Lesson 2: Your White Paper Checklist

Creating a White Paper takes a lot of time and expertise. It pays off in the long run, especially for B2B customers, because there are so many different ways you can use it:

• Raise awareness of your product or service
• Demonstrate your knowledge and establish authority
• Provide a valuable asset to your new or existing customers, engaging them to travel to the next stage in their journey with you.

It’s also piece of content with a long life, which you can repurpose in dozens of different ways as part of your sales and marketing campaigns. 

To make this significant project much, much easier, it helps to get organized before you dive in. That’s what this checklist is for. Use it to prepare for the research, writing, and distribution of your White Paper. Here we go!

• Define your objective for creating the White Paper. What do you want to achieve?
• How will you measure and define success for your White Paper?
• Define your target audience
• Identify a key pain point or gap in customer knowledge, which your White Paper will address
• Decide how you will distribute and promote your White Paper
• Check out the competition: what are they doing?

• Can you generate unique new data for the White Paper? Examples: survey, interviews, sharing in-house research
• Source outside data and references for your White Paper
• Run your research questions through a couple of AIs, as a supplement to your primary research
• Keep a record of your research approach and findings

• Review your research
• Organize your data and themes in an accessible format that will speed up your writing
• Form a customer - centric hypothesis based on your data and findings
• Sum up your hypothesis in one or two tight sentences 

• Create an outline for your White Paper
• Get feedback from your team, customers or client
• Create a second outline, and add references where they fit
• Write that first draft
• Think about visuals now, as you write
• Get more feedback
• Create your second and possibly third drafts

• Brief your designer as early as possible
• Ask your designer for a mock-up
• Send your designer the second draft for layout
• Iterate collaboratively until the design is finalized
• If you’re doing your own design: create your template before you start writing, and then write to fit your design 

• Double-check your references and numbers
• Run the White Paper through your organization’s approvals process
• Get at least two people to proofread your White Paper in its final format

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