How to Write an eBook Visitors Actually Want to Download

The advent of the internet—and therefore online publishing platforms—means any expert can write and distribute a book, even if they don’t have a publisher. Sure, non-experts can put out books now as well, but we’re not talking about them. We’re talking to you: a knowledgeable thought-leader in your field who has important information to share with your audience.

When you produce a high-quality, educational eBook (not unlike the one you’re reading now), you can use it to meet several of your content marketing goals. So many people write and promote eBooks because they work. They have huge benefits, especially for B2B companies who sell high-ticket professional services. Three of the major things you can accomplish with an eBook are: building authority, positioning yourself as an expert, and generating leads for your business.

Building Authority

Authority is an important asset for B2B service providers. It makes it much easier for you to reach and influence prospects and customers. You earn respect and trust, which are crucial for developing and maintaining long-term relationships. Ultimately, authority means when someone has a question or problem in your area of expertise, they’ll come to you first.

Learn more about the importance of authority, the different types, how to start building it in the Authority Marketing Playbook.

Learn more about the importance of authority, the different types, how to start building it in the Authority Marketing Playbook.

An eBook goes along way in building your authority with customers and prospects. You can dive deep into a topic, provide your readers with a ton valuable information on that topic, and prove that you’re the go-to person or company on the subject. Next time that person has a question about the topic in your eBook, where do you think they’re going to turn? To you.

Positioning Yourself as an Expert

When it’s published publicly, an eBook inherently brings with it an air of expertise. By diving deep into a topic and educating your readers on it, you share your expertise organically and without being in-your-face about it.

Your audience wants to hear from an expert who has background and experience solving the problem they’re facing. Often times, they’ll skim through your eBook just to confirm you do have expertise on the topic. Share your experience, and success overcoming the issue detailed in your eBook so your audience feels they can trust your advice. Give your readers reasons to be confident in your ability to help them solve a problem.

Generating Leads

The best way to get people to read your eBook is to talk about it. Share it on your business’s social media outlets. Share it with your email list. Share it with existing clients who will find it useful as an added benefit to their current and past work with you. When marketing to new audiences, generate leads by doing your best to collect contact information before users download the eBook. Ask for an email address, and for permission to send them periodic emails. Once they provide their email address, add them to your lead generation funnel, and follow up with anyone who expresses interest in your services.

In addition to sharing with your existing audience, be sure to set yourself up for success when trying to reach new audiences. Identify related keywords when publishing on eBook platforms such as Amazon Kindle Direct. This will help you reach new audiences who might not already be familiar with your work. Be sure to use keywords that relate directly to the problem your eBook solves to ensure you reach your desired audience.

Once an eBook is created, it can also be repurposed in a variety of ways, including:

5 Kinds of eBooks We Love

Not all eBooks are created equal. There are many different types of eBook formats, but here are the 5 types that work best.

No matter what type of eBook you decide to create, the steps and advice in this eBook can help you create an impactful piece of authority-building content. Learn more about the process we use to create eBooks, and you’ll be well on your way to seeing success, just like we do.

Focusing on Your Niche

You can’t establish yourself as an expert and build your authority without focusing your efforts on a niche. Concentration on a niche saves you time, money, and effort because you are targeting your specific, desired network. You have a certain set of skills and knowledge to offer your audience, and your audience is best served with content related directly to their needs. When you identify your niche, gear your eBook toward that audience, and watch the high quality leads come in. If you need help determining your niche, review the niche section of the Authority Marketing Playbook.

When talking directly to your niche, be sure they know you have something new to offer them. In any positioning statement you write for your eBook, be sure to answer the following questions up front:

Writing the eBook for your audience personas

Once you have identified a niche, the next step is to define your target audience persona(s). Within your niche, customers may have different needs. Using your already established customer base, you can build personas for potential customers to better target their needs. Learn about creating personas in the Authority Marketing Playbook. Here’s a rapid-fire version of the steps on how to build your audience personas.

What are your goals?

How will you know when your eBook is successful? Goal setting can help you quantify what you want to accomplish with your new content. In B2B, the major qualifier for success is leads—and ultimately turning those leads into customers. Learn more about goal setting in our webinar all about content marketing.

