Tag Archives: capturing leads with ebooks

Overlooked Ways to Generate Leads Online

Overlooked Ways to Generate Leads Online Lead generation is an art that requires careful planning and a creative approach. After exhausting all the obvious channels, you’ll inevitably feel like you’ve hit a roadblock. Once you find yourself at this crossroads, change your tactics and try out these alternative methods instead:

Focus on other social media platforms

Expand your reach beyond out of Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Other places like Quora and Reddit are good to explore. Both platforms are social, but less personal and therefore, more targeted. They also cater to different interests, some even niche. Best of all, they have a large enough user base to make them worth a marketer’s time.

Design a free email course

People like valuable information as well as free stuff. Combine these two things in one package like a complimentary email course, and they’ll find it hard to resist. Whatever topic you choose to discuss, make sure you delve into it deep enough to make people feel like they’re part of a virtual class. If they find the experience useful, they’ll think, ‘If I already get this for free, I wonder what more I can get if I buy their products or services?’

Support a cause

Kill two birds with one stone – fulfill your civic responsibility and get leads at the same time. People are likelier to support a business with values that align with theirs, so choose a cause that’s not only close to your heart but also relevant to your brand. Sponsor a project with your charity, or donate part of your proceeds.

Start a podcast

Not everyone likes to watch or read content. Some people prefer to listen to content while running on the treadmill or typing emails at their desks. So aside from the usual articles, infographics, and videos, consider starting a podcast by uploading pre-recorded audio files or streaming a live online show. It’s a great way to appeal to people.

Create a quiz

There’s something about a quiz that draws people in. Maybe it appeals to vanity which is all part of human nature. Or maybe it piques curiosity, which is also part of human nature. Whatever the reason is, people can’t resist a quiz. It doesn’t have to be a full-blown – even a simple quiz that reveals an aspect will do.

These are just some of the alternative ways to generate leads online. You can surely come up with more on your own as long as you think outside the box. Get wacky, get crazy! Who says lead generation has to be boring?

Use Your Blog Posts to Create an eBook

Use Your Blog Posts to Create an eBook

Have you ever considered writing an eBook? It’s a tool that can often be a great soft-lead capture piece to use on your website.  If you’re a blogger, chances are you already have everything you need to create one easily!

Follow 6 steps to use the blog posts you’ve already written to create an eBook.

1. Content

Look at your blog posts. You’ll more than likely notice a recurring theme among a group of them. Maybe you write regularly about how to live on a budget, or make meals in thirty minutes or less, or how to stop procrastinating and start writing. Whatever your blogs are about you’ll probably notice a few similar subjects that pop up on a regular basis.  This can be the framework for chapters in your ebook.

2. Sort It

Gather all the blog posts you’ve written on one subject. Read them! I emphasize read them because your eBook needs to make sense and not duplicate information. Decide which blogs to use and put them in a logical order and make  necessary additions or deletions to them for providing a cohesive flow and chapters that build on others and refer to items in other chapters.

3. Add Content

Your eBook should now be taking shape, but it’s still a collection of blog posts. The next thing is to turn it into eBook format. This involves adding more specific content including the following components:

  • Introduction – what they will learn and why they should read it
  • Review each chapter and consider a chapter introduction that refers back to the previous chapter with  “In the last chapter we covered…and in this chapter, we will address…”
  • Copyright page
  • Acknowledgments
  • Conclusion
  • Add page numbers
  • You could also consider adding headers and footers

Take a look at eBooks you’ve downloaded in the past. Choose a couple you really like and model your eBook layout after them.  Remember, people like to skim so use titles well, generously use sub-titles and bulleted lists, and do not have too much content on any page. It’s not a college term paper!

Once you have the basic format of the interior pages, you need to read it again, from front to back. Better yet, have someone else read it for you for an outside perspective!

Check and double check

  • Formatting
  • Spelling
  • Layout
  • Content
  • Make sure the table of contents matches the page numbers

4. Design

Pictures, graphs, and infographics can support the message of your eBook. But be careful not to add them just for the sake of it. They must enhance the content, be relevant, and not distract the reader.  That being said, it is important to use images to enhance your key points, provide examples, and to break-up the text. Use an image per page at least.

