Although it may seem that eBooks are outdated in today’s age of visually appealing video content and brief, attention-grabbing text, they continue to be an effective tool for converting leads into customers in the B2B market.
eBooks are a valuable tool for increasing brand awareness among target audiences. According to a report by the Content Marketing Institute, 51% of B2B businesses find that incorporating eBooks into their marketing strategies is effective. Additionally, a survey found that over 52% of Americans own a dedicated e-reader device for consuming eBooks. These digital resources can effectively provide helpful information to potential clients, such as product details, industry tips, and troubleshooting guidance.
eBooks can serve as a comprehensive resource for various topics, including company best practices and product components. They offer B2B businesses the opportunity to engage with their target audience at various stages of the buying journey. If you want to understand eBooks’ value for your B2B business, this article is for you. It will delve into why eBooks are essential for any B2B organization and provide guidance on creating an eBook that generates leads.
What is a Business eBook, and Why do B2B Businesses Need It?
It’s no secret that 81% of customers prefer online research about the product they decide to buy. An eBook is a series of properly written articles that help educate your customers about your services and products, and it is an offline collection of different educational resources about your offerings.
Instead of demanding customers to click on a specific link of your blog post or website, B2B businesses can use eBooks to combine all the points into a sequence. Your business may need an eBook for the following reasons;
- It will help you collect the email addresses of your potential customers
- It will improve your credibility and reputability
- It will boost your efficiency
You must show your authenticity and core values to convince your buyers and clients. Creating an eBook for your business gives you an edge to express your values and show your loyalty to the consumers so that they can make wise decisions about your business.
If you’re not creating eBooks for your business, you’re missing out on an enormous business opportunity. Creating business eBooks is the most effective way to generate leads and earn more revenue. Since most sales are developed from e-readers, tablets, and smartphones, eBooks have become more apparent.
Are you still trying to convince yourself about the importance of eBooks for business? Please read the following top reasons why you should invest in creating business eBooks.
1. Increase the Number of Your Customers
When you put effort into creating an appealing business eBook, it delivers value to your customers. You can use different infographics to provide lots of information to your audience. Through the engaging content of your eBook, you can teach customers how your products/services can help them get rid of their day-to-day concerns.
When customers and clients recognize the effectiveness and values of your business, they will believe in investing in it.
2. Excel from Your Competitors
Only a few businesses are interested in investing in creating a business eBook on different digital platforms. You can become more noticeable among your competitors by making your business eBook, and it will not help you stay in the competitive business market but will also help you engage more buyers. When customers find more valuable content on your websites, they only sometimes care about your competitors.
Once your buyers and clients have realized the values of your business, they will build a loyal relationship with it. They will always prefer your services/products over your competitors.
3. Improve Your Brand Reputation
To get more from your B2B business marketing efforts, you need to know about your target audience. It would help if you created customized customer personas to target buyers based on their specific needs and requirements. You can create a 10-page eBook to deliver valuable content to your target audience.
You can also save your precious marketing dollars by creating a business eBook according to your business requirements. The engaging content of an eBook will boost your sales and make a tangible difference for your audience, and it will improve your brand/business reputation and help you get more from marketing efforts.
4. Increase the Authenticity and Credibility of Your Business
Your potential buyers and clients prefer comparing your services with the competitors, so they can make a wiser decision about investing in your business. You can help them explore the features and effectiveness of your business by creating different business eBooks. The in-depth content of eBooks can build credibility and nurture a customer relationship to the point of sale, and Ebooks can provide consumers with some informational and actionable values.
Potential clients can easily compare your services with your competitors when they get valuable insights about your B2B business. If they find your business more effective, they invest their money in your business or products.
5. Get Maximum Return on Investment (ROI)
You must invest many of your dollars to accomplish your marketing efforts. Unlike other marketing strategies, creating a business eBook is much more cost-effective. You can get assistance from an ePublishing company in creating business eBooks without disturbing your budget.
Above all, you don’t have to create different eBooks for marketing channels. Once you make an eBook, you can share it on your business website or send it to your potential buyers via email. You can also share it on social media platforms to drive more leads. Along with the more significant response from the audience, eBook will help you get more return on investment.
6. Enlighten the Important Aspects of your Business
You often use landing pages to deliver the information your clients are seeking about your business. But it becomes difficult to completely cover your core values, business profile, and objectives through landing pages. Business eBooks will help you show every aspect of your business in-depth.
You can create eBooks for all the topics you mention on your website landing pages. You can start the eBook with the most evident and significant aspects of your organization and then dive into the other advantages of investing in your business.
7. Improve Your Content Marketing Strategies
Content marketing has become the most significant marketing trend for numerous reasons. Statistics highlight that more than 61% of marketers believe content marketing can effectively generate more leads.
Delivering engaging content to your buyers and potential clients increases your odds of being seen. You invest a lot of effort, time, and money in creating blog posts about the credibility of your business. You also share different content on social media channels to improve your brand reputation. But the problem is that people expect consumable and small content for both social media and blog posts. If you’re sharing a blog post of 25,000 words, most people won’t read it.
