The Ultimate eBook on Producing eBooks - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Promoting your eBook

We’re drawing a line in the sand - there’s really no benefit to making premature sales calls to prospects whose only interaction with your brand is an eBook download. The intent level shown is almost nothing and you’re more likely to aggravate your ICP versus delight them. 

Diego Oquendo, Marketing Manager at Catalyst Consulting, said:

“Lead gen might be an easy way to get more MQLs (contacts) through the door to try and meet sales quarterly targets. But for example, if your sales cycle is in 6 months and you have 2 weeks left of the quarter… Your sales team might rely too heavily on contacts from lead gen forms who have little or no intent.” 

“Which may ultimately get annoyed with your company and harm your brand’s reputation in the long run. This is one of the problems with lead gen.”

Is there a better way?

Give them things they want. Find out the problems they need to solve and offer them content to help. Share entertaining videos that they enjoy engaging with. Put on exclusive events for those in your nurture bucket. 

Alice de Courcy, Cognism CMO, said:

“A lot of us marketers put all of our focus on the conversion - getting people to download the eBook. Ad copy, landing page copy, how much you give upfront versus how much you gate…”

“And often, the thought ends there. Your reader fills in the form, goes to a classic thank you page and then you’re in a standard nurture sequence from marketing and outbound.”

“But how do we make sure that the person who downloaded the eBook actually reads it - because ultimately, your goal should be engagement.”

“You need to find interesting ways to remind them about the content - and not worry about converting to a meeting at this point.”

“And following up with other relevant content over time.”

“Ultimately, it just increases the chances that when sales do reach out, that they remember your company, which will make that sales conversation so much easier.”

So what might your post-download nurture look like?

No matter what direction you choose for your nurture campaign, it has to put the downloader first. You can’t guarantee that they’re in a buying phase or force them to take action before they’re ready. 

So it makes much more sense to delight them with unexpected extras, going the extra mile to add value so that they have the best possible experience of your brand. 

After all, it's called a nurture campaign for a reason!

Fran said:

“You could send your list of contacts who downloaded your eBook an invite to an exclusive event with the SMEs featured in the content. Whether it’s a presentation going into more details or a Q&A where readers can ask questions about the eBook topic.”

What do we mean by an on-demand nurture?

Nurtures on demand are entire email nurture sequences that you host on your website. This means the prospect can access the entire nurture at once, rather than waiting for your drip emails to arrive in their inbox.

Sounds like a blog page, right?

It’s not. Nurture campaigns, when done right, tell a story. They take the reader through a well-designed journey. Providing the perfect content to fill knowledge gaps and share information about your product.

Here’s an example of an on-demand email nurture we use!

How to equip your sales team for post-content download sales conversations

One of the areas of contention around gated eBooks comes down to the lack of communication between sales and marketing during the handoff process. 

Marketing can’t expect sales to have efficient conversations with prospects post-download if they haven’t got a clue what the eBook was about - or what the likelihood of the prospect having read the eBook is. 

And sales can’t expect marketing to read minds - if the quality of the leads coming through the pipeline from content downloads is bad, then there needs to be a productive conversation about improving them.

Alice said:

“Being realistic, your sales team is not going to read your eBook. And depending on who you’re selling to - for example, selling to senior lawyers - the knowledge gap between the content in the eBook and the salesperson in the next step is large