Exploring White Papers: The Testimonial White Paper Example by Jonathan Kantor

Exploring White Papers: The Testimonial White Paper Example:

Last week, I discussed the “Competitive White Paper Example”, as part of my five-part presentation exploring the different white paper approaches. Just to review, these five approaches include:

- The High-Level Educational White Paper Example

- The Ground-Level Educational White Paper Example

- The Competitive White Paper Example

- The Testimonial White Paper Example

- The Visionary White Paper Example

In this fourth segment, I’ll discuss the “Testimonial White Paper Example”.

Testimonial white paper examples are similar to case studies in the respect that they provide a closer look at the circumstances before and after the implementation of the advocated solution in the white paper.

Many might say that this sounds like a case study, but the difference with the testimonial white paper is the integration of the case study information within the white paper content as opposed to offering the case study as a stand-alone document. As a result, this boosts the credibility of the advocated strategy/solution by providing a “proof of concept” of how it solved an actual business problem or need.

Testimonial white papers can take one of two approaches:

The first, more popular approach describes how the named strategy/solution solved the business challenge or problem described in the white paper using an actual company that is identified in the white paper. This is the most common method of using a testimonial to validate solution effectiveness.

The second takes a somewhat different approach by using an unnamed solution to describe strategy/solution effectiveness. This second approach is used when the named testimonial does not grant authorization for the white paper marketer to use their name in the white paper example. With the unnamed approach, the details with company size, strategy/solution detail, and business or technical environment are precise. The name of the testimonial is left generic, so instead of saying XYZ Insurance Corporation, this approach would use, “a large midwestern life insurance company” to describe the customer.

Testimonial white papers use “resource-specific” detail such as people, time, money, or assets to illustrate how the featured solution provided a benefit to the customer. Testimonial white paper examples typically include data such as ROI or TCO statistics, operating costs, timeliness of delivery, resource efficiency, increased profitability, or workflow improvement. An additional and important ingredient of the testimonial white paper example is how the featured solution improved customer satisfaction.

Next, I will cover the fifth and final white paper approach: “The Visionary White Paper”.

If you would like to learn you can use white paper marketing for lead generation, I invite you to review a FREE 10-minute sampler from my on demand course, “Craft Lead Generating B2B White Papers Like a Pro!