No, definitely not — and I can say this with full confidence as a marketer. eBooks are by far some of the most effective forms of content that drive leads and conversions to my site.
One of the most challenging aspects of marketing is communicating the real value behind your products or services. The difficulty often lies in your brand’s ability to communicate complex information when we normally have very limited time to do so in our blogs or infographics. This is where eBooks come in. An eBook can give you a platform to communicate practical, useful, and more comprehensive messages. With an eBook, you can deliver longer forms of content and educate your prospects. It’s also a great way to highlight your expertise in a creative and informative way.
If I had to drill down to specifics, there are three things that I’d like to highlight to underscore why eBooks are valuable assets for any marketing strategy:
1. eBooks Help Strengthen Your Brand
Studies show that 63% of customers prefer to do business with a brand they consider authentic. This is why brand trust and authority is something that businesses should work to develop.
By far, one of the best ways to establish this for your business is by creating content that’s relevant to your audiences. Speaking about a subject with authority helps you strengthen your brand, talk about something with authenticity, and highlight your expertise in the industry.
2. eBooks Help Generate Leads
Based on personal experience, eBooks are one of the best ways to generate leads for any business. When done well, an eBook is a cost-effective way to deliver information and educational material that can urge prospects to convert.
3. eBooks Have High Perceived Value
Blog posts and articles are designed to deliver content to customers, just like eBooks. However, eBooks have a higher perceived authority and therefore value. This is what makes them more effective for lead generation. As a strategy for gathering customer information, using eBooks in exchange for a prospect’s email address has proven to be very effective.
4. eBooks are Easy to Produce
Compared to other forms of exclusive content, eBooks are by far easier to write and distribute. Whitepapers often require extensive research, while webinars and podcasts demand a lot of production time and equipment. eBooks, on the other hand, are simple and straightforward to create. If you don’t have time to write anything from scratch, you can simply compile previous blog posts and articles into a single eBook and polish it into a more professional work. Previously published infographics can also be included to add more value to the piece.
5. eBooks are Convenient
eBooks don’t require constant management or maintenance. Once you’ve completed the design and set it up on your website for download, there’s no need to keep checking on it to make sure it’s functioning as it should. You now have more time to focus on tracking metrics to see how you can better improve your marketing tactics.
Bottom line…
eBooks are still valuable strategies that deserve to be a part of your marketing efforts. That said, you can’t expect to whip together a few thousand filler words in a day or two, slap in some stock images and call it a writing masterpiece. You have to offer real value and substance to your readers for eBooks to give value to your marketing efforts in return. If you want to know more about how eBooks can help your brand, get in touch with me today.
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