The writing in your white paper needs to be easily readable. Your
reader needs to be able to read it within minutes. This is the reason
why the writing needs to be very simple.
What's the difference between your marketing material and a story, a magazine article or a novel?
People
make time in their life to read stories, magazine articles and novels.
They entertain them and they enjoy reading them. If they find them hard
to read and understand, they don't mind spending some extra bit of time
thinking about it. They enjoy doing this part. It won't stop them from
reading it.
Your white paper on the other hand is read at work and sometimes it appears out of nowhere.
It's
a 10-14 page document. Your reader will be inclined to read it, if they
find it beneficial. After they start reading it they want to finish
reading it as quickly as they can and get back to work. They don't want
spend their time thinking about it. This is the reason why it needs to
be simple. If it's too complicated, your reader will avoid it.
Once
they feel that they find it hard to read it and it is taking up a huge
chunk of their valuable time, they are going to get rid of it and start
reading something that is easy to read. This is the reason why you need
to keep it as simple as possible. The simpler the white paper the higher
is the chance of it being read completely.
And when it is read completely, the higher are the number of leads it is going to generate.
You
need to keep everything in the white paper to the reading level of a
7th grader. Your readers will normally have a higher reading level. But
when they read marketing materials, they are going to try and finish
reading them as soon as they can. During this time they will be reading
it at a level of a 7th grader and this is the reason why it needs to be
written at the level the 7th grader.
If you can write your white
paper at a level lower than the 7th grade. Then it is going to function
better. It's not as easy as you think, as we have already seen on
television that it's hard for adults to compete with 5th graders.
So
the next time you write a white paper make sure that it's easily
readable. The easier it is to read the better is its ability to generate
a lead.