Are you trying to drive more leads to your business? Do you need to establish yourself as a credible leader in your industry? Do you want to create an enticing offer to get more people to sign up for your marketing emails? There is one way you can do all of these things: write an ebook. We'll be exploring the various ways ebooks can help you grow your business.
eBooks for Business Lead Generation
What is lead generation?
To stay in business, you have to have someone to sell to, right? Lead generation is a method of attracting potential clients or customers and encouraging them to take an action, such as schedule a consultation. Generating leads is the step that comes before selling. Once you have the lead, there are many steps you can take to convert the lead into a customer - but what we're focused on here is generating the lead itself. One of the most effective ways to generate leads is to get them to sign up for your emails, where you can share content, offer sales, and highlight your services. But people don't just go around signing up for emails - we all get enough already. So you have to make it worth it by offering something that compels them to give you their email address. That's where ebooks for lead generation comes in.
Whether you offer an entire library of resources or simply have a single, enticing offer that compels people to schedule a time to talk with you, an ebook can be an effective way to drive more leads. The most common question we get about ebooks for lead generation is, "What should I write about?" There are a number of answers, but consider one of these lead-generation powerhouses:
- Answer a question or provide a solution to something that demonstrates your expertise that someone might typically have to pay for. The cost? A name and email address (where they can, of course, unsubscribe any time, but won't if you're giving them great content).
- Provide insight into your area of expertise with tangible steps the reader could take to achieve success.
- Share some inside secrets that will help your reader get ahead - it could be a marketing secret you use, a method for calculating ROI that helps you justify worthy investments to your boss, or an inside track to better networking to build the right relationships.
In the end, you can write about anything that both showcases your expertise and gives the reader a valuable takeaway. The point is to drive the leads to you, where you can further showcase your experience and expertise or highlight the services offered by your company.
Here are some examples of ebooks used as lead generation tools for businesses that might inspire you:
IT Company in Ohio that offers a library of resources for people when they sign up for the monthly newsletter. Each of the ebooks provides the person with in-depth guidance on IT topics and are of value on their own.
A business coach who offers a single, in-depth guide to pivoting your business. The ebook itself is of great value and gives them an opportunity to showcase their coaching service.
Hubspot, the king of lead generation, offers a series of lead generation ebooks to help you move your business forward, where they of course collect your email address for further marketing of their services.
What do these offers all have in common? Even if you don't purchase the services they offer, the ebooks themselves are a treasure trove of useful information. It should be your goal to do the same - offer something useful, even if only a small percentage of people actually convert, because you never know who will come back a year later to hire you when they're finally in the right space for it.
