Service Businesses: How to Create an eBook for Lead Generation

eBooks are great, cost-efficient tools to help B2B businesses generate leads, educate their audience, and build trust & authority. In this blog we'll cover why eBooks are essential in B2B lead generation, how to create an ebook, and various promotional strategies.

Why eBooks are Essential in Services Marketing

Services, as apart from B2C businesses, usually require an element of lead generation to close a sale. Luckily, eBooks are a great resource for generating leads while also helping you establish authority, and repurpose your content.

Lead Generation Tool

eBooks can be a great tool for capturing leads in a cost efficient way. Let's say you're a real-estate agent looking to capture first-time homeowners entering the market. You can imagine that first-time homeowners would have many questions about the buying process, current conditions, financing, etc. Here's where you come in with your "Free Guide to New Home Ownership" which answers many of the questions they might have.

eBooks are great lead generators because they have a very low cost to the audience (usually just contact information) and generally a low cost to the creator. Businesses can create it once and promote it over and over again.

Establishing Authority

When you package up your thoughts and ideas into a format that is clean and professional while providing valuable insights, you will add to your brand authority as a business. Your eBooks however must have both visual appeal and useful information however, without one or the other it can backfire and hurt your brand authority.

Imagine you walk into a car mechanic shop and they are trying to sell you their comprehensive tune-up service. They hand you a pamphlet that is all white with times new roman font. Or inversely, you get handed a beautiful pamphlet but there's no details inside of it. Both situations would lead to the same conclusion; based on presentation, this service may not be for me.

Content Repurposing

The beauty of ebooks is that they can be broken down into smaller pieces that can be used across other platforms. For example, if a wedding planner created an ebook titled "50 ways to decorate your wedding", they could create a social media posts for each one of those 50 ways. You could also expand on topics mentioned in your eBook on blog posts, emails, cse studies and more.

For more info, check out the benefits of eBooks in marketing.

Preparing to Create Your eBook

Before you start creating your eBook, you must define who you're creating the eBook for, identify your eBook buying stage, and align your chosen topic with the buying stage.

Define Your Target Audience

To begin the planning stage we must understand who we're creating this eBook for and what stage they are in their buying journey. To illustrate this, I'd like to share a recent project we worked on with Vecko Construction, a concrete builder out of Houston Texas. Vecko wanted to integrate eBooks into their lead generation strategy, focusing on residential consumers wanting to do patio and driveway work. We suggested Vecko create multiple eBooks to hit consumers at different buying stages:

Awareness level

Home Improvement 101: A Comprehensive Guide to Outdoor Concrete Projects

Boost Your Home's Value: How Concrete Improvements Make a Difference

Consideration level

Budgeting Your Project: Understanding the Costs of Residential Concrete Work

Decision level

The Ultimate Checklist for Hiring a Concrete Contractor

Purchase level

Your Project Timeline: What to Expect When You're Concreting

Notice how each of these relate to the original topic of residential concrete construction work but would resonate more strongly depending on the buying stage the consumer is in. Check out this link if you're not sure how to do target audience research.

Choose the Topic

You want to make sure you're choosing a topic that will resonate with your audience. A great way to create topics at various stages of the buyer's journey is familiarize yourself with the funnel mentioned above.

Awareness topics

Content at this stage should educate your audience on the possible solutions to a specific challenge or problem. In the example above, the specific challenges were home improvement and increasing home value.

Consideration topics

Consideration level topics should help the consumer assess which solution is right for them. In the example above, a budgeting eBook would help the consumer understand what kind of work they could get done, depending on their budget. If you offer different services or services with varying levels of output (i.e. a car detailing service) consideration level eBooks could be helpful to include.

Decision topics

At this stage, we must help the consumer make a decision to purchase your service. To do that, we must answer the final questions needed to make that purchasing decision. In the example above, we created a checklist for the consumer to assess concrete contractors. If someone downloads an eBook at the decision level, you know they are very close to making a purchase.

Other decision level topics could be buying guides, pricing packages, and case studies.

Purchase topics

At this point, the consumer has purchased or is very close to purchasing with you but that doesn't mean you can't continue to provide value. The consumer may say, "Okay, I bought your service, now what?" Even post-purchase, we want the experience to be as worry-free as possible. In the example above, we wanted to give purchasing consumers a project timeline to give a general overview of what to expect.

The eBook Creation Process

To create an eBook, you must first create an outline before you start writing. Afterwards, you can get into the design and formatting, and lastly proofreading and editing. Let's break those down piece by piece.

Outline Your eBook

When outlining your eBook, you want to make sure that you are as concise as possible. Think of ebooks as directions on how to get from point A to point B. When giving directions there isn't much room for telling stories or including many anecdotes. Break down your topic into chapters that when combined, will address the value you're proposing.

Usually I like to outline my eBooks like this:

1. Cover Page

2. Introduction - tease out an overview of what the consumer will receive by reading

3. Table of Contents - outline of the chapters and their page numbers

4. Chapters - include info on the topic but also testimonials and links to contact you

5. Conclusion - should be similar to your introduction but with more substance

6. About me / the business

Writing the Content

You may notice that once you start getting your ideas onto paper, you may have more to say than you previously thought. If you find that you're having trouble with the writing portion, stop trying to write well at the onset but try just write, period. This can be your thoughts on the subject, bullet points, or random tips. Once you have some ideas down, you can give them more color as you go on.

