E-books are an Integral Part of Online Marketing
Internet marketing can be one of the most cost-effective tools for promoting your business because there are no materials costs for digital marketing methods, except for the cost of internet access. This change of format for advertising has taken the place of many traditional advertising formats for businesses who are now investing in PPC ads rather than classified listings in newspapers, and who are utilizing the modern equivalent of the advertising brochure, the e-book. There are a lot of advantages to be had from producing an e-book to promote yourself and your business, and the e-books themselves can have many different layouts. Creating an e-book has become very easy and often it is simply a matter of having the right software to produce PDF or EPUB versions of your copy. There are also online services like Smashwords.com that allow users to format and publish their e-books free of charge, which enables e-books to further gain momentum as a popular, facile informational source.
It is understandable that people could be a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of writing a book, but e-books are very different from traditional, printed books. Professionals possess specialized knowledge within their industry, and usually promotional e-books present that sort of information. The main difference is the size of e-books; many are only a few pages long. If you find that writing a book is beyond your abilities, or that you haven’t got the time to devote to doing so, it is also possible to outsource the writing but wherever possible it is preferable to do it yourself. When you are creating an e-book for promotional purposes, it is often useful to focus on one aspect or one set of statistics that are significant in your business that will produce a short but informative document that you can use to promote your expertise and your business’ services.
There are several advantages to using an e-book to market your business. The most obvious one is that writing an e-book promotes your image as an authority in your niche by providing valuable information for your readers. Publishing your own e-book is also an opportunity to present your unique perspective on issues or practices within your niche, and can be used to set your business apart from the rest.
A large part of every online marketing strategy deals with raising your brand awareness; an e-book is an excellent medium for making a comprehensive introduction of you and your services or products. For more established brands, e-books can be used to entice visitors to their website, where they can subscribe to the e-mail list in exchange for a free copy. Having an organic e-mail marketing list is a key component to most internet marketing plans, and having an e-book is one of the most popular and effective ways to build one. Many businesses publish regularly updated reports as an incentive for visitors to remain active on the e-mail subscribers’ list, which also gives their brand the air of being an industry authority with many subscribers looking forward to the next issue.
Another advantage of the e-book format is that it is easy to insert hyperlinks into the text that link the book to your website, thereby widening your business’s presence across the internet. There are also sites like Scribd.com which allow you to upload the document to their online library with links back to your corporate website; this in turn contributes to your SEO. This way, if your e-book does go viral and spread across the internet, all of the potential customers that read it will be instantly connected to your business with a simple click on a link.
