eBooks have developed a bit of a stigma within the B2B space over the past few years.  People see them as a waste of time and a difficult thing to produce.  However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.  eBooks are an incredibly useful tool for B2B lead generation.  You just have to know how to market and use them.  Contained in this post you’ll see tips and tricks for getting an effective eBook written, published, and disseminated.

Writing the eBook

When deciding what to write about, you need to ask yourself what are the pain points your customers are experiencing.  No one wants to read an eBook about how great you are or how great your product is.  They want practical solutions to problems they’re running into on a daily basis.  So, create a chart and list the problems your customers encounter and then rank them from 1 to 10.  Then you want to write about the most pressing issues.

When writing about these pain points, give generic solutions that don’t require the customers to necessarily use your services or products.  This is important because the customer doesn’t want to be sold.  They want to learn.  By branding the book and sharing your expertise, you’ll be creating a solid relationship of trust with your clients and you won’t have to actively sell them to get their business.

Next, make sure to write the book in an easily digestible manner.  Instead of a wall of text, give bullet points and short bursts of information.  Mix in case studies and examples that give the customer real world experiences that are similar to their own.  This will make the book more enjoyable and easier to read.

Finally, make sure you choose your title wisely.  Most customers are going to judge the book by its cover.  So you have to make sure it grabs their attention.  Look at popular media outlets and learn from their title writing.  You’ll notice they use lists, questions, and mystery to get readers to click and read.  You need to be doing the same with your book.  So, choose a title that uses a list or asks a question.  Whatever you do, don’t make it a generic and vanilla title.

Publishing and Marketing the eBook

This is the most crucial part of the marketing strategy.  You need to find the best outlets for marketing the eBook.  However, before you do that, you need to make sure your customers come to a page where the eBook is displayed proudly and encourages them to download it.  If you need a quick landing page, I love using Unbounce and suggest my clients do the same.  It allows you to create dozens of landing pages extremely fast.   Once you have the landing page set, then you want to bring customers in.

To do this, I suggest using paid advertising to build some initial buzz.  Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook are great places to publicize the book and gain downloads.

Another great method is to get a thought leader in your industry to read and endorse the book.  You can do this by emailing or reaching out via social media to the thought leader and asking them if they could spare a few minutes to look over the eBook and if they’d be willing to share it with their followers.  This technique is incredibly effective and doesn’t cost you a penny.

At the time of download, you want to ensure that you’re capturing the reader’s name, email, company, and any other information you’ll require for a good lead. Giving away a free eBook without getting something in return is pointless, so ask them for their email in exchange for the free book.

At the end of the eBook, you need to provide easy access for social sharing.  Post links in the PDF that allows the readers to share the eBook with their followers. This will help the eBook gain some viral traction.

After you have the leads, you now need to nurture them.  I’ll cover how to do this in a later post.  So keep your eyes peeled for that.

Much success,

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