“Too much marketing”
That was the feedback from one of my clients. He was the CEO of a small tech startup.
I had just turned in a first draft of a white paper he hired me to write.
The topic was technical and full of stats.
I don’t remember the topic, but I remember his comment.
I remember the comment because it stung.
The white paper was meant to be educational and to push the sales process forward to a closed deal.
It was a white paper to send to either an engineer or a manager.
The white paper was to support the sale cycle.
In other words, it’s purpose was to be “too much marketing.”
But it didn’t go over very well with my client.
Now to be honest, at first I had no idea what “too much marketing” meant.
I sort of chuckled when he said it.
I was writing a white paper, a marketing tool.
A white paper is part of the marketing process.
Isn’t that the point of marketing? Too much marketing is good, right?
Wasn’t the entire point of the white paper to help push the sales cycle along?
Apparently to the CEO, it was not.
He was an engineer by trade and was looking for a white paper to boost his sales.
I’ll tell you what I told the client in just one second.
It’s good advice for anyone who uses white papers.
First let’s me tell you about his reaction.
Over the years I’ve heard his comment of “It’s too marketing” all the time.
It’s a shortcut for people to say that it sounds “too salesy” or as one guy put it “like a used car salesman.”
Here are a few choice phrases:
“It sounds too salesy.”
“It’s not enough technical information”
“My customers don’t like this ‘hypey’ type of information”
“I’m not a used car salesman”
Yes, these are actual phrases used. Many were shared with me by my marketing friends who are also writers.
If you read a lot of white papers, you’ve seen this.
Some white papers are excellent at explaining the service or product. Others are hypey and salesly.
In my stance, there needs to be a bit of both.
You can definitely go TOO FAR with the hype and salesly lanaguage.
We’re going to talk about how to keep this from happening in your future white papers.
This information is going to be useful for you if you are a white paper writer or if you edit white papers.
But it is especially going to be useful for you if you are the manager or the business owner who is using white papers as part of their customer acquisition strategy.
Before we dig into the details, let me explain something.
This is a key point and very important.
If you’re in business, you have to sell.
Selling is the process of showing your customer the value of your product. And then getting money from them.
It’s the KEY part of business.
No sales. No money. No pay bills. No salary.
If fact, if you read surveys of failed businesses, you’ll find the #1 reason for failing is the lack of customers. No sales.
HOWEVER….
There IS a way to sell your product without sounding sleazy.
Selling is moving your customer towards a purchase. Sounding sleazy is coming across as over the top and filled with hyperbole.
One is good and one is gross.
That’s the point of this post.
This post will contain several killer writing tips you can use in your white papers.
It’ll dig into the steps you can use to make your white paper sound like a pro without sounding like a putz.
There’s going to be two posts on this topic.
In this first post, you’ll read about grammar and language in your white paper.
In a follow up post, I’ll show you psychological tricks you can use to push the sale forward. I’ll also show you the ones to avoid because they set off red flags to your reader.
This going to be in list format with commentary.
Use this like you would an editing checklist.
When you’re reading over your white papers, use this as part of your editing checklist.
Here we go:
Remove superlatives –
A superlative is a word expressing ‘the highest degree’ of something.
The problem of superlatives is simple to explain. In today’s world, consumer’s have been hearing these words since they were children. And they’re done with it.
They don’t believe it anymore.
Superlatives are a red flag to the reader to NOT believe what you are saying. Some examples of superlatives are words like excellent, wonderful, premier, first-class, unparalleled, remarkable, marvelous, and so on.
Using these words is a signal that you’re overblowing with hype or at least outreaching your claims.
Remove generalizations and replace with specifics and details
This step is like the superlative rule.
Remove words that are general and generic.
Examples are fast, slow, hot, cold, big and small. Whatever fits your product or service.
Do you have a “fast” response time? That’s what everyone says.
Is your product small? So does your competition.
The real issue is these words feel like someone’s skirting over the truth.
It feels like marketing hand waving.
Yet when you add details and specifics, it bumps up the believibility.
Why?
There’s several reasons. Here’s one of them.
We’re trained to believe experts and authority figures.
How to experts talk? With data, details, and specifics.
When you use data and specifics, you’re demonstrating your expertise on the topic.
Go back through your white paper and look for these generalizations. Circle them as you find them.
Then go back and replace them with details and specifics that relate to the generic word.
If you do this, you white paper will have more credibility and believibility.
No oversized claims , over claiming promising too big –
A combo of the two above.
