eBooks are extremely popular content marketing forms for businesses across of range of industries. It’s an opportunity for your company to showcase your expertise and build further trust with your audience. So, how do you create an eBook? And, once crafted, what’s the best way to launch your eBook?
What is an eBook?
An eBook, or electronic book, is a book published online and made available in a digital format for electronic devices. You could read an eBook online, on a computer, a tablet, smartphone or e-reader or Kindle.
At Absolute Digital Media, we have created a number of downloadable eBooks, both for our own agency and as a service for our clients. Creating an eBook is a fantastic way to deliver your expertise and delve into a detailed topic, as readers seek out eBooks for a comprehensive, detailed and informative guide to a specific subject.
How to use an eBook in Business?
eBooks are a fantastically versatile content format and they’re not just reserved for digitally consuming fictional tales. In fact, business eBooks are highly valuable content tools that can be used to showcase your expertise and services.
This blog will approach launching an eBook from a marketing perspective, and see how businesses and agencies can utilise this long content form to sell their agency and expertise.
How to Create an eBook?
When creating an eBook there are three main steps to the process:
1. Ideation
Firstly, you need to decide what your eBook is going to cover. Start by considering what topic or subject within your industry or niche is lacking in informative, public information? Or, perhaps you can provide a unique insight or new learning to a trending topic that users are seeking out? Either way, your ideation process should start by questioning why readers need your new eBook.
Once you’ve landed on a topic and title for your eBook, you can start planning the content and structure of your book. eBooks vary in size and length, but they should always have a clear structure and content flow so you can clearly deliver the information in a logical and useful way.
2. Content Creation
Now is the time to get your ideas and insights flowing! Crafting the content of your eBook is the exciting part, it’s where you get to commit your idea to paper and draw out your expertise, data, insights and unique case studies that apply to your topic.
eBook content structure can vary, but it’s good practice to split the content up into a clear format for readers to follow. This could either be a traditional chapter system, where each topic area has a defined chapter, or you could create a beginning, middle and end format to track your argument and ideas.
Throughout your content creation, you need to keep your reader in mind and deliver the information in a tone and style that will resonate with them. For businesses, this is likely to be your customer base, so consider who your target market is and tailor the style to them.
Let The Content Masters Craft Your Next eBook
3. Design
While crafting your eBook content, you should be considering how this information can be enhanced with visual assets. With 65% of the population identified as visual learners, including graphics and images into your eBook to support your message and demonstrate your data is vital.
Once your content is complete, the next step is to bring the visuals to life and layout the content into the eBook format – this is where your work really starts to come to life! During this design process, you can also determine how to publish your eBook, the easiest and most popular eBook delivery for businesses is to create a downloadable PDF. This is the quickest, easiest and cost-free method for hosting your eBook.
How to Launch an eBook?
With your eBook content complete and ready to be launched into the public domain, it’s now time to start understanding how to market your eBook to ensure it succeeds.
Pre-Launch
Hyping your eBook is crucial for ensuring you’ll get those valuable downloads. Create a pre-launch campaign strategy focused on utilising all your existing marketing channels and contacts.
Firstly, social media is key. Developing an eye-catching pre-launch social campaign with sneak peeks into what the eBook will deliver is a fantastic way of drumming up interests and getting users to sign up for your content release. Use impactful design assets, videos and to the point content snippets to shout about your eBook’s imminent launch.
Here’s a post Absolute Digital Media created for our latest eBook launch:
We’re counting down the days to the launch of our latest eBook: The Thrive Guide 🦁🌴
Check back to our profile on Monday for all the tools you need to get your digital marketing thriving 😉 #absolutelife #thriveguide #seo pic.twitter.com/KXz7Pl7tXW
— Absolute Digital Media (@AbsoluteDMedia) February 5, 2021
As well as jumping on socials, you should also create an email marketing campaign for your eBook release and get your contacts excited about the coming eBook launch. Tell them what they’ll learn from this new eBook project, why they should download and what unique insights they’ll get from this particular piece of content.
An email marketing campaign is also the perfect opportunity to share a pre-download link or reminder opportunity for readers looking to be first in line for your latest eBook.
If you’re hoping to attract new audiences with your eBook, you should consider creating a dedicated eBook download page on your website and invest some basic SEO tactics into driving traffic to this page. Conduct some keyword research around your eBook topic and insert these into your eBook website page to capture search volume and drive new users to your website to download the product.
Connect To Your Audience Through Digital
Launch Day
Congratulations, your eBook is live – now tell the world!
Our Thrive Guide is here! 🚀
💥 Easily assess your current marketing efforts
💥 Tips for remodelling in the face of difficulty
💥 Develop your marketing efforts further to look to the futureDownload your free copy, now 👉🏻 https://t.co/oUm5BI08Tk pic.twitter.com/kz8gTggYES
— Absolute Digital Media (@AbsoluteDMedia) February 8, 2021
Launch day should be all about telling people how fantastic your eBook is and encouraging them to download now. From social media to email marketing, even a dedicated blog post or PR outreach tactic could be beneficial to spread the word about your eBook.
Sharing audience engagement and comments about your eBook is also a fantastic way of making user-generated content promote your eBook and position the content as a trusted source of information. To do this, share your eBook with prominent people within the industry or topic your eBook covers and ask them to share their thoughts, this will help drive new people to download your book and help increase the engagement around your eBook campaign.
Promote Your New Products With Expert Marketers
Long-Term Launch Strategy
Once the big launch day is complete it doesn’t mean you now sit back and relax. Quite the opposite. An eBook is a product which is available online for a long period, and people might not download it straight away but may well look for it in the future. You, therefore, need to create a long-term promotion strategy to share the knowledge of your resource across your marketing channels for a substantial period.
Sharing page snippets, quotes and images from the eBook is a great way to remind users that your resource is available for tips, advice and learning. You can also map out any events or trending topics that relate to your eBook content and would be useful for promoting the eBook alongside this popular event. Whatever promotion tactic you choose, you have to think long-term and seek out opportunities to share your resource and gain valuable downloads.
It is also important to analyse the success of your previous promotion tactic to see what performed well. For example, do image assets gain more social engagement then quote sharing? Establishing what works for your market will help guide your future promotion tactics and ensure your effort is put into valuable actions.
For more information on creating and promoting an eBook, contact the team at Absolute Digital Media today on 0800 088 6000.
