

They show readers that you're reliable, experienced, and adept in a given domain. White papers enable you to build trust with your audience. The contents of your white paper should serve to showcase your expertise in a given area. Your audience is searching for information, and will look for an authoritative source - a business they perceive as having in-depth knowledge of a subject. Whatever type you produce, the contents of your white paper should serve to showcase your expertise in a given area. An example of this would be the Content Marketing Benchmarks Budgets and Trends from the Content Marketing Institute. Other types of white papers simply present a summary of useful statistics and information about the state of a particular field or industry.


Businesses - especially in the consulting, financial, or B2B sectors - use them to communicate their organization’s philosophy on a topic, make the case for the superiority of their product, or simply to present research findings related to their field. Today, the term is most commonly applied to “deep dive” style publications. One famous example is the Churchill White Paper, commissioned by Winston Churchill in 1922. The term "white papers" originated in England as government-issued documents. They often include charts, graphs, tables, and other ways of visualizing data. The facts and opinions expressed in white papers are often backed by original research or statistics that the publisher has aggregated from reliable sources. The difference between the two is that white papers tend to be more technical and in depth. In the world of marketing, a white paper is a long-form piece of content, similar to an eBook. It is meant to educate readers and help them to understand and solve an issue. A white paper is an in-depth report or guide about a specific topic and the problems that surround it.