Classic examples are “Best deal money can buy.”
“The best investment you can make.”
“You won’t believe your eyes.”
“Too much of this doesn’t work in marketing.”
In some forms of copy, like direct response letters, you can use these claims carefully. In white papers you want to avoid them completely or offer a proof element immediately after.
Remove cliches
You’ll see writers use cliches to try and make their white paper “less academic”
They’ll use cliches to inject personality into their copy.
They believe it adds a “friendly” tone to the white paper.
Personality is good. It gives the paper a distinct feel.
Develop your own voice and tone of the white paper with other techniques to inject personality.
Ditch the cliches.
Remove adverbs and adjectives –
This tip is a writing one.
Use this in all your writing.
Here’s the rule: Remove all adverbs and adjectives.
Following this rule will allow you to clarify concepts in your white paper.
An adverb is a word that modifies a verb and usually ends in ‘ly.’
Cut them out. Use a different verb instead.
Don’t say ‘walked briskly.’ Say scurried. Or trot. Or skip. Or stumbled.
When you find the right action verbs, your writing becomes so much more interesting to read.
Here’s what Stephen King says about using adverbs in your writing:
“The adverb is not your friend.
Adverbs … are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They’re the ones that usually end in -ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. … With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.
Consider the sentence He closed the door firmly. It’s by no means a terrible sentence (at least it’s got an active verb going for it), but ask yourself if firmly really has to be there. You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you’ll get no argument from me … but what about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn’t firmly an extra word? Isn’t it redundant?
Someone out there is now accusing me of being tiresome and anal-retentive. I deny it. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day . . . fifty the day after that . . . and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it’s — GASP!! — too late.
I can be a good sport about adverbs, though. Yes I can. With one exception: dialogue attribution. I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions . . . and not even then, if you can avoid it. Just to make sure we all know what we’re talking about, examine these three sentences:
‘Put it down!’ she shouted.
‘Give it back,’ he pleaded, ‘it’s mine.’
‘Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,’ Utterson said.
In these sentences, shouted, pleaded, and said are verbs of dialogue attribution. Now look at these dubious revisions:
‘Put it down! she shouted menacingly.
‘Give it back,’ he pleaded abjectly, ‘it’s mine.’
‘Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,’ Utterson said contemptuously.
The three latter sentences are all weaker than the three former ones, and most readers will see why immediately.”
–
That quote is from his book, “On Writing.”
If you’re a writer, that book is worth adding to your library.
Avoid complex and complicated sentences – write short and simple –
White papers are often used in markets with complex products and services.
Examples are markets like technology, business-to-business, and financial markets.
In these industries, most buyers have multiple degrees and extended certifications.
They’ve spent tens of thousands of hours in training. They’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars GETTING that training.
They’re HIGHLY educated.
And the writing reflects their schooling.
The writing is academic, with long thoughts and complex sentences.
Unfortunately, this is anathema for helping someone understand your product. In other words, not good for marketing. Break down your sentences from complex monstrosities to simple ideas easy to understand.
Go easy on the scarcity
In a traditional sales letter or marketing piece, the call to action at the end is direct. It’s intense.
In a white paper, you should be firm, but not over the top.
A hard close is seen as “too salesy.”
Be firm, but not over the top.
It can turn away your prospect.
–
That’s it!
That’s the top 7 ways to stop being sleazy in your white papers.
Use the list above when you’re editing your white paper.
Follow these 7 steps and you’ll tighten up your writing and make it more effective.
In the next post, we’ll discuss some psychology principles to avoid.
If you combine the psychological principles with the seven in this post, your paper will be a killer marketing tool that is NOT “too much marketing” as my client remarked.
Let me finish the story from the beginning.
He had just told me that the white paper was “too much marketing.”
Here’s what I told him:
“The job of the white paper is to sell. It’s to move more product. It pushes your reader’s mind one step further to the realization they need to buy your product. It’s to convince the readers that you’re product is solid, your service is killer and the reader needs to pick up the phone and call your sales team. There’s no such thing as ‘too much marketing.’ It’s more marketing you need. You want more people to find out how good your company is. If you have less marketing, you’ll starve.”
He frowned at first.
In the end, we added a few extra technical pages and I went through the 7 steps you just read about.
At the time, this was an eye-opening experience.
I’ve written a lot of white papers since then.
What I know now that I didn’t know then is this. The psychological principles are just as important as the writing ones.
We’ll talk about those in a future post.
Until then…