eBook Marketing: How to Create and Use eBooks in Your Online Strategy

eBooks are all the rage in the digital marketing community.

Businesses around the world utilize them in their online strategies, while thought-leaders and industry gurus use them to boost their reputation and increase their following.

There are hundreds of eBook marketing examples available on, practically, every topic.

And yet, the market is hungry for more.

That’s because this type of format is accessible and easy-to-digest that provides value in the form of condensed meaningful content.

If you have been slow to pick up on the trend, or are willing to up your eBook marketing game, you are in the right place.

In this article, we’ll highlight how to create eBooks, provide topic ideas, share insights on your digital marketing strategy, and more.

Let’s get down to it!

How to Use eBooks in Your Online Strategy

When building your eBook marketing strategy, keep in mind that eBooks are a versatile format. There are two main ways that you can use them – as a lead magnet or as a branding asset.

Create Powerful Lead Magnets

In marketing, eBooks are most commonly used as lead magnets. This means that they are created with the purpose of attracting new potential clients.

The books are offered on landing pages, or along blog posts and other pages that cover related information. The user can access and/or download them by filling out an opt-in form and providing their email address and other details.

If this is what you have in mind, you should consider creating a series of eBooks that address the most common issues that your target audience faces. The books should provide in-depth information and comprehensive solutions to these problems, so that the customer may see them as a valuable asset.

To ensure your eBook marketing efforts result in a successful lead magnet that attracts high-quality leads, you should position it in or below the middle of the content funnel. Otherwise, you risk wasting valuable resources on potential leads that are less likely to convert.

If these types of leads enter the pipeline, they may, potentially, clog it, and slow down your overall lead qualification and nurturing process.

Fortifying a Personal and Company Brand

Although marketing eBooks make great lead magnets, they can be much more.

The format can be approached as an accessible way to establish your personal brand and contribute to the image of the company.

To that end, the book needs to be written by a CEO and/or founder of the business, or a high-level executive who has some authority in their position and the industry. However, any employee with a captivating story to tell can try their hand as well.

The point is to provide value to the audience in the form of industry-relevant information.

As such, the book can be a way to create a buzz around the company and may become a valuable asset to its online reputation and authority.

It can also contribute to building the brand’s identity and personality, and attracting new customers not only with knowledge but with values and ethics.

Aside from benefiting the brand’s image, these types of eBooks can also be a source of revenue for the company.

Benefits of eBooks for Marketing

eBook marketing can benefit your online strategy in the following ways:

• Lead generation. As mentioned, eBooks are a great lead magnet. You can provide them as freebies to viable website visitors interested in your product and service, and to other potential customers who may benefit from them.

This way, you can add them to your email list and initiate the lead qualification and nurturing process.

• Customer Relationships. eBooks include organized and structured information on a topic that the client cares about. More often than not, this is a solution to a pain point, practical know-how, or valuable insights.

By offering them what they need and helping them solve their problems, you start building a connection with them. Furthermore, you show your expertise. As a result, they are more likely to do business with you.

• Thought-Leadership and Authority. If the information you provide is valuable, this can boost your authority in your niche and industry, and earn the respect of both your customers and peers. This can benefit your reputation and contribute to building new partnerships and attracting clients.

Furthermore, if your eBook offers valuable industry insights, it can result in brand mentions, boost awareness, and improve recognition.

• Revenue. Depending on how you approach the distribution of your eBook, it can contribute to your profits. While these types of books rarely cost much, they can become a source of recurring revenue.

5 Ways to Write a Marketing eBook

Writing an eBook doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, depending on your goals, you may already have the rough material laying around and only need to compile it, edit, and optimize it.

Here are some practical ideas on how to write an eBook:

1. Use Pillar Posts

Pillar posts and the pertinent topic clusters are great source material for a marketing eBook.

You can use the information you’ve already published to create comprehensive pieces of content. This way, you will provide all the information the customer needs in one place.

Although the content will not be entirely unique, it will still have value, because it is structured and organized and saves the user time and effort.

Furthermore, when editing the eBook, you should consider providing additional value, by adding more relevant information and data, as well as high-quality images and infographics.

2. Repurpose Other Long Form Content

Providing that you have other valuable long-form content, such as podcasts, videos, interviews, etc., you can use them as the foundation of an eBook.

For example, if you often interview interesting people in your industry, you can publish a compilation of these interviews and focus on relevant insights. You could also invite the participants to provide more information that would be exclusive to the book, thus boosting its value.

This approach will also help you promote it, because all the names featured in the eBook are likely to post about it on their social profiles, and recommend it to their followers.

Furthermore, this way you can strengthen your connections with others in the industry, as well as boosting your recognition, awareness, and reputation.

