Writing a book sounds for many like an extremely complicated and time consuming task.
But for B2B businesses keen to position themselves as thought leaders in their space and provide useful content for their audience, an eBook is a great place to start – and it doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds!
In addition to providing great insight into who you are as a company, your knowledge and expertise, eBooks can also be great tools for lead generation, promotion and sales, as well as potentially giving you an extra revenue stream for your business.
With the ability to avoid the long and arduous processes associated with traditional print marketing, writing a book that can be instantly published online is a great opportunity to improve your brand’s credibility and awareness without spending a huge amount of money.
But there’s no point in spending your time writing an eBook if no one’s going to read it. If you want to write something interesting, engaging and successful for your audience, keep reading.
Writing an eBook isn’t something that will happen overnight. You’ll need skill, time and commitment, and - above all - patience.
Here are some of our top tips when it comes to writing unique and engaging content for your company eBook.
It’s worth doing your research before you get started. Ideally, you want to pick a topic that hasn’t been discussed in too much detail already, giving you the opportunity to provide more value to your readers and highlight your niche as a business. A good place to start is by looking at Google's suggested answers for questions that are being asked within your industry to get a better understanding about the kind of information that your audience are searching for and any potential gaps that your competitors haven’t covered off. You want to give them access to information they can’t get anywhere else (especially if you want them to part with their personal details or money in exchange for your eBook.)
Following on from the above point, it’s key that you really understand who your audience is and what they want to get out of reading your eBook. Do they want to understand a topic better themselves? Do they want to find out more about you as a business? Whatever it is, make sure this is right at the centre of everything you create, giving them as much insight and value as possible.
The benefit of an eBook is that it gives you the opportunity to go pretty deep into a topic, fleshing out your thoughts and ideas into easily digestible sections. This means you can provide a lot more value to your audience than you could with, for example, a blog or article. When someone chooses to read an eBook, they’re expecting a longer read and are dedicating time to this, so you need to make sure you’re answering all their questions (even the ones they don’t realise they have!) and providing them with information that they can’t get by just visiting a competitor’s website.
Once you’ve decided on your topic, the next step is to start structuring your eBook into chapters. What areas are you going to cover within the book? How much detail are you going to go into? Going through this exercise should also help you to identify any potential gaps in knowledge that you can fill with research or help from an industry expert. Building out an outline of your eBook right from the start will also help you work through it in a succinct and effective way, leaving no space for going off on a tangent or missing out vital information.
Similarly to a website, when you’re creating an online book, the content needs to be structured in a way that makes it easy for the reader to digest the information and encourage them to keep reading. If you just present them with block walls of text, it can come across as overwhelming and prevent them from wanting to read on. We always recommend breaking up your text with headers, graphics and images that align with your narrative and make it easier for them to take the information in.
No matter what the topic of your eBook is, B2B audiences still want to read a story. Even if you’re covering off complex themes and issues, the reader will still have an emotional response to the content, so the more human you can make it, the better. We’re not suggesting that you should try and dramatise or sensationalise your copy, but instead try and bring it to life with customer stories, real-life narratives and data. Put them in the shoes of your customer base, explaining why they need your help and how you can work together to do amazing things. Creating a narrative throughout your eBook will be absolutely essential to getting the reader onboard with your value proposition.
Data is a key tool for many B2B companies that want to provide an additional level of trust with their audience and demonstrate the issues that challenge the businesses they work with and how they can help to resolve them. How you present your data is completely up to you, but we recommend being as visual as possible to help bring the numbers to life and create impact in real terms. This could be with graphs, infographics, or even just tables with relevant industry statistics.
Downloadable eBooks are a great way to generate qualified leads and nurture relationships with prospective customers, and while they can be a vital part of any content marketing plan, they can also be a time consuming task to complete and require a set of skills that not all marketing teams can manage on their own.
CopyHouse are the experts when it comes to creating compelling long-form content for businesses within the Fintech and technology industries. We work closely with our clients to understand their propositions, conducting in-depth research and interviews to fully understand the subject matter and create a fully rounded eBook full of unique insights.
To find out more about working with us, or for a free 30-minute consultation, get in touch.
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