When Should You Use a White Paper Instead of a Blog or eBook in Your Content Marketing Efforts?

You wouldn’t use a jackhammer when the situation calls for a hammer and a nail. That’s how you lose security deposits, friends, and maybe some hearing.

Similarly, you might be cautious about using a whit epaper - one of the most thorough and rigorous tools in the content toolbag - when a social media post or blog might suffice. Recall that white papers are generally extensive and well-researched pieces of thought leadership content that, when done well, can share insightful subject matter expertise and demonstrate credibility on a subject. Ideally, white papers add valuable and differentiated knowledge to the industry or category they cover; the target audience feels obligated to read them, fearing they may miss out on actionable information and an opportunity to get smarter.

So how do you determine that your concept calls for a white paper? Not a blog. Not an Instagram post, a tweet, or a LinkedIn diatribe. But a piece of thoughtful and carefully crafted content that will transform how others perceive your company for the better.

Here are some cues that should alert you to the idea that a full-fledged white paper is the appropriate destination for the ideas, data, or material that you’ve begun to assemble.

You want to share extensive findings on a complex issue or topic to demonstrate subject matter expertise.

Simple: you have a wealth of insights to share.

While one or two targeted topics might be better fodder for a blog or LinkedIn post, a higher volume of takeaways necessitates a more extensive structure. Though attention spans are short and casual readers reward succinct, skimmable content, you’re not targeting casual readers. You’re targeting the most engaged readers in your category - in many cases, the same people who would most likely buy from you. To tell them something they don’t know and to do it in a way that they’ll find credible requires a thorough approach. One that includes context, background, supporting data, and clarifying commentary.

In the white paper, we don’t ask the reader to take our word for it, to trust us. The whitepaper is how we earn that trust by providing unassailable insight, fortified with support. That’s both difficult and inefficient to achieve in shorter-form vehicles.

So where do these extensive findings come from? That brings us to our next cue.

You have unique primary data from your underlying business to share.

In many cases, you need not look far to find valuable industry insights worth sharing - your business is likely sitting on a wealth of data just from serving customers on a day-to-day basis.

Sharing this primary data can not only demonstrate your unique understanding of the industries you serve and the problems they face, but it can also implicitly convey your value proposition. Consider some examples:

  • A cybersecurity company can share data on the attacks it has thwarted, including the most common types, the vulnerabilities they targeted, and how they failed. Sharing this information helps readers protect themselves, with the added benefit of noting that the company offers a plug-and-play solution.

  • A food delivery application could offer its partner restaurants a variety of insights on dining behaviors: when people order, what dishes or cuisines are most popular at different times, and when and why customers abandon the ordering process. This value-add encourages restaurants not only to continue using the service but also to optimize their operations. Better performance from the restaurant -> better performance for the application.

  • An e-commerce marketplace can share data on the transactions taking place on their platform - which brands are hot, which products are frequently sold at a discount, and which products enjoy seasonal strength. These insights are useful to buyers and sellers, as well as brands that produce the products.

In each case, the data originates from the simple operation of the company’s core business. It just requires organization, analysis, and articulation for it to transform into a valuable white paper. If you know your business is sitting on insightful data and you want to share it - whether on a specified cadence or ad-hoc - the whitepaper is the correct vehicle to bolster your credibility and the perception of your brand as a leading expert in your field.

You’ve conducted thorough secondary market research and synthesized the findings.

Perhaps your core business isn’t overflowing with valuable data and your competencies lie in analyzing a market or a category using external indicators and available third-party data.

This doesn’t make your insights any less valuable. Rather, some industries are so oversaturated with data that synthesizing it to find actionable or unique takeaways is an extremely desirable skill. Consider the investment management industry. The amount of data available on financial markets and economic indicators is staggering, and top-tier firms frequently share white papers with their clients analyzing relevant market trends. While some of this content is conducive to newsletters in an abbreviated format, firms will often package this analysis into a thematically organized overview of their market views. For example, an investment firm may structure a white paper as follows: our view on the economy, how we arrived at that view, the impact on our positioning in each asset class, and our implementation of that positioning.

You can’t achieve that in an email without raising far more questions than you answer. So feel free to use a newsletter to summarize, but guide readers to the full white paper report to ensure these concerns and questions don’t go unanswered.

The takeaway: if you operate in a category or service an industry rich with available data and you have unique conclusions to draw from that data or an original angle to explore, you have a valuable white paper to produce.

You have an abundance of engaged customers or industry constituents who are willing to share their opinions.

Family Feud cornered the market on survey-based gameshows, but there’s plenty of room to stake your claim to survey-based white papers.

If you have a large audience of engaged customers who can represent a job function, industry, or category, then you have great ammunition for the foundation of a white paper. The specific number of respondents required may vary from purpose to purpose, but if you believe you can issue a survey and receive several hundred viable responses, there are likely conclusions worth sharing. Survey-based white papers will often highlight averages and popular responses, sometimes segmented by the type of responder, along with some commentary that contextualizes them. We frequently see this methodology used for “State of” white papers - like the “State of Marketing” or the “State of Crypto.”

A few examples:

  • To form its “State of Marketing” white paper, Hubspot surveys thousands of marketers on the types of marketing initiatives they use, what they plan to use, and what has been most effective, among other things. Because Hubspot services so many different companies and industries, the company gains a huge volume and broad diversity of opinions to reflect where the marketing function has been and where it’s heading in the year ahead.

  • In partnership with UBS and Art Basel, Arts Economics surveys a large audience of art dealers and auction houses to better understand their sales trends, where they’re selling, and how they expect business to change. “The Art Market” report is an annual staple of the category, read dutifully by all who conduct art business. Because the market insight is so valuable, parties are happy to contribute their responses.

  • The crypto platform Gemini recently released a “Global State of Crypto” report, relying on survey responses from its customers worldwide to share how buying behaviors are changing, the extent to which customers plan on buying more crypto in the year ahead, and what concerns are most pertinent.

You’ve developed a framework to understand and/or implement a new technology or innovation.

While data can be a foundational piece of a good white paper, its existence in a central role is not a prerequisite. If you have subject matter expertise in an emerging trend that can impact your customer’s or audience’s business in myriad ways, explaining that trend and the steps your audience can take to benefit from it makes for compelling white paper content. As always, it must be well-researched, thoughtfully detailed, and thoroughly supported. Remember: a white paper audience is already knowledgeable on your subject matter, so don’t confuse this with a more general how-to or eBook, which is generally more high-level and quickly digestible. In a white paper, we get into the weeds and answer those second and third-level questions.

The obvious example that has likely already crossed your mind is artificial intelligence. Surely, hundreds - maybe thousands - of white papers have been written in the last year detailing the impact of AI on different industries, services, and functions. A few years back, many white papers considered the implications of blockchain technology and NFTs. These trends become increasingly popular topics of conversation, and audiences share a great fear of struggling to follow or contribute to those conversations, so demand for white paper content is high. But so is supply. It’s important, then, to ensure that your business can deliver a unique angle or perspective that tells the audience something they’re unlikely to find elsewhere.

Otherwise, they may not come back for the next paper. Or worse, they may not be as eager to make that next purchase.


Some or all of these cues have your wheels turning but you’re unsure of how to start? ThoughtLede works with you to develop and write white papers that will be the talk of your network. Get in touch today to get started.

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