Exploring White Papers: The Visionary White Paper Example

Exploring White Papers: The Visionary White Paper Example: from White Paper Pundit by Jonathan Kantor

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

- 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 fifth and final white paper approach is called “The Visionary White Paper”, (aka the Statement of Direction or SOD).

The previous four white paper approaches, (High and Ground Educational, Competitive, and Testimonial) dealt with topics that were available at the time the white paper was developed. Its content was focused on either explaining the details associated with the advocated strategy/solution or comparing it to another strategy/solution that was also available at that time.

Visionary white papers take a different approach by focusing on a casting a future vision, essentially a solution that is not presently available, but will provide a solution at some point in the future. In certain industries, especially the technology sector, presenting a company’s vision of the future is an important ingredient within a corporate marketing strategy by retaining existing customers rather than have them flee to a competitor on the belief that their existing solution provider does not offer a solution they need at the present time.

Visionary white papers are deployed when an enabling technology takes hold and becomes popular within an industry. For example, when Facebook became a popular Social Media platform, many corporate marketers released white papers presenting how they plan on using Facebook and other Social Media platforms to communicate with their customer base and marketing their solutions.

More formal Statements of Direction (SODs) which are visionary white papers under a different name. SODs describe the specific steps that an organization will be taking over the next one or two years to support an industry trend or frequently requested customer need.

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!