Here is a snapshot of metrics to focus on:

What to Write About

Choose the right topic for your audience

When creating your eBook, you want to ensure it will be beneficial for your target audience. The only way to do that is to be sure the topic of your eBook is something your audience will care about. We’ve already talked about how to establish yourself as an expert. To keep that trust, you must create content relative to your audience needs, and they will keep coming back for more.

When you’re trying to decide what to write about, there are a few go-to places to look. One of the best places to get inspiration is from your customers. Dig back through your email to find questions your customers have asked—then build out your answer in an eBook.

If you don’t have customers yet to ask, you can look elsewhere. Google Trends shows data on what people are searching for. The national trends likely won’t apply to you, but you can search for any keywords within your niche.

Customer research and title testing

Once you have your topic nailed down, it’s time to choose a title to grab the attention of your audience. Using the personas you created earlier, research other types of content your audience is using, and what kind of titles are being used successfully. Are title short or long? Do titles include buzzwords or general language? Do they frequently include language that indicates lists of suggestions (10 ways to…)? Don’t copy someone else’s work, but use popular titles as inspiration to create a title that tells your readers what to expect, and appeals to your target persona.

Brainstorm 15-20 potential titles for your eBook using different keywords and title formats. Rapid-fire test these titles with A/B testing on Facebook. Create an ad variation with each title and see which gets the most positive attention.

Using a catchy title

You can create all the great, helpful content you want, but unless the right people download your content, you won’t meet your goals. Most readers download content based on a title. Make sure yours is catchy, concise, descriptive, and honest.

Quality Matters

In everything you do for your customers, quality matters. eBooks are no different. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to download your eBook, view it as poor quality, and forever hold a negative view of your brand. Spend the time to be sure that every eBook you publish is high quality. Follow these steps to identify and create high quality content.

How much time will it require, you may ask? Well, creating an eBook that properly demonstrates your authority and expertise isn’t a one-day project. In general, you can expect to spend at least 40 hours on researching, planning, writing, designing, editing, and publishing your eBook. Not all of these hours have to be your time. We’ll cover outsourcing in more detail in the next section.

Repurposing high-performing content

It’s likely that an ebook isn’t the first content you’ll be creating for potential customers. What else have you created that was successful? Is there more material that you can add to that content to turn it into an ebook? That’s a great place to start.

Some examples of this include:

Once your ebook has been created, you can then repurpose it as well: Break out sections of your ebook into separate blog posts. Turn pieces of the ebook into bite-sized, shareable posts for social media. Send a section of your ebook to subscribers as a weekly email. Use concepts covered in the ebook for podcast topics.

Build Evergreen Resources

Not all of your potential customers will find your content at the same time. As you write content for your eBook, be sure you content is applicable for any time your audience finds it. Avoid writing content that only applies to events or situations that only occur once. Instead, make your content general enough to apply to situations that come up at all times. This will ensure that readers who find you months after you publish will still find you as an expert and explore your other content.

Why create high quality content?

If you are asking potential customers to read (or skim) a long eBook, you need to provide them with value. Inherently, an eBook has 0 value. The value of an eBook comes in its utility. Your expertise comes in how you provide/define value. Your eBook must goes above and beyond what already exists in your niche, and it must be unique in format, opinion, or case.

If your eBook is superficial content without evidence to back up your expertise, you may lose audience members for your future content. If readers don’t see the value in downloading and using your longer resources, they won’t stick around or take the next steps to hire you.

How to Create an eBook

Now that you have worked to identify your niche, and you’ve identified a topic, it’s time to create your eBook! Starting an eBook can be daunting. There are multiple steps: writing, editing, choosing a title, designing, publishing, and getting readers. We’ll help you through all of that. Follow these steps below that have worked for us, and you’ll be on your way to success in no time.

THE CREATION PROCESS

Step 1: Document What You’d Like Your Readers to Learn

In order to write or repurpose content successfully, you need to know the end goal. What do you want your readers to get out of your content? Why should they use your ebook instead of other available content? Identify your goals and let that guide your writing.

Step 2: Create an Outline

This will help you structure your planned content. If the end product flows well, it will make more sense to the reader.

An outline also helps you get all your ideas in an easy-to-read format so you don’t need to wade through lots of other content as you get to the writing part of the process.

