Lesson 1: Why Start With a White Paper?

With just five quick lessons, I'm going to show you how to build a powerful engine for your next content campaign. It all starts with a White Paper.

Here's an overview of the course:

• Lesson 1: Why start with a White Paper 
• Lesson 2: Your White Paper checklist 
• Lesson 3: How to write your White Paper 
• Lesson 4: 10X your White Paper 
• Lesson 5: Making your White Paper pay (value metrics)

Today's first lesson will cover:

• What is a White Paper?
• How does a White Paper benefit my business?
• Why would a White Paper appeal to my customers?
• Is it hard to create a White Paper?
• How much does it cost to create a White Paper?
• Does a White Paper really work for sales and marketing?
• Questions to think about
• Looking ahead to Lesson 2

If you have any questions, feel free to ping me an email.

The term White Paper comes from government. In some parliamentary systems, like the UK, it’s a detailed policy briefing about upcoming or proposed legislation. 

A White Paper aims to persuade.  You adopt a position on an issue or problem, and then use data, facts, and logic to convince the reader that your solution is best. It’s an in-depth resource that pulls together useful research and expert analysis. 

Some people say that 2,500 words is the minimum length for a White Paper. In my experience, a shorter length doesn’t matter as much as the strength of the content and how well it’s presented. You’ll want on-brand design and strong visual elements, plus flawless writing, data, and reference citations. 

We’ll talk more about researching and writing your White Paper in upcoming lessons.

A White Paper is also a useful marketing tool for engaging B2B customers, or an audience of professional decision-makers. In healthcare, your audience might be professionals like physicians, nursing leadership, pharmacists, or informaticists. Or you might be talking to people with influence over purchasing decisions, like employers or C-suite executives. 

As an immediate benefit, a White Paper showcases your expertise and builds trust. For example, if you offer an informatics or digital health service, your White Paper might focus on cybersecurity, which is an issue that keeps your customers awake at night. You can use the White Paper to define the problems, propose solutions, and inspire your customers to book a demo or sales call. 

A White Paper is a great lead magnet, too. You can use it to draw potential customers to your website, click an ad, or provide an email address in exchange for a download. 

Your sales team can also use a White Paper as a follow-up or leave-piece. 

Most of all, it’s the foundational building block for a tower of smaller content pieces, a benefit we’ll cover in Lesson 4. 

A White Paper is never a hard sell, and this is important to remember. With a strong White Paper, you’re helping your customers solve a problem. You’re also:

• Building their professional knowledge in an accessible way
• Alerting them to critical issues in their profession or business sector
• Saving them time, by doing the hard research
• Pointing them toward other resources, if they want to know more.

Ideally, by the time they finish your White Paper they will also feel a burning need for your product or service. They will know that your business is clearly the best one to help them. 

Like a Swiss army knife, a White Paper is a tool that works for a variety of tasks. It does take a lot of time, knowledge, and effort to create a White Paper – that’s why it’s valuable to your customers. 

There are different ways to get it done:

• You can research and write it yourself, and then have an editor finesse the document.
• If you’re confident with Canva or other design software, and you already have a visual identity for your brand,  you can make it look decent on your own.
• You can hire a copywriter and / or a designer to create the whole thing. If you can afford it, I’m going to say this is the best way to go. Costs will depend on who you hire, and the length and complexity of the White Paper, but you will need more than a few hundred dollars. Compared to other marketing tactics, though, the technical and cost barriers are low.  

The real beauty of a White Paper is the way it can be carved into smaller chunks and repurposed across a campaign, while maintaining consistent messaging. In the long run, it might be more cost-effective to approach your content calendar this way, instead of creating or commissioning a lot of smaller, unrelated pieces. 

One benefit of White Papers is that they have a longer lifespan than content like social media posts or blogs. 

They’re also likely to be shared inside an organization or with your customer’s network of contacts. 

You can tell pretty quickly if a White Paper is engaging potential customers, by looking at simple metrics like website visits, download rates, and social media shares. Longer term, you’ll want to know whether it’s building brand awareness and ultimately generating sales leads. 

If a good return on investment (ROI) for a marketing campaign is 5:1, then an effective White Paper costing $5,000 should bring in $25,000 in sales. The Investopedia article listed in the references gives an accessible introduction to the various methods of calculating ROI for your marketing campaigns. 

I would add that you have to consider the ROI generated by all the content spin-offs you get from a White Paper, too. 

1. What are some issues that a White Paper could cover, for your customers? 
2. How do these topics align with your sales and marketing goals?
3. Do you have the necessary subject expertise in-house, or available to commission?
4. Does your team have the time, knowledge, and skill to research, write, and design a White Paper? It is a lot of work!
5. What potential benefits can you see for your business or organization? One benefit of White Papers is that they have a longer lifespan than content like social media posts or blogs. 

Looking ahead, Lesson 2 is shorter, and it will give you a pre-launch checklist for your White Paper.

Feel free to drop me an email with any questions. You'll also find some White Paper FAQs here. 

Barney, Nick. What is a White Paper? TechTarget. April 18, 2023. https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/white-paper

Beattie, Andrew. How to Calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) of a Marketing Campaign. Investopedia. June 25, 2025. 

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/053015/how-calculate-roi-marketing-campaign.asp

Kolowich Cox, Lindsay. What Is a White Paper? [FAQs]. HubSpot. July 17, 2020. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-whitepaper-examples-for-business (Includes some great examples!)

UK Parliament. White Papers. https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/white-paper/