How to Create a Compelling Ebook
Of all the content marketing strategy options available to your business, eBooks are perhaps one of the most useful forms of generating qualified leads. As a piece of long-form content, it provides immense value within its five-20 pages by educating your audience. If written and designed effectively, they can help fuel your content marketing strategy and grow your business.
If little thought or effort is put into an eBook, it will be nothing but a large waste of time. It won't attract your target audience, let alone convert any of them. In some cases, a poorly done eBook can discourage your audience from further reading more of your content.
Create a Successful EBook with These 6 Tips
The last thing you want to do is waste your precious time, so here are some tips to ensure your eBook is successful the first time around.
1) Pick a worthy topic: In order to choose a topic that delights, educates, and answers questions for your target audience, you need to know them well. What are their specific pain points? Do they frequently ask common questions about your product? These are topics worthy of an eBook. You can also look to your blogs and see which one has the highest number of views. That would be a good topic to elaborate more on, too, in eBook form.
2) Don't try to conquer a mountain: The best eBook is one that is highly specific about a pain point or topic of interest to your audience. If you try to address too many issues at once, your rambling may lose readers. Stick to precisely what you're writing about and nothing more.
3) Break it up: Nothing is more disinteresting that one full page of only text. If you don't break up your eBook into easily digestible chunks, your audience won't want to finish reading to the last page. Instead of using large paragraphs to get your point across, use bulleted lists to make the information more consumable. If a reader quickly skims the page, that list will jump out, and they'll still grab some of your message.
4) Use eye-catching visuals: Images are a great way to tell a story and showcase your point. They are, after all, worth a thousand words. Incorporate relevant images throughout your eBook to give readers a break. If you're discussing CEO challenges, use pictures of executives in a boardroom. Graphs will also help support your point while giving your readers something to look at.
5) Incorporate data and examples: In the midst of making a key point, strategically insert data to support your claim. It sounds much better when you say eBooks can help increase lead generation by 20% rather than simply eBooks increase lead generation. Statistics will validate the information you're discussing and give your content more credibility.
When gathering supporting facts and figures, they should be obtained from reliable sources who are experts on the matter. If you get content from unreliable sources, your credibility will be threatened.
6) Insert a call to action: Once they've finished reading your multi-page eBook, you need to have a call to action to tell your readers what to do next. A call to action could be to read more of your blogs, schedule a consultation with your business, or complete an assessment. The sky is the limit when it comes to CTAs, but try to only insert one at a time; you don't want to confuse them about their next course of action.
Read More: To Gate, or Not to Gate? That is the Marketing Question
Ebooks are the perfect addition to a business' content marketing strategy. They allow you to elaborate more on a particular topic of interest and, hopefully, generate more qualified leads. If your eBook is well chosen, specific, broken up, visual, and credible, it will do just that.