Step 3: Write the Material

This is the fun part! We’ve found that writing an ebook in sections works very well. If you can write one section at a time, following your outline, it will allow you to organize your thoughts and ensure your writing is cohesive.

As you write a certain section, stay on topic — or otherwise move your content to the appropriate section of your outline. We typically use major headings and subheadings, and we keep our sections short. This will allow you to write a table of contents to direct your readers to the section that most meets their needs. You don’t want them to read all your content to find a specific answer.

Step 4: Design Your Ebook and Its Associated Resources

Typically, ebooks live on your website as a downloadable item with an eye-catching cover and a layout with pull quotes, graphics, and other imagery. In addition to the actual ebook, you’ll want these additional items created:

Tools for Creating Your eBook

A lot of tools exist to help you create your eBook. If you have a great topic, but don’t have the time, desire, or experience to create it, you have the option to outsource. There are three basic avenues for assistance.

If your eBook is simple and straightforward (mostly copy on a non-technical topic), you can use a freelance writer and a web-based tool like Beacon. However, if your eBook has more complicated sections (a workbook, charts, images, etc.) or is on a very technical topic, you may want to work with an agency or find high-level freelancers to help create your eBook.

Once your completed all these steps, and you’ve finalized a product you can be happy with, it’s time to get your masterpiece in front of prospects.

Publishing

Once your ebook is complete, it will be time to send it out into the world. There are a lot of places where you can publish your ebook, but the easiest and quickest option is your own website.

You’ll need to decide whether you’ll charge for the ebook or offer it for free. If you’re creating a B2B ebook, we recommend you offer the content free of charge. When offering the content for free, your goal is to build authority and generate leads who will become customers that provide income from other projects.

Asking readers for their name and email address before they download your ebook is the most popular way of collecting the contact information of your leads. Typically, the form is shown after the user has decided to download your work, but before they can access the full ebook.

Another option is to put all the content from the ebook on your site (like a really long blog post), and have the designed version be available for download. Visitors can access the full ebook without providing their contact information, but your ebook can get more reads and build more authority with this approach.

Amazon Kindle eBooks

To gain the authority and status of being a published author, you can self-publish your ebook on Amazon Kindle Direct, which offers step-by-step instructions for the process. If you choose to pursue this option, there are additional tools available to you in the publishing stage, such as:

Generating Leads

You can publish your ebook this way and still offer it for free, but if you decide to charge readers for it, the Kindle Direct Publishing algorithm is very helpful in recommending a suitable price. You should also look at other books and ebooks in your niche, or at least in your industry, and do some price comparisons for yourself.

As you follow the process to publish on Kindle Direct, the online system will ask you specific questions to help determine keywords for your ebook so it can be found in searches; price it or offer it for free; market it; and help release it to an international audience. This can be especially important if you’re trying to expand your customer base outside of your home country.

After completing all the steps in the uploading process, your ebook will be available almost immediately on Kindle Direct, which makes you an official author — a great talking point for building authority.

You can further use your newly published ebook to build authority by soliciting reviews. Some of your target prospects may see that you’re a published author, check the reviews on the ebook, and simply use that information to decide whether to work with you. The most effective method of requesting reviews is providing the ebook to members of your target audience and asking for an honest review. During this process, be sure to follow Amazon’s guidelines by not trying to influence the content of the review or otherwise bribing the reviewer.

You can learn more about Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing by watching their introduction video.

Other online publishing platforms include Apple Books and Barnes & Noble Press. You may find yourself needing different file types to publish through different avenues. Using a program such as Online-Convert can help you transform your ebook into any file type you need

Getting downloads

You’ve uploaded your content, and now it’s time to bring in those leads. Promote your new eBook to all your existing audiences. While this process may not generate all new leads, you may reach a new subset of your existing customer base to generate more work. Announce the new eBook on your website, send a link to your email marketing list, share it on social media, and talk about it when you meet with current customers or attend networking events.

In addition to marketing to your current audience, be sure to target new audiences relevant to the personas you identified. Reach new audiences by investing in paid ads on social media, search engines, or through retargeting. Do you partner with other service providers in the industry you are targeting? Invest in advertising specifically to their audience to get a higher return on investment and higher quality leads.