Here business eBooks come in handy. eBooks help you cover specific topics in extreme detail. Your content marketing strategies may need more depth, but eBooks are the ideal fix. You can add engaging content, infographics, and charts to help the audience consume longer content.
8. Grow Your Email List
Every online business needs an email list of potential buyers to grow sustainably. B2B businesses must focus on getting the emails of their target audience to deliver valuable content to them. It will give you direct access to let people know what you are offering and why they should invest in your business.
Creating business eBooks is a hands-down way to grow your business email list. You can require your customers to share your email address to gain access to your eBook. This type of gated content will help you get valuable insights about your potential buyers and target them based on their needs and interests.
9. Measure Your Success
The impact of your eBooks on your customers and clients helps you measure your success easily. There are numerous tools available that you can use to analyze how much time readers are spending reading your business eBook. You can also ask the readers to rate the effectiveness of your eBooks. All these efforts help analyze your customer satisfaction level and measure your success rate.
Creating an eBook has always been an excellent way to measure your success, improve brand loyalty, and generate more leads. It will help your buyers understand that your business offers something incredible.
10. Easy to Create
Unlike creating different aspects of your business website, creating an eBook requires no particular skill or expertise. Creating an eBook will take time, but you can publish it with little effort.
Tips for Creating a Lead-Generating Business eBooks
Fascinating and well-written business eBooks are ideal for marketing your B2B business. Your buyers need information that can meet their needs or help them solve a problem. If you successfully offer the content your potential clients need, they will return for more.
Research by HubSpot shows that 27.7% of marketers use eBooks, making them popular lead magnets. You will benefit from your eBooks only if you deliver valuable insight and engaging content.
Our following tips will help you create a lead-generating eBook for your business;
- Keep Your Target Audience in Mind
Before creating an eBook, put some serious thought into the personas of your specific audience. Determine whom you are trying to reach. Are they plant managers? Procurement managers? MROs? Identifying your target audience will help build a powerful connection through your content.
You can target your audience with product brochures by including performance curves, certifications, product specifications, CAD files, and charts in your eBook. All this information will help readers understand your overall eBook strategy.
- Align Your eBook with Your Marketing Goals
A well-written eBook will reinforce your business, establish it as a subject matter expert, generate sales, and drive traffic. But you can avail yourself of all these perks by providing valuable and informative content in your eBook. Align your eBook with your marketing goals to position you as a knowledgeable leader in the business market and improve your overall brand awareness.
- Keep Your eBook Consistent & Clear.
The average length of a business eBook may vary between 2,000 and 3,000. These words are more than enough to highlight the essential aspects of your organization. Avoid unnecessary words and fluff when creating a business eBook. It will make your readers less engaged if you try to increase your word count.
You can first create an outline to roadmap the structure of your eBook. This practice will ensure that every critical topic is included without losing sight of your content’s goal.
- Use Attractive Colors
The colors you use in your business eBook should remain clear and consistent throughout the guide. The behavioral psychology associated with the colors can help promote brand awareness. Marketing experts say that visual factors like the color palette and imagery influence more than 90% of purchasing decisions, and studies also highlight that color can increase brand recognition by 80%.
The colors you choose for your business eBook can communicate an emotional connection with the readers. Choose the colors that suit well with your brand and showcase your company’s overall style.
- Design a Landing Page for Your Business eBook
A landing page is a gateway to collect user information and generate leads. Include the length and placement of your form, copy size, and a call-to-action (CTA) button to ensure your landing page stands out.
- Add Clear Images to Your eBook.
Your eBook will fall flat without clear images and excellent visual presentation. You can highlight the necessary information with graphics and use headlines with directional clues to direct the reader’s attention.
Keep the look of your eBook clear, consistent, and clutter-free to enhance its visual presentation. You can use numerous online applications to make your content marketing efforts more appealing and effective.
- Promote Your eBook On Different Platforms
The last thing in launching a business eBook is promoting your content on different channels. You can use social media posts, email nurturing campaigns, paid marketing ads, and industry-focused newsletters to promote your newly created eBook.
The Bottom Line
Business eBooks are a great way to share valuable, engaging, and helpful content with potential future customers. Creating eBooks for your B2B business allows you to build your emailing list, show your brand’s authenticity and credibility, and improve your content marketing efforts. It is an excellent way to emphasize a particular subject. You can also offer different types of information by sharing research, showcasing a case study, or adding images and graphics.
Your future customers and clients require information they can quickly get their hands on. You can help them by offering easily consumable content as an eBook. You can provide free eBooks in return for your reader’s email address. This tactic will help you collect the emails of your captivating buyers and share your future blog posts, newsletters, and other offers with them.
When creating a business eBook, you need to prioritize the interests and needs of your target audience. Please focus on the visual presentation of your eBook to make it more effective and appealing.