How to Create an Ebook That Empowers Your Marketing and Sales
As inbound marketers, we‘re always looking for effective ways to attract, engage and convert leads into customers. One of the most powerful tools in our arsenal is the ebook. Ebooks enable you to provide in-depth, valuable content that educates prospects, establishes your authority, and nurtures leads through the sales funnel.
But creating a successful ebook is no simple task. It requires careful planning, compelling writing, professional design, and strategic promotion. You need to craft an informative resource that grabs attention, delivers on its promises, and guides readers to the next step.
In this ultimate guide, we‘ll walk you through the entire ebook creation process from start to finish. You‘ll learn how to pick a winning topic, write content that engages and converts, design an impressive layout, and launch your ebook with maximum impact. We‘ll share tips, best practices, and tools we‘ve picked up from creating dozens of our own ebooks at HubSpot.
By the end, you‘ll have a proven roadmap to make ebooks that don‘t just generate leads, but empower your sales and marketing teams to close more deals. Let‘s get started!
Planning Your Ebook for Maximum Impact
The first and most critical step in ebook creation is planning. You need to strategically select a topic and outline that align with your marketing and sales goals. Your ebook can‘t just be interesting to read—it needs to attract the right audience and move them through the buyer‘s journey.
Start by considering your target buyer persona and the challenges they face. What questions do they have? What information would help them make a purchasing decision? Do some keyword research to identify topics and phrases your ideal customer is searching for.
It‘s also vital to loop in your sales team at this planning stage. Ask them what common obstacles or objections they encounter in the sales process. What do prospects need to know to feel ready to buy? Targeting your ebook topic to overcome these barriers will make it an indispensable sales tool.
Once you‘ve honed in on a relevant topic, flesh out your ebook outline. Break the content down into chapters that follow a logical flow. Each chapter should deliver on a specific learning objective and include key takeaways. Keep the overall length in mind—most successful ebooks are between 2,000 and 10,000 words.
Finally, set a realistic timeline and assign roles and responsibilities. Determine who will be responsible for writing, editing, designing and reviewing the ebook content. Set hard deadlines to keep production on track. Effective project management is essential to get your ebook out the door and into the hands of your audience.
Writing Can‘t-Put-Down Ebook Content
With your blueprint in place, it‘s time for the heavy lifting: writing. This is your opportunity to share your unique insights and establish your brand as an expert in your industry. But it‘s not enough to simply brain-dump information. Your writing needs to engage and compel readers to keep turning the pages.
Follow these tips to write ebook content that informs and converts:
• Write like you speak. Use a conversational, relatable tone and avoid jargon. Reading your draft out loud can help you catch awkward phrasing.
• Tell stories and give examples. Illustrate your points with real-world applications and case studies. Storytelling is a powerful way to make complex topics more memorable and persuasive.
• Make content scannable. Break up long paragraphs into shorter chunks. Use headings, bulleted lists, callouts and visuals to help readers quickly grasp the key ideas.
• Provide immense value. Don‘t be afraid to give away your best insights and advice. The more actionable and useful your content is, the more readers will trust you and seek out your expertise.
• Optimize for search engines. Include relevant keywords in your chapter titles, headings and body content to help your ebook show up in search results and reach a wider audience.
Once your first draft is written, share it with your team for feedback. Run it by your sales department to ensure it aligns with their needs and adequately nurtures leads. Consider hiring a professional editor to polish the content and ensure it meets your brand standards.
Formatting and Designing Your Ebook
With the writing complete, your next step is transforming your text document into a professional-looking ebook. The design and formatting of your ebook is just as important as the words on the page. A polished, readable layout will keep people engaged, while a sloppy design may cause readers to bounce.
Follow these ebook formatting best practices:
• Design an eye-catching ebook cover. Your cover is the first impression readers will have of your ebook, so make it count. Use bold colors, clear fonts and compelling visuals that communicate the value inside.
• Keep fonts simple and consistent. Stick to no more than two fonts and use proper heading styles to create a text hierarchy. Avoid tiny or hard-to-read fonts.
• Incorporate your branding. Reinforce your brand‘s aesthetic throughout the ebook with your logo, colors, and imagery. Consistent branding builds credibility and keeps your company top of mind.
• Use high-quality visuals. Include graphs, charts, infographics, photos and illustrations to break up the text and clarify complex ideas. Invest in creating custom graphics or sourcing licensed images.
• Create a clickable table of contents. Help readers navigate your ebook by hyperlinking your chapter titles to the corresponding pages. This is especially important for longer ebooks.
• Add social sharing buttons. Make it easy for readers to share your ebook with their networks by embedding social media buttons and pre-written posts.
While you can design your ebook in Word, PowerPoint, or InDesign, it helps to have templates to maintain consistency. HubSpot offers five free, professionally designed ebook templates that make formatting a breeze. They include sample chapters, heading styles, and placeholder images you can customize for your brand and content.
When your ebook design is finalized, export it in a universally accessible file format, such as PDF. Consider offering other formats like EPUB and MOBI as well, which can be read on e-readers and mobile devices.
Launching and Promoting Your Ebook
Congratulations—your ebook is ready to be released to the world! But your work isn‘t over yet. Now it‘s time to put your promotion plan into action and get your ebook in front of as many people as possible. The more downloads your ebook generates, the more leads you can convert into customers.
Luckily, HubSpot makes it easy to launch and track your ebook campaign from a central platform. Start by creating a dedicated landing page where people can submit their contact information in exchange for the ebook download. Use persuasive copy and visuals to sell the value of your ebook and compel visitors to hand over their details. HubSpot‘s drag-and-drop landing page builder allows you to launch pages without any coding or design experience.
To drive traffic to your landing page, promote your ebook across multiple channels, including:
• Blog posts related to your ebook topic, with calls-to-action to download the full resource
• Social media posts that tease insights from the ebook and link to the landing page
• Targeted email campaigns to your subscriber list and specific persona segments
• Paid ads on search engines and social media platforms where your audience hangs out
• Webinars or videos that offer a "sneak peek" of your ebook content
Continue to promote your ebook for several weeks or months to get the most mileage out of your efforts. As you start generating leads, don‘t forget to nurture them through the funnel with follow-up emails and sales outreach.
Use HubSpot‘s built-in analytics to track how your ebook is performing over time. Monitor metrics like views, downloads, conversion rates, and the number of new contacts generated. This data will give you valuable insights to optimize your campaign and inform your strategy for future ebooks.
Turning Ebook Leads into Customers
By following the steps in this guide, you‘ll be well on your way to creating ebooks that educate your audience, generate leads, and empower your sales process. But the true measure of an ebook‘s success is how many of those leads turn into revenue.
To get the most ROI from your ebook, you need to strategically integrate it into your overall marketing and sales efforts. That means using your ebook as a key tool in your lead nurturing campaigns, sales conversations, and customer onboarding.
For example, you could send automated emails that share additional resources related to your ebook topic, moving leads deeper into the funnel. Your sales team can use the ebook to follow up with interested prospects and overcome objections. You can even repurpose the ebook content into other formats like infographics, webinars or drip campaigns to reinforce your expertise.
The key is to keep the momentum going and make your ebook a central part of your inbound marketing machine. By providing a comprehensive resource that solves your audience‘s problems, you‘ll earn their trust, build lasting relationships, and ultimately drive more sales.
Ebooks may seem like a lot of work, but when done right, they pay off in dividends. Invest the time to create a high-quality ebook that showcases your unique value, and you‘ll have an asset that generates leads and empowers your sales team for years to come.
So what are you waiting for? Brainstorm your next ebook idea and start planning your content today!