White papers underestimated in the UK?

I had a conversation yesterday with someone who has launched a new White paper distribution site.  Something came up which I found interesting.  He said that while the concept of white papers and case studies was well understood by US companies, it was significantly less well understood here in the UK, and he found quite a few barriers when he talked to British marketing people.

I would be very interested in views on this because I think we need to get our heads round the concept.

If you are making a technical sale, white papers are a powerful way of getting your message across.  People will download and read them while they will ignore brochures. 

1.  I define a white paper as a document which argues a position or provides information. 
2. This is not a brochure - as soon as it starts reading like a brochure people will treat it like one and bin it.
3. Like a newsletter, the author has to be a (relatively) independent publisher of a paper which might be ’sponsored by’ the company.There has to be a sort of mental Berlin wall between the authors job as marketeer and job as author.

No-one thinks that a white paper is going to be other than  self-serving of course, but the information should be truthful and useful.  A white paper is used during an earlier part of the sales cycle than a brochure.  The reader is in information gathering mode rather than product selection mode.  It therefore plays a vital part in lead generation. 

Because it is at an early stage of the cycle, a listing of your product’s features and benefits is inappropriate.  Instead talk about the problem and alternative approaches to addressing it.  Sure, you come down in favour of an approach which your product happens to take.  Quelle coincidence.   But readers expect this and can tolerate it as long as the arguments have been put fairly.   

Who should write the document?  The sales and marketing people are probably not sufficiently knowledgable to write something and frankly often only know how to write a brochure.  Your technical guru (if he/she is the product of the English scientific  education system) probably can’t write English.   So it needs to be a collaberative effort. 

I really think this is under-estimated here in the UK.  Virtually every company that is a business to business sale should think about creating white papers about their area. 

Examples of technology white papers here  A nice article about writing white papers here.   And I practice what I preach - if only I had the time to keep them up to date!

My contact’s new site by the way is: http://www.keyitsolutions.com

Bob
Textor