From Tedious to Tantalizing: A White Paper Case Study

I'd like to share an interesting example with you from the work I do.

A client came to me at the end of 2023 with a white paper he wanted to send out for the new year. It clearly needed my work.

It was a classic case of technical material that's certainly familiar to him, written from his point of view ... but just not fully understandable to his customer.

Let's imagine I was his prospect and he had just sent me this white paper. As a reader it would make me extremely impatient. If it was not simple and easy to follow -- understandable and interesting even as I skimmed through it -- and it was not clearly about me, then frankly I wouldn't care. I'd toss it on the heap and forget about it.

So when he sent me this a year ago December I knew I needed to do some digging. I wanted him to answer for me, How does what he shares in the paper actually matter to his prospect?

It Takes Multiple Tries

I did a first pass with him on that question. And then a second pass. And a third.

As a writer I'm always asking, "Why does this matter? If I were your customer, how would what you're saying be relevant to me?"

This before-after example should be fun. Let me show you some things I did with the material he gave me. For the sake of his privacy I've made this mostly anonymous.

Here's a small piece from the material he and I were starting with. A snippet of the "Before":

I'm picking this selection as a case study because it's so stark. I'll be honest: This text was hard to process.

I told my client exactly that. "This is kind of dense. What was the point you wanted to make here?" He answered me, and gave me more context and background. I tweaked the copy.

We did several passes with this -- my questions and his feedback. Here's my example of an "After":

These are for an industry you're probably not familiar with. But you should be able to clearly see a qualitative difference between the first one and the second one.

The Recipe

Note what I've done:

• I took out most of the numbers and data.
• I cut way back on discussion of my client's own industry, to focus more on what the reader, his prospect, cares about.
• Every line finds some way to nudge the reader toward "Here's how this impacts you."
• The sentences are more clipped. Clearer and easier to read.
• I expanded the material a bit. Yes, it takes up more space on the page. But it spells out in far clearer terms why my client's message truly matters to his reader. It's far easer for a skimming eye to pick that up.

Some Human Elbow Grease

Could you find ways to improve on this further? Absolutely. But this is always the direction work like this should go in.

Again, we started with some basic raw material -- a discussion around a paid service that's necessary and essential but technical, initially written from the point of view of an industry-focused insider.

Then over Zoom I had multiple conversations with my client. We went back and forth to clarify what he uniquely does in his industry and why it matters to his customer.

And with some elbow grease we turned the paper inside out, making everything clearer and more relevant to the reader.

Can AI do this? Someday, maybe.

But for right now? Doubtful. This kind of work takes the human touch.

Got a technical solution you need made clear and understandable to your customer or prospect? DM me here or email me at Bryan at bryantodd dot net and I'll roll up my sleeves and dive in.