Use this checklist to make sure you’ve covered all your bases.

For more information on how to share and track your content with different customer groups, check out the Authority Marketing Playbook.

Turn Downloaders into Customers

Even though people who find your eBook are most likely downloading it for help to solve a specific issue, that doesn’t mean you should overlook using it as a source to highlight your company and your services. Are you helping them solve an issue that you also offer to solve as a paid service? Mention that. Provide a call to action for them to contact you if they need more in-depth advice, service, or a direct solution to the problem.

How do you turn downloaders into customers when your eBook is free? It’s all about the follow up. As mentioned earlier in this eBook, if you publish your content on your website, we recommend collecting an email address before the lead downloads your content. There are two approaches for getting the eBook to the lead:

With the first option, you have no way of validating people’s email addresses before they download the ebook. While this approach may be easier to set up, you won’t be able to stop people providing fake emails from accessing your ebook. With the second option, a valid email address must be submitted to access the ebook, but this will require additional setup to deliver the ebook to the lead’s inbox automatically (and therefore quickly, which is vital).

When you have a valid email for leads, you can set up an email series to follow up with them and educate them further on what you do. Follow up a few days later to make sure they got the information they needed and invite them to email you with any questions they might have. Recommend your services if they still feel overwhelmed after reading your content.

Later on, send them future ebooks on related topics. Keep your name at the top of their mind so they think of you whenever they run across similar issues in the future. For more information on how to create such an email series for following up, view the relevant section in our Podcast Guesting Playbook.

Using bots as forms

An approach we’ve tested—and found success with—is using bots as the method for collecting lead information and delivering the eBook. The term “bot” may still be a little taboo for you and your customers. However, we believe that bots are the way of the future, and they can help you qualify leads faster and save time and money.

Through the use of autoresponders (immediate attention), and chat boxes on your website (only funneling qualified leads directly to your sales staff), you can use bots to start a conversation almost immediately with your customers. When leads engage with your bots, they can be qualified faster, and help ensure that your valuable sales personnel are spending time with leads who have a higher potential for conversion.

By using bots in lieu of forms for your eBook, your website visitors get information faster and without leaving your site. Plus, bots are more conversational by implementing the ability and encouraging users to respond. To see one of these bots in action, go to the Authority Marketing Playbook and click the Download button. This will initiate a bot that collects your email address and delivers the playbook. We use Drift for this and all our other bots./authority-marketing-playbook

Don’t Stop at One

The process of creating your first ebook will be long, and once you’re done, you’ll probably want to take a deep breath of relief. Just remember that the effort will have been worth it, because you’ll be building authority, generating new leads, and on your way to attracting new customers.

So, what’s after that? Your next ebook! Continue creating content, but don’t just create ebooks simply to have them. You’re investing a lot of time, effort, and money to build each ebook, after all, so it’s important to do so with purpose.

One way to structure your strategy is to create different ebooks for different personas. You can speak to each group of prospects about the specific topics they care about. In this case, you won’t cross-promote your ebooks to the same audience; you’ll have separate promotion, messaging, and follow-up approaches for each.

On the other hand, you could create a series of ebooks that all speak to the same audience. Each ebook could build on the knowledge shared in the previous one, or you could separate them by topic. With this approach, you want to heavily cross-promote the ebooks — if a prospect is reading one, they ought to know about the others. If people should read the ebooks in a particular order, be sure to direct them accordingly at the beginning and end of each. If order doesn’t matter, mention the other ebooks within your content as it seems appropriate.

Your ebook structure and plan should align with the goals you laid out in the planning phase. For example, if the purpose is to assist in cold outreach, create ebooks that are prime for explaining and promoting to cold prospects as a way to educate them about your services and entice them to engage with you. If the goal is to upsell or cross-sell your existing customers, build the ebook topics around information your customers need to know for them to be persuaded to buy more of what you do.

Continue building on your ebook strategy and periodically assess what’s working and what’s not. Track the metrics discussed at the beginning of the ebook (leads, prospects, conversions, initial sales value) and continually adjust and optimize to improve performance over time.

If you have questions about creating ebooks people actually want to download, contact us using the link below.