Ebooks are great marketing tools for establishing your brand’s authority, sharing your expertise with your community, and generating leads. But you need to make sure you have a plan for promoting your offer so that you can attract and convert visitors.
That’s why today, we’re sharing seven tips for successful ebook marketing:
- Define your target audience
- Conduct keyword research
- Establish an online presence
- Use social media to your advantage
- Launch PPC campaigns
- Use high-quality images
- A/B test everything
But first, let’s talk about why you need to plan for ebook marketing in the first place.
Why do you need an ebook marketing plan?
It’s simple: You need an ebook marketing plan to make sure you can get the most leads and the most downloads out of your gated content.
Like any marketing launch, a new content offer requires thought and direction in order to be successful. An ebook marketing plan allows you to centralize this prep work and this direction to make sure you’re promoting a cohesive brand experience, too.
Take a look at this ebook landing page example from HubSpot:
An ebook about brand marketing to talk about brand for ebook marketing. Perfect.
The colors are consistent with HubSpot’s branding, and the messaging and visuals are consistent across promotional materials for this ebook on building a brand. By using consistent branding here, HubSpot’s offer looks like a more recognizable, more authoritative resource. An ebook marketing plan using the tips below can help you promote your offer as a more authoritative resource.
How to crush ebook marketing
Now, here are our top seven tips for ebook marketing. Use these to improve your current campaigns or as a step-by-step guide to make sure your next content download offer is a runaway success.
Let’s get started.
1. Define your target audience
Before you begin brainstorming and launching your ebook marketing strategy, it is essential to first define the target audience and the demographics you intend to reach with this promotion.
Start by considering your customer personas, which should include personal and business demographics, as well as motivations and pain points.
Next, consider your target for this specific ebook. Is your goal to appeal to middle-aged mothers who lead hectic and busy lifestyles, but love to cook? Are you looking to grab the attention of individuals who are new to the startup world and are in need of a step-by-step guide?
Are you intending to target specific locations by region, zip code, or population density? How will your target customers discover your book, and what selling points will you use to attract them to your ebook's content?
That’s a lot of information, but that’s a good thing. By defining a specific audience first, you can use this to target your ebook marketing strategy and make it as personal—and as successful—as possible.
2. Research keywords and search trends
Without understanding the trends of your target markets and industries, it’s extremely difficult to promote an ebook, especially if the subject matter is simply not in demand. Luckily, that’s solvable.
Spend time researching keywords and search trends to see how in demand content on your topic is and what else is out there. You should also check to see how that’s changed over time, and take note of any big differences.
That’s why Google Trends is a great tool for your marketing. You can get valuable insights into specific keywords, groups of keywords, as well as broad trends in various industries and markets you intend to corner with your ebook. Using tools such as Google Trends is also ideal to gauge trends over a period of time, from one week to more than five years, and to compare topics.
No one’s surprised by “cookie” dominating here, right?
Taking the extra time to gauge interest in your topic and find any relevant trends or keywords will help you make the most of your ebook marketing strategy.
3. Create an ebook landing page
This is worth repeating: Your business needs a website.
Establishing an online presence is essential for any business today. While social media is a great tool (more on this in a minute), it’s not as beneficial for your business as a website, where you can own the domain and accrue value. SEO, or search engine optimization, plays a key role in determining the overall success of a brand, business, or website. When a website or presence is fully optimized, it is much more likely to appear within the first pages of search results when using top search engines such as Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo!, and Bing. With the right optimizations, you can help to significantly boost your website’s reach—and increase the visibility of your ebook.
For your ebook marketing plan, make sure to create a specific landing page for your ebook. This is where you’ll include your form and CTA to convert your visitors. Here’s an example.
Impraise includes an image of the ebook, as well as a summary of the content. Even more, they include the value of reading this ebook by listing out what you’ll know after reading the guide. You can also include social proof, like positive reviews from customers or industry professionals who can vouch for your content.
4. Use social media to build your network
You can expand your reach online by using social media to build your network. Plus, putting social media to work for you is a great way to maximize your online reach—even if you do not have a large digital marketing budget.
Whether you’re using a personal account for work or business account for your company, make sure you’re developing a professional presence on social media using platforms that are most likely to resonate with your target audience. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and even Snapchat are great places to start.
When it comes to promoting your ebook, pay attention to which platforms you’re using. If you are writing an ebook on DIY home renovations, for example, using Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook are optimal. These platforms are extremely visually-oriented and have focused, niche communities.
If you’re promoting content geared towards startups or B2B companies, these platforms might not work for you. Instead, you may want to focus on Facebook, Twitter, and especially LinkedIn, the world's largest professional social networking platform.
The best takeaway here is that using social media to your advantage doesn’t require extensive programming or marketing knowledge. It doesn’t even require a budget. That’s why it’s a great medium for ebook marketing, for seasoned marketers as well as new entrepreneurs.
Looking for a step-by-step guide? Check out How to Build Your Social Media Presence in 2021!
5. Launch PPC campaigns
Now, this option does require some budget: PPC campaigns.
Using pay-per-click, or PPC, campaigns is another way to spread the word about your ebook so that you can attract and convert more visitors. The key here is reaching users who you think would fit into your target audience that you identified. You need to make sure you’re targeting the right keywords and then—like we talked about above—offer a consistent brand experience.
Take a look at this Google Ad for DemandJump that offers a blog and content creation guide:
And take a look at the landing page:
The landing page with the offer echoes the same messaging, emphasizing that it’s never been easier to create a content strategy—with DemandJump’s helpful guide.
6. Use high-quality images
Getting your design elements, including your images, right is so important. Without visual appeal, catching the eye of prospective readers and customers becomes extremely challenging, if not next to impossible.
In a hyper-visual world, choosing the right promotional graphics for your ebook marketing matters. Knowing what type of graphics or imagery you should use with your ebook is not always a simple decision, especially if you are inexperienced with graphic design and online marketing. That’s where looking at your resources and marketing tools comes in. Here at Unstack, for example, we have a Pexel integration to help our users feature high-quality photographs, graphics, and other images throughout their website and landing pages.
There are also tons of marketing tools that help with design elements, including images, illustrations, icons, and more. The bottom line: Make your ebook marketing look good.
7. A/B test everything
A/B testing is an extremely popular method of testing the overall performance of digital campaigns for professional marketers and online entrepreneurs alike. And it’s extremely popular because it’s extremely useful.
A/B testing involves comparing two versions of the same ad, email, or web page with minor isolated differences, such as headline changes, copy edits, and visual alternates. That way, if one version performs better, you can say with certainty it was the headline or the copy and determine the best version to use to communicate with a potential audience.
You should A/B test elements of your ebook marketing plan, including emails, landing pages, and even ebook titles. Taking the time to test these elements can provide valuable insight into the type of messaging and copy that is most effective at appealing to those who have a genuine interest in your ebook content and those who are interested in learning more or becoming a customer of yours. Plus, you can use these insights to create your next ebook and make it even more successful.
Level up your ebook marketing
Launching a new content offer doesn’t have to feel stressful, confusing, or overwhelming—especially with the right ebook marketing strategy. Use these tips to build an effective ebook marketing campaign to start getting more leads and growing your business!