Stephanie Donelson

Want to get more out of content you’ve already created and provide a valuable lead gen source? Then you’ll want to add ebooks into your content marketing strategy!

Ebooks, also known as guides, are, as the name implies, electronic books. They’re bigger content pieces that are formatted into chapters or sections and contain a lot of content and sometimes visuals and graphs, and are made to be read online. 

While ebooks do require a bit of your time for planning, production, and promotion, they’re wonderful anchor pieces of content for different marketing campaigns. They’re also a great way to drive new traffic to your site and get new leads.

Many website visitors are more comfortable downloading a free ebook from you to learn more than filling out a contact us form. The visitor gets a piece of high-value content and you get their contact information. 

Distributing ebooks can be an easy way to get in the door with a potential customer and prove your value as an educational and trusted resource. Sharing quality content with them on a regular basis can help them convert on a faster timeline than aggressive sales emails. 

Ebooks also have the benefit of improving your site’s SEO and EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trust)! Meaning your site can reap the benefits of this content and rank higher for the related terms from your ebook. So, really, they’re a win-win all around.

Ready to learn how to create an effective ebook for your content marketing plan? Let’s go!

1. Create an ebook editorial calendar

Either add a new line to your brand’s overall content marketing strategy or create an ebook specific editorial calendar to keep track of what’s coming up for design and development. Look at how an ebook can elevate your content calendar and how it’ll fit in with other pieces of content. 

Think about how this content will be worth sharing their email address for! Help them learn about something in your industry and provide guidance. 

Also look at your competition, what kind of ebooks or resource guides have they published and are actively promoting on social media?

Come up with topics

If I were to write an ebook for my own website where I share marketing tips and tricks, I’d create a list of content topics or buckets I can use, like:

• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• SEO
• Digital marketing advertising
• Marketing measurement
• Public relations

From there, I might start brainstorming titles based on these different topic areas:

• 10 reasons your landing pages are failing 
• The beginner’s guide to social media marketing
• The ultimate guide to content marketing
• Copywriting 101
• 10 things to know about automated email drip campaigns
• Improving marketing performance: A deep dive into marketing metrics
• Technical to text: How to reduce your website’s bounce rate

Now I can go back to my calendar and slate in these different content topics and ideas. You will want these topics to be kind of broad so you can include quality content. An ebook isn’t just a beefed up blog post. A blog post you have could be turned into a great chapter or section of an ebook, though. 

2. Research, outline, and write

You may reverse the order of this one and start with the outline and then do your research, or you might do your research first and then construct your outline; either way you will need to do both of these steps at one point.

You already have your topic picked out so now it’s time to get to business and start writing!

In your research you’ll want to look at keywords to find out what terms and phrases you’ll want to target in the ebook as well in the messaging when it’s time to promote your ebook. I like to have at least three terms, a primary, secondary, and tertiary term to work into my copy when writing ebooks. 

After that, start your research by compiling stats and stories. Stats are a great way to support the points you’ll make in your ebook and show you’ve done your research – just be sure to cite your resources!

Now that you know what data is available and how the story is shaping up, it’s time to create your outline. 

Let’s say I was going to make the ebook “The ultimate guide to content marketing.”

My outline might look something like:

• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What is content marketing
  • Definition
  • Examples
• Chapter 2: How to create a content marketing strategy
  • Content marketing goals
  • Strategy
  • Content marketing calendar
• Chapter 3: Content marketing + SEO
  • Benefits of content marketing for SEO
  • SEO best practices for content marketing
  • Title tags, headlines, meta descriptions, and keywords
• Chapter 4: Content marketing tactics
• Chapter 5: Measuring the performance of content marketing
• Conclusion
• About us

You can see how each chapter has different subsections within it, but they all relate back to the theme of the chapter. Make sure you build upon each chapter and have laid your content out in the order that makes the most sense. 

Next?

Write it. 

