Does your company currently produce eBooks as part of your marketing collateral? If not, then you could really be missing a trick. Many small business owners wrongly believe that producing eBooks is a costly and time-consuming process, that’s only relevant for the big players within their industry. Here’s 5 reasons why that couldn’t be further from the truth…
Reason #1: They are cheap to produce
Because eBooks are of course produced solely in the digital realm, there are no printing or production costs. Which means the overall costs of producing them are minimal. The average timeframe for producing and putting together the eBook should only be between 5–10 hours. Meaning that if you are paying someone hourly, then it shouldn’t cost you much at all.
The key thing here is that in this day and age, it’s often better for content such as eBooks to be fairly short. Content tends to work better these days if it’s concise and to the point. Most people online these days don’t want to spend hours reading through anything. So it’s a real win-win that consumers tend to like shorter content these days. Which means that the eBook will be quicker and more cost-effective for you to produce. Bonus!
This is therefore a real win-win situation. You can keep your eBooks nice and short. And they will tend to do better than longer content.
Reason #2: Your leads, prospects and customers will grow to love you
These days, your target audience is probably looking out for content that is useful and engaging. People have come to expect this kind of content from companies. They don’t just want sales hype and information about your company. They want genuinely valuable advice and guidance from you.
Nothing gets you into a potential customers good books quite like providing them with help and advice just when they need it. And the bonus is it makes them aware of your company and what you do for all the right reasons.
It can also provide them with the essential level of credibility, trust and confidence in your company that they need. This is often required before a potential customer feels confident enough to make the jump to making a purchase from you.
If you are providing great content such as eBooks to your potential customers and your competitors are not, then you instantly have a significant competitive advantage. As you are already helping and aiding them long before they may even be ready to make the purchase. And this kind of service and consideration for them as a potential customer does not go un-noticed.
Reason #3: You’ll learn something about your company, your industry, and your customers
One thing that’s often overlooked by individuals and companies that produce eBooks, is how much can be learned from them. It’s amazing once you start researching and putting together the content for your eBook. You can learn so much useful and insightful information about your industry and competitors etc. This all helps you to market your products better.
Producing eBooks can be a highly valuable experience for any individual or organisation. As you find out more about what people think about your industry, you can use this new information in really important ways. It will help you to understand your target audience better. And this can only be a good thing.
The key point here is that in the modern digital era of the internet and information overload, there is always plenty that all of us can learn about practically anything. Even if we are true experts and gurus in our field!
Putting together content such as eBooks is a fantastic way to sharpen your knowledge and understanding of your industry. And to ensure you remain up-to-date and well-informed about the latest developments in your industry. Plus anything significant that may have changed in recent times that you might not have been aware of.
Reason #4: You’ll stand out from your competitors with great marketing collateral
Another great benefit of producing content such as eBooks, is that this marketing collateral can be added to your website. Better still, it can often stay on your site for many years to come. Meaning it will make your website seem more professional and authoritative to anyone who visits it.
It will also brighten up the site and make it significantly more aesthetically pleasing. For example by being able to display the covers of your eBooks on the site. Plus things like associated infographics and other visuals that have come from your eBook content. All this content improves your website. Which is only good for your overall marketing.
It’s amazing just how much adding some eBooks and related content like infographics to your site can lift it and really bring it to life. And this can really give you an edge over your competitors website. Which might be, in contrast, quite dull in comparison.
This can really give you an important edge when potential customers are conducting research into your products/services. If they are visiting a number of websites looking for the products you sell, this can really give you an edge.
It’s not just your website though of course where this matters. Once you have your eBook and related content, you have some essential stand-out collateral that you can use on other channels. We are thinking here about Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. Which is perfect for gaining the attention of your target audience and getting them to stop and take action on these channels.
Reason #5: It’s great for SEO
One more key benefit of producing content such as eBooks is it’s innate ability to improve the SEO of your website. Because of the longer-form nature of eBooks, they are naturally fantastic for SEO.
And all you have to do is ensure that the eBook content is duplicated and transcribed directly on an associated landing page on your website. All that valuable targeted keyword content is then picked up fully by search engine bots and keyword scanners. And this counts towards significantly improving the SEO of your website.
As anyone who knows anything about modern day online marketing will tell you, content has become a key part of the strategy for pleasing search engines like Google. And it really helps in terms of ranking well with them. Producing eBooks is a great way to enhance this further and ensure that you are taking full advantage of the key change in the way that search engines view and rank your website.
Make sure you don’t get left behind here by ensuring that you have some longer-form content such as eBooks on your site. They should cover the key issues and topics that matter most to your target audience. They’ll thank you for it over the longer term by rewarding you with more business. Which is exactly the point of any marketing. Hopefully it’s now clear why this is such an important strategy. Get this right and it can have a fantastic impact on your marketing.
Conclusion regarding Marketing Collateral – eBooks
We hope you have found this blog post on marketing collateral and specifically eBooks useful and interesting. Be sure to implement the tips featured above into your content moving forward.
Want to see a great example of how to do eBooks really well? Visit Hubspot’s website where they have lots of eBooks available to view and download.
Want to learn about other areas of marketing? View all our services.