White Papers are lengthy documents written in an executive style and work best when describing how to use your product or service to solve your customers problem.
The key to a good white paper is an authoritative tone and solid research to back up your argument.
I like to use them when competing for technical business, no one like to listen to a know it all drone on, yet when buying these days it’s basic diligence to check the seller knows their stuff. By providing a white paper you can professionally convey your excellence.
Back in the day these were solely the preserve of multi national mega corps, now anyone with a spell checker, a few Google search operators and some gumption can produce a white paper that serves their customers, and builds better sales.
For your source material Pay a Proper research firm like Millward Brown or Answer the 5 W’s about your customer and the urgent issue you are about to fix. Get stuck in with some help from Hubspot.