A business can only survive in the online world if it has a strong online presence. Strong online presence is measured by the number of social media followers the business has, the number of visitors to the business’ website, and the number of website visitors who actually convert to become paying customers. An eBook is one of the leading methods of attracting people to your website and hopefully influence them to become paying customers.
The most effective and frequently utilised way of using eBooks to generate leads, is by leveraging their perceived value to sign up prospect your mailing list. I call this a ‘carrot eBook’, because your publication is positioned as a ‘dangling carrot’ which your website visitors simply cannot resist, and thus willingly hand over whatever details you ask of them when prompted (most commonly their email address) in order to get their hands on that juicy carrot. One fine example of this is the ‘Top 25 Business Growth Tips’ eBook created by the crew at Gleam.io, pictured below.
Identifying and successfully harnessing online communities whom will have an appetite for your carrot ebook is an artform in itself; the logical place to start is by subtly promoting the problems it can solve on relevant forums, social media groups, blog comments and of course tactical references throughout your own website. A visitor who clicks on your link in any of these places and is then redirected to your website where they prompted to submit their email address before being able to download the book. Of course, with the appropriate opt-in settings in place, the reader is also automatically subscribed to your mailing list when this transaction, of sorts, takes place. It’s a Win:Win situation; the reader receives something of value for no monetary outlay, as does the website owner who is then able to nurture each email lead into a prospect to buy their core products and services in the future.
Yaro Starak, the man behind the successful blog Entrepreneurs Journey, is one such practitioner who uses this strategy well. The pop-up window pictured below appears on his website, prompting visitors to download his well-regarded book Blog Profits Blueprint for free if they submit an email address.
Yaro claims that over 150,000 people have already downloaded it. Yep, that’s a solid email list alright! But it doesn’t stop there…let’s consider the value equation of this technique; when you compare the minimal production costs of an eBook, it is often a particularly economical vehicle for growing an email list. In most cases, each high-quality email subscriber can be worth at least $1-$2 to a business, if not more. When considering Yaro’s case, he may have spent $1,000-$2,000 in the production of his eBook, however yielding 150,000 subscribers means he has derived $300,000 in business value. Not a bad return on investment, hey! More often than not, eBooks can be a no-brainer for lead generation when you look at them from this perspective.
An eBook can also be used to generate more traffic for your website, and even to other publications or eBooks you have written. The beauty of this medium is, being constructed in a purely digital format, that the user is just one click away from entering the world wide web. This means that as the author, you can strategically place a hyperlinks within the content to your own (or partner’s) websites. All the reader would have to do is click the link in their pdf or e-reader of choice and be directed to the target page.