3. Compile Industry Insights and Tips

Tips are one of the most sought-after formats online. People across all industries love to have a glimpse into the day-to-day of others and see what makes them successful.

By publishing your own insights on your industry and/or tips on how to succeed, you are likely to attract the attention of not only others in the field, but new clients as well.

Depending on the time and resources you invest in these types of eBooks, they can be valuable both as a freebie and as a marketing product.

Furthermore, if you go the extra mile, and can provide unique valuable insights and tips, they can boost your authority and help you establish your name as a thought leader.

4. Tell Your Success Story

Everybody loves a personal success story – and every entrepreneur who has made it has one.

By sharing your personal story, you can boost both your own brand and credibility and your company’s awareness and reputation.

You can talk about the setbacks you encountered along the way and how you overcame them, provide insight to wannabe entrepreneurs and startups, as well as highlight the popular industry figures who helped you out.

And if you focus on how much you care about what you do and the passion behind your brand and products, it’s highly likely that your story will resonate with the audience.

These types of stories help others relate to you and can strengthen the connection you have with them because they show you as human. They make it more likely that people will like you and want to do business with you, because they feel that they already know you.

5. Write It From Scratch

Of course, if you have an idea that doesn’t match any of the ideas suggested above, you can just write an eBook from scratch. It will take you longer and may require additional resources, but, in the end, the final product will be completely unique.

How to Create an eBook

Once the book is written, you should initiate the following stages of the production process:

Design

To make your eBooks look more professional, you should consider adding visuals, such as images, infographics, diagrams, or anything else that may improve the user experience, and provide additional value.

It’s best that this part is implemented by a professional designer, who can create compelling images and a cover that will increase the overall quality of the final product.

If it’s a freebie, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. However, if it’s a book that you intend to sell, keep in mind that a high-quality good-looking cover may be the difference between making and breaking it.

Still, in either case, we advise against doing it yourself, and/or choosing a low-budget design.

Editing and Proofreading

To save time, you should consider implementing the design and editing processes alongside each other.

It’s best to assign this part to a professional editor who will help you increase readability and improve formatting, eliminate typos and grammatical errors, and make sure the quality of the content is agreeable to your audience.

Also, you should consider what types of formats to make your content available in, and what types of devices your audience may use to engage with it.

If it’s a downloadable PDF file, it’s best to optimize the content for mobile, because it is very probable that this is one of the ways that the audience will interact with it.

If it’s intended to be read on eReaders, it should be structured like a regular book, and provided in the most popular and pertinent formats, such as KPF, MOBI, EPUB, etc.

You should also consider providing your clients with a bundle that includes your eBook in a bunch of different formats, so that your book is available to everyone regardless of the device they might be using.

Publishing

How and where you publish your marketing eBook depends on your goals.

If it’s a lead magnet type of content, it should only be available for free on your websites. However, even if the book is a freebie, you can still decide to sell it on different platforms.

This way, you can even attract more leads, because the perceived value of the book will be higher since they obtained free something that others have to pay for.

However, if revenue is what you are after, we advise against this approach, because it may reduce sales.

Presuming you want your marketing eBook to be profitable, you should consider not only offering it on your own communication channels, but making it available on Amazon as well.

The platform is a vertical search engine that has its own ranking rules, but, at the same time, results from there show up in Google search results as well.

By optimizing your listing with the proper keywords, you can rely on organic impressions and sales to boost your revenue.

Promotion

Regardless of whether your eBook is a freebie or not, you should consider promoting it across your website and communication channels.

To that end, you can create paid search ads, and optimize them with the keywords that your customers often search, and which are related to the book itself, while creating a compelling landing page with a strong CTA.

You should create strategically placed opt-in forms and popups that users will encounter across your website when they engage with relevant content.

If the aim of the marketing eBooks is for revenue and brand building, it may require a different strategy.

As mentioned, you should consider posting your book on Amazon. Once it has been launched, you can offer it free for a limited time, and then for a discounted price for another set period of time.

This way, you will be able to attract more readers and build up reviews on Amazon and other platforms. The more reviews you have, the more new customers are likely to purchase your book.

Also, the more reviews you have, the higher up the algorithm is likely to show your listing. This way, you will reach even more potential customers and pull in more sales and revenue.

You should also launch social media campaigns, contests with the book as the prize, and make an email campaign to promote the launch.

Bottom Line

Marketing eBooks can be a valuable asset in your digital marketing strategy. They allow you to attract new leads, build a connection with them, and boost conversions.

Furthermore, if you are willing to go the extra mile, you can create and publish content that not only shows that you are a thought leader, but that can skyrocket your reputation and authority in your industry.

Regardless of how you decide to approach eBooks, using them to enhance your online presence is always worth considering.