The Myth of the Two-Page Whitepaper

Engineering, sales and marketing, and corporate communications documents serve well-defined needs. For example, data sheets summarize product features and specifications for customers. Executive briefs provide promotional summaries for busy executives. Press releases announce specific events, releases, or other news (see Table 1). Each of these types of documents typically achieves its goals in about two pages of copy.

Table 1. Characteristics of Various Types of Business Documents

Domain Main Audience Tone Goal Examples
Engineering Customers Technical Product education or evaluation o Specifications
o Data sheets
o User guides
Sales and Marketing Prospects Promotional Brand building; increased sales, revenue o Web copy
o Product briefs
o Executive briefs
o Brochures
o Blogs
Corporate Communications Employees, suppliers, investors, partners, analysts Promotional Promote the organization’s reputation among stakeholders o Press releases
o Newsletters
o Annual reports
o Intranets
o Blogs

Conversely, whitepapers draw upon and synthesize a broad range of content from the domains shown in Table 1 as well as others—e.g., internal training documents, analyst reports, sales presentations, business plans, product descriptions, surveys, etc.—to achieve its desired effect. Whitepapers effectively reach further up the value chain than the aforementioned documents in order to:

• Demonstrate thought leadership for a particular issue
• Thoroughly understand a given business issue or challenge
• Analyze a marketplace
• Describe best practices to meet challenges
• Address the audience’s perspective, not merely the author’s perspective
• Explain a product’s (or service’s) ability to solve a business or consumer challenge

In pursuing these goals, whitepapers both transcend and distill individual elements from other forms of communication (see Figure 1). As a result, the audience, tone, and goals of whitepapers differ from those of other business documents (see Table 2).
Figure 1. Whitepapers Synthesize Information from Multiple Domains


Table 2. Whitepaper Characteristics

Domain Main Audience Tone Goals Examples
Whitepaper Customers, prospects, analysts, partners, others Objective, credible, informational, professional o Business issue education
o Thought leadership
o Marketplace analysis
o Research aggregation
o Best practice enumeration
o Informational product description and relevance o Business whitepapers
o Technical whitepapers
o Hybrid (business/technical) whitepapers
o Industry-specific whitepapers
o Best practices whitepapers

The Optimal Length of a Whitepaper?

Achieving whitepaper goals can be a complex endeavor. While other forms of collateral can achieve their goals in a few pages, Hoffman contends that whitepapers’ ambitious purposes cannot ordinarily be realized in less than 8-10 pages. Conversely, longer whitepapers challenge the attention span of most readers. (In some cases, technical whitepapers require more content to effectively convey the needed information.) Some of the whitepapers on Hoffman’s Web site deviate from this “rule-of-thumb” length, primarily at the clients’ insistence.

Still, there is some disagreement in the marketplace as to the proper length of a whitepaper. For example, marketing communications company In Other Words states that “generally a good whitepaper is fairly short (two to six pages).”1 In a 2007 survey by WhitePaperSource Publishing, 17% of 600 whitepaper writers surveyed indicated that the length of their average whitepaper is 1-4 pages. This report also observed that “highly experienced writers tend to produce longer whitepapers.”2

Hoffman occasionally receives inquiries from prospective clients who are convinced that a 4-page or even 2-page whitepaper, for example, is what they need. In Hoffman’s view, a document of this length may suffice for a sales brochure, press release, or an executive or product brief; but space constraints render it unable to accomplish the objectives of a whitepaper.

A whitepaper succeeds to the extent that it offers a stimulating level of education, explanation, and discussion not present in abbreviated forms of collateral. In this context, the crucial distinction between the whitepaper and the brief, press release, or sales pitch is that the whitepaper aspires to more than ephemeral status. Advertising pioneer Clyde Hopkins wrote, “Advertisers do not expect a second reading.”3 However, like any informative research report or entertaining feature article, the optimal whitepaper is designed to be read more than once, and to remain on hand for future reference. Alas, the mythical two-page “whitepaper” may not receive many second readings, dooming its enduring value as a business document.