white papers. The more white papers you write, the more you will position yourself as a trustworthy authority on the subject.
This post is excerpted from my Udemy course on White Paper Copywriting.
Recent Comments