You should also create a cover page. Keep it simple and relevant. For some, this might sound a little daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Canva.com has some great cover templates. Hubspot has eBook templates also.

5. Format

Formatting is where your completed document becomes the eBook. You could convert it to a PDF file or use an eBook service. Creating eBooks is one of the services we offer. Once you have the eBook stored as a PDF, I strongly suggest you check it again.

Yes, I know by now you have read through it so many times you feel you know every word by heart, but sometimes the formatting can be a little off when it’s converted to PDF. So don’t be tempted to skip this part just to save time. You should also consider having someone else read it as a new set of eyes might spot something you missed.

6. Publish

All that is left is how to offer your eBook to your readers? The simplest way is to upload the PDF as a document to your website. You will now have a URL that links directly to your eBook.

Most people give their eBooks away free of charge as an incentive to sign up for their newsletter. If you plan to monetize your eBook, you’ll need some a gateway which releases the eBook only after it’s paid for it. Another method is to load the ebook to Amazon.com.

Need an eBook for your free opt-in offer?

Contact me and I can get you with our team to go over your strategy and find your perfect topic. Our team can use your blog posts or write your eBook for you. We’ll format it, add a clickable index if needed and create an appealing cover. Then we’ll add the book to your WordPress site and send it to your subscribers via MailChimp.

Want to get your eBook published? Contact me, I’m happy to help and get you with our team!

Capturing Leads with Ebooks

Capturing Leads with Ebooks

Perhaps the most often repeated phrase in online marketing is “content is king”. But it’s true; if your content isn’t worthwhile, your visitors won’t stick around.
The quality and originality of the content you present are vital to visitor retention, SEO, social media, branding, and marketing. Let’s look at the benefits of putting your quality content into an eBook to generate leads.

eBooks are your chance to present in-depth information you can’t squeeze into a blog post. eBooks should have a more formal tone than blog or web copywriting, it’s like a mini-book. They’re a good way to show your expertise and authority, and they work well as a soft lead capture tool.
For some people, the idea of writing a book might seem overwhelming, and an ebook is shorter! It can be done at minimal cost and in a variety of formats, like .pdf, or Kindle, and often with free tools. What are uses for eBooks?  Let’s dive into a few…

1. Capture prospects from social media

Add a subscription form to your landing page and use social media posts to direct traffic to it.  On the page, use your eBook as a free opt-in offer. One advantage of social media is that it draws visitors who are curious about your topic, love to interact online, and will post comments or share good content with their friends.
Offering something informative like an eBook relevant to your business helps target those with real interest. Are you in social media?  Giving them the right Twitter hashtags or inviting the right Facebook groups to read your eBook is dangling bait for your target audience. With a quality eBook, you’ll get positive responses that’ll increase interest to a widening circle of visitors. There’s no better advertising.

2. Use them to advertise

eBooks can be updated and reposted whenever you like – giving you the chance to promote the updates. eBooks can include links to your sales web pages or resources your audience might find interesting on your website. In your updates, include coupons or discounts available only to eBook readers, links to freebies readers will appreciate – or links to your next eBook. You could do follow-up eBooks essentially a user manual or promote your accessories. In short, you can do about any selling in an eBook that you can on a web page, and more in-depth. Just provide a link to your order page.

3. Use eBooks to gather information

The value of eBooks comes from the leads and sales they generate. You could charge money for your eBooks, that won’t make them more valuable, but it will limit the number of people who read them. Gather useful information by inviting interested customers to a website where they must enter personal info, such as names, email addresses, and interests relating to your product or services, before getting the link to your eBook.

If you convey the impression that this is info they won’t get anywhere else, they’re more likely to give you their info. You’ll build a targeted mailing list to use for future campaigns. Ask for professional or demographic information to help build a better picture of people most interested in what you have to offer.

An eBook doesn’t have to be a hundred or even fifty pages of material. It just has to give prospects something they didn’t know, and the opportunity to get/learn more. By creating quality eBooks geared toward marketing, you’re creating a sales tool that exists forever in cyberspace and will continually generate leads for you.

Are you using eBook’s effectively on your website for lead capture?  A simple Waftio form can be the lead capture solution you need to kick-off that next ebook marketing plan!