Design and Formatting

As previously mentioned, a professional, visually appealing design is very important when creating an eBook. The design is an opportunity for you to showcase your brand's aesthetic and authority. If you're no design expert, don't worry. You can hire a professional or you can browse eBook creation software that will help you do it yourself.

Proofreading and Editing

You never know where your eBook might end up which makes proofreading and editing critical steps in the process. Since you cannot control what happens post-download, you want to make sure that the spelling, grammer, and formatting are exactly what you'd like your brand to be represented as. Don't forget this step!

Distribution and Promotion Strategies

When in the right platforms, eBook can be a powerful tool to generate leads. Let's detail how to choose the right platform, as well as integrating eBooks into email marketing.

Choose the Right Platforms

eBooks work great across a multitude of platforms, especially those that allow you to do targeted promotion. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn have good targeting tools and serve well for digital publications such as eBooks.

Video based platforms like YouTube and TikTok can also be good tools when the eBook is positioned effectively. For YouTube you can link to your eBook in the description of your videos as well as your about page. For TikTok you can mentioned pieces of your eBook in posts and drive consumers to click the link in your bio.

Email Marketing

Email is another great way to move users down the funnel by educating them with your eBook. My suggestion would be to segment your email list based on buying stage and include the next level's eBook within a nurture campaign. You can create a multi-touch nurture campaign that has pieces of the ebook within each email. Since many people may not see every email or will not piece them all together, the audience would be incentivised to download to get the complete picture.

Since the goal of an eBook is to acquire contact information, you shouldn't send email contacts to a form-gated page. You should send consumers to a page where they can access the eBook directly, without entering in contact information.

For more information on eBook promotion, check out this blog on effective eBook promotion strategies.

Measuring Success

No strategy is complete without accurate methods of measuring success. Here, we'll go into the metrics of tracking downloads, measuring engagement, scroll rate, bounce rate, and calculating ROI.

Track Downloads

This is one of the greatest measures of success when it comes to measuring the performance of your eBooks. Make sure that whatever platform you're using to host your ebook whether it's a website or something else is configured appropriately to track downloads.

Engagement Metrics

Apart from downloads, there are other engagement metrics you can garner from your eBook promotional webpage that tell you more about how well you're getting consumers to download. Let's break them down:

Scroll Rate

If you have a longer page that details what consumers will receive by downloading your eBook, tracking the scroll rate is a good way to measure interest in what you have to offer. A high scroll rate indicates that consumers are either scrolling to get more information to assess whether it's worth it to download your eBook, or they are engaged in what you have to say about the eBook or topic.

Pair this up with your download rate.

• High scroll + low downloads: The webpage or eBook needs to be more enticing

• Low scroll + low downloads: You may not be targeting the right audience with the right message or you need more content on your page to build trust

• Low scroll + high downloads: You are targeting a motivated audience and/or your eBook topic is very valuable

• High scroll + high downloads: Your web page content is convincing enough to get the audience to download the eBook

Engagement Rate

Opposite of bounce rate, engagement is a good way to assess whether your webpage is getting consumers to click on links, to press the "download now" button and more.

Bounce Rate

Pairing up the bounce rate of traffic on your webpage with consumers clicking on your ads is another great way to measure performance of promotion.

• High clicks + high bounce: Your promotion is good but it may not match the expectations of consumers when they reach your site

• Low clicks + high bounce: You don't want to be here, reassess your promotional targeting

• Low clicks + low bounce: You may want to dedicate more funds to your promotions

• High clicks + low bounce: Your promotional message and targeting is good and your web page content matches the expectation of the consumer

ROI Calculation

There are many factors to consider when trying to measure the ROI of an eBook including promotional costs, costs to create, download-to-sale rate, and average sale amount.

If you're using paid ads on Google, Meta or Pinterest, you can calculate the cost per download (total cost per click / total downloads). If it takes you 10 clicks at $5.00 each to eventually get 1 download then (10 x $5.00) / 1 = $50 per download

Let's take it a step further to say that every fourth download leads to a sale. So $50 x 4 = $200 cost to lead to closed sale. If your eBook cost $200 then after the first sale, it takes $400 worth of eBook creation costs and promotion to close a sale. After the next, it only costs $200 worth of promotion to close a sale since you already covered the cost of creation. As time goes on, the eBook will deliver more value that what you paid for it.

Even though it's not eBook specific, this is still a great blog on measuring content marketing ROI if you're looking for more information.

Conclusion

Now, you know how to create an eBook in the ever-changing landscape of services marketing. eBooks serve as a multi-functional tool that benefits both businesses and their prospective clients. From generating cost-efficient leads to establishing brand authority and repurposing content across various channels, eBooks offer an invaluable way to engage audiences at every stage of the buying journey.

By carefully crafting eBooks that address the specific needs and questions of your target market, you can build long-lasting relationships and drive conversions more effectively. So, if you haven't yet integrated eBooks into your marketing strategy, now is the time to recognize their potential and start reaping the benefits they offer.