What is an ebook and how do I use it in my content strategy?

The practice of content marketing is a strategic digital marketing approach. Content marketing is centred around on designing and disseminating necessary, appropriate, and constant content. The goal is to attract and keep a clearly defined audience and. The endpoint is to drive profitable customer action.  Rather than presenting your products or services, you are providing readers with genuinely relevant and useful content. This is to help them solve their issues.

An ebook is just a digital version of a physical book. It is designed to be read on a computer, smartphone, tablet device or a dedicated e-reader (electronic reader) device such as the Amazon Kindle. As part of your content marketing strategy, ebooks are a great way to help with your demand and lead generation. If done correctly, ebooks offer several distinct benefits that make them an integral part of a thorough digital marketing strategy — the following lists several of the most valuable benefits of ebooks for lead and demand generation.

Benefits of ebooks

Help To Promote Expertise

Long-form content usually gives a business a space to establish credibility and expertise. This is more so than it can through short-form content such as blogs. Electronic books, specifically, allow you to formulate the message and the knowledge you want to show the target audience. As people who download eBooks are actively looking for information or education, publishing an ebook is a useful structure. The compelling portrayal of your message will do wonders for your credibility.

Inexpensive To Produce

Compared to the broad range of digital marketing materials that a company produces; it could be argued that ebooks offer the best value for money. It is necessary to invest time and resources to create the content; however, the production costs are minimal as opposed to, for example, a full print media kit.

Developing and publishing an eBook is also efficient. The total amount of time it takes from the development of the initial concept to the creation of the content and publication can take as little as a few weeks.

Simple Distribution

A typical digital marketing challenge is to figure out how to get the content you create to the right people. There are a variety of delivery options that are available with ebooks:

Most digital marketers offer eBooks via website download. This is in exchange for a user’s name, email address and other pieces of valuable contact information.

Expand your brand’s reach. You can do this by making your ebook available through Amazon.com or other large online digital self-publishing platforms.

Readers want to be able to download eBooks on desktop, tablet or smartphone devices. This means that you need to make sure that you connect your eBook content marketing strategy to your email communications as well.

Promote your ebooks as an added-value tool for people who sign up for your email marketing. Attract attention to your social channels and promote your eBook there.

Subtle Marketing Form

It is challenging to design marketing strategies that audiences accept and often go out of their way to find.  This makes eBooks unique as people download these publications because they want to access the information presented in their pages. By giving your eBook for free, you provide readers with the perception that your content is highly valuable.  After you establish credibility and show that you have the ability to solve their problems, subtly guide the reader toward your business and the solutions you offer.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to learn more about content marketing? The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Copywriting and Content Marketing Course will help you do this. For more information, please visit our website.