When you need to fill your sales pipeline, generate fresh leads, expand the audience of your content and build your email list, consider creating a new long-form content asset with the help of an ebook ghostwriter. Because ebooks are educational rather than promotional or sales-focused, they increase your company’s credibility. A high-quality ebook can position you as a thought leader within your niche, increasing the profile of your brand and encouraging leads to become clients.

Ebooks enhance the publisher’s authenticity, a characteristic that 63% of customers say makes or breaks their decision to buy. This strategy is the cornerstone of content marketing, which drives three times the leads of traditional marketing at just over a third of the cost. Intrigued? Review this comprehensive guide to implementing an ebook campaign.

Ebook Strategy: Decide on an Approach

To generate leads with an ebook, you need to determine how the content will facilitate your potential customer’s journey through the sales funnel. Ideally, an ebook should support your core product or service by offering your reader value, without replacing their need to actually make a purchase from your brand. On the other hand, an ebook without a close enough connection to your core offerings won’t effectively encourage the reader to take the desired next steps, whatever they may be. Hiring an ebook ghostwriter can help you make this distinction successfully.

In general, an ebook should convert readers who are aware of your product to leads who are interested in buying your product. A typical marketing model provides a free ebook in exchange for a subscription to an email newsletter. Once the person moves from the awareness stage to the interest stage, your email campaign should guide the reader to take action and make a decision about your offering. Make sure your planned ebook fits seamlessly into this strategy.

Choose an Ebook Topic

Whether you have an ebook ghostwriter in mind or plan to create your own ebook content, certain types of ebooks are popular because they work. Depending on your niche area and the goals for your ebook, consider publishing in one of these common formats:

• How-to ebooks explain how to do something within your realm of expertise. For example, let’s say you’re the marketing manager for a farm CSA share program. You want to encourage community members to sign up for a produce delivery subscription. The strategy? Hire an ebook writer to create an ebook about using and storing seasonal fruits and veggies. This type of information will inspire readers to learn more about your service and its benefits without duplicating the value of the subscription itself. Ideally, how-to ebooks should answer common questions that drive your target audience to search the web for answers.
• List ebooks explain and illustrate any number of items within your chosen category. Returning to the farm CSA example above, you could write an ebook about “36 Great Seasonal Produce Recipes” or “15 Desserts To Make With Local Fruits and Veggies.”
• Inspirational ebooks are designed to target your audience by highlighting your unique journey. For example, maybe the owner of the farm CSA share is the first woman of her family to run the farm in over 150 years. That’s a story worth telling, especially if you offer a tie-in product like small business consulting sessions for women.
• Introductory ebooks provide the basics of your niche that newbies need to know. For your CSA share client, that could take the form of “ABCs of the Garden” for those new to eating fresh produce.
• Research-based ebooks present original data and insights, sometimes interspersed with case studies and personal anecdotes. These ebooks can include contributions from other thought leaders with the proper citations to provide context for your own study. For example, the farm CSA could present statistics about how its program has improved community health, along with background from sources like the USDA about the importance of well-rounded nutrition.

Tips to get  Ebook Inspiration

Review your existing content for inspiration. The AdEspresso blog by Hootsuite published a “Pick, Produce, Publish and Package” ebook framework. This model recommends selecting 10 blog posts of about 1,000 words each. You could also choose a few longer whitepapers. You can optimize the performance of your ebook by using Google Analytics to identify your top-performing posts from the past. Then, convert these content assets into a new 10,000-word publication with the help of a talented ebook writer.

Keyword research should also inform your ebook topic selection. What terms do readers search when they find your content? What related terms are they searching? What topics and questions interest them the most? The answers to these questions drive smart topic choices. If you’re new to keyword research, get started with an intuitive tool like Ahrefs Keyboard Explorer.

Create a Content Brief for Your Ebook Ghostwriter

For the purposes of this guide, we assume you’ll be outsourcing content creation. Before you engage an ebook writing service, you should clarify the format, outline and goals for the publication. Remember that an ebook doesn’t have to span hundreds (or even dozens) of pages to provide reader value. According to Content Marketing Institute, most ebooks range from 12 to 40 pages. Ask your ebook ghostwriter to incorporate multiple headings, sidebars and other points of entry to keep the reader engaged and make the content easy to scan.

Take Care With Your Ebook Title

According to Unbounce, a striking title is the most critical aspect of any marketing offer, including an ebook. Your book title should stand out from the crowd while clearly communicating its informational value for the reader. Your ebook ghostwriter should consider time-sensitive titles; we’re all so busy that most of us love to hear that they’ll learn how to complete a monumental task in minutes, hours or days. Copyblogger data indicates that while 80% of readers at least glance at the title of a content asset, just 25% actually read the entire thing.

Have a Persona in Mind

Make sure your ebook writer becomes familiar with the target audience. If you have already developed an audience persona for your brand, provide those details to your content creator. If you haven’t, take time to do so before investing in an ebook. This step will enhance the efficacy of your message by speaking directly to your potential clients.

Prepare To Proofread

Once you receive the finished manuscript from your ebook ghostwriter, carefully proofread to make sure it meets your brand’s content standards. Have several pairs of eyes review for issues like typos, incorrect or inconsistent formatting, long paragraphs, unnecessary words, spelling and grammar errors, and poor word choice. Read the content out loud to identify clunky phrases and sentences. Double-check names, numbers, facts and statistics that appear in your ebook and ask your writer to cite sources where appropriate.

Get the Facts on Formatting

Ideally, readers should be able to access your ebook in their format of choice. Convert the final manuscript into one or more of these formats, or hire someone to do it for you:

• PDF, which is easy to create and familiar for the majority of your audience
• Epub, the universal ebook format
• MOBI, the format used by the Amazon Kindle
• HTML5, which provides fast loading and potential interactivity

Both PDF and HTML5 formats will also be indexed by search engines, which increases the number of people who will reach your ebook content organically.

Encourage Further Action

While lead generation is the primary purpose of your ebook, CTAs within the content can draw your reader into the next phase of the marketing funnel. Hubspot recommends including CTAs periodically throughout the ebook, with buttons that lead to a product page, registration page for a course or event, or an offer to sign up for a consultation.

Delve Into Ebook Design

While you can use a tool like Canva to create your own book cover and interior layout, the most professional results will come from a professional graphic designer. It’s worth the investment in design services for your ebook since attractive graphics, an eye-catching cover and a readable flow will encourage more readers to take advantage of your offer. Consider these best practices when formatting your ebook:

• Instruct your designer to use a simple sans-serif 11 or 12 point font for the main body content.
• Use a minimal color palette that complements your brand’s logo and aesthetic.
• Add headers to guide your reader through the book.
• Stick to short paragraphs and lean on lists for maximum readability.
• Include high-quality images that illustrate and support your content, whether you take your own pictures or license art for use in your ebook.

Promote Your Ebook

Once you’ve approved the work of your ebook ghostwriting service, you’re ready to share your content with the world. According to the Disruptive Advertising blog, failure to effectively promote an ebook is the most common reason for failure to generate leads. Prepare in advance by developing a strategy comprising these common methods of ebook promotion. Start building buzz about your book before it comes out by beginning your campaign in the weeks leading up to the release.

Landing Page Essentials

Before you do anything else, create a landing page where the audience can get your ebook. With a campaign-specific landing page, you encourage readers to complete a single action. In this case, you want them to download your ebook in exchange for an email address. The landing page should be as simple and as intuitive as possible to direct the reader straight into the interest portion of the sales funnel.

The main components include a short opt-in form, engaging text that boldly and concisely describes your offer, and an obvious CTA button with text like “Download Now” or “Get Your Ebook.” Add client testimonials to your ebook landing page. A study by Social Fresh suggests that this step can improve conversions by up to 89%. If someone sends a complimentary comment or email, ask if you can quote his or her words for this purpose.

An essential element that sometimes gets overlooked? Your landing page absolutely must be optimized for mobile users, who will comprise the lion’s share of your audience.

Blog-Based Benefits

Announce your ebook in a blog post. Include a clear call-to-action that shows your audience exactly how to obtain a copy. The post itself should target similar keywords as your ebook itself, so think of it as a preview or teaser. Provide an overview of what the book includes and leave your reader intrigued enough to seek further information.

With each relevant blog post you publish, drive traffic to the landing page with social shares and calls-to-action. Each blog post should have a CTA that sends the users to the ebook landing page. When a customer completes a different offer, add a CTA for your ebook on the thank you page.

Connect with other blog publishers who may be willing to partner with you. Ask to write a guest post on their site to build awareness of your ebook and other products in exchange for a similar guest post from them on your site.

Social Media Spread

Ask for reviews or social shares from individuals in your network. Consider recruiting a few friendly readers to serve as brand ambassadors who will promote your ebook in exchange for payment or in-kind products and services. Working with influencers instantly multiplies your book’s audience and exponentially increases your trust among their readership.

Use social media ads to reach a new sector with information about your ebook. Hootsuite recommends taking advantage of the tools in Facebook Ads and Twitter Lead Generation Cards to create, target, test, share and track the performance of paid ads. What’s more, this type of promotion typically costs just a few hundred dollars.

Reach out to trade journals if your ebook appeals to a particular industry. This works well when your ebook highlights trends, new research or cutting-edge techniques.

Don’t forget to send an email offer to your existing list. These customers have an added incentive to download your ebook since they’ve already moved into the interest portion of the sales funnel.

Get Started With An Ebook Ghostwriter

If you’re ready to write your first ebook, you don’t have to go it alone. Contact BKA Content for a price quote and to learn more about how our ebook ghostwriters can transform your ideas into a product that turns casual viewers into live leads.