Use a Word Doc or Google Doc so you can collaborate with other content writers and track any changes. This is probably the hardest step, so break it up. Instead of writing your ebook in one go, write chapter by chapter and send off for feedback.

If you need sign-off on the ebook before it gets published, make sure people see the copy in this stage as it’s the easiest way to edit or rearrange content. You don’t want to hand over a finished design and realize chapters two and three need to be switched and half of chapter three’s content doesn’t work. 

3. Design the ebook

For consistency’s sake, I have a base template for ebooks that I work off for each new one. That way return visitors or current customers know exactly how to find the information they’re looking for and the ebooks seem familiar. 

Make sure to brand your ebook by using your:

• Brand colors
• Brand fonts
• Logo
• About us or contact us information

Beyond the branding, some ebook best practices include:

• Use graphics: Icons and shapes or photos or a mix of both add some color and break up the text in your ebook. You should also use infographics, graphs, and charts if possible.
• Break up text: Keep sentences short, no more than four sentences per paragraph to help the reader quickly move through your ebook. 
• Bulleted lists: Use bulleted lists to draw the reader’s eye down while not missing any important information.
• Create call-out boxes: Want to call special attention to something or share key takeaways? Use call-out boxes with titles like: Good to know, remember, quick tips, or something similar. 
• Short and sweet: Most ebooks clock in around 25 pages or so but if the information and graphics are really good, you can probably get away with up to 50 pages.
• Table of contents: Include a table of contents so readers can see what’s included in the ebook and quickly jump to the section they’re most interested in. 

4. Give it a home

Create a landing page for this specific ebook that you can direct people to if they want to download their own copy.

Your landing page should include: 

• A headline (with your primary keyword term!)
• Well-written teaser copy 
• Graphics
• A strong CTA
• An opt-in form

Optimize the title tag, meta description, and photo for when it’s shared on social media. 

5. Make it go the extra mile

Create an email campaign to go with your newly published ebook to help nurture your leads and turn prospects into customers. It doesn’t have to be a big campaign, maybe a series of three emails where you thank them for downloading a copy, sharing related content they might like, and inviting them to talk to sales.

6. Promote your ebook

The ebook is published and most of the hard work is done! Yay! But now you have to send traffic to your landing page and encourage people to download a copy, which is going to require some heavy lifting.

Advertising

Drive qualified traffic to your landing page by setting up ads in Google or Bing. Make sure the promise of what they’re downloading is clear and use those targeted keyword terms you came up with during your research phase. 

Blogs

Break out one of your chapters or a section of your chapter and turn it into a blog post! That can be text-based, an infographic, or quick video using the information from your ebook. At the end of the post, tell readers they can learn more on this topic by downloading their own copy of your new ebook.

You could also go and update older, but related blog posts with a new CTA to download the guide. 

Email

Share your new ebook in your newsletter or other regularly scheduled emails with your contact lists. If you have well-segmented lists, you could even follow up with certain contacts who have indicated interest in similar topics in the past and announce your new guide.

Event tie-in

You could tie your new ebook to an upcoming event or offer it as a post-webinar resource. To make it even more personal, you could ask them to email you or a specific marketing email address to request a copy and bypass the form all together. It makes the content seem more exclusive and then you can start a conversation right away with a prospect.

Influencer marketing

If you used research or stats from an industry influencer (remember that you should have cited them as a resource), you could reach out to them thanking them for the helpful information and share that you used it in a new ebook. They just might be willing to share with their followers and drive new leads to your site. 

Sales outreach

Share your newly published ebook with your sales team who can send it to their contact list to re-engage a potential customer or provide value to current customers. 

Social media

Create custom graphics or videos promoting your ebook and share those on social media, along with a link to the landing page. Or, you could pull out stats and quotes to drive up intrigue about what else is contained in your ebook. 

Are you creating any ebooks as a part of your content marketing strategy? Share your success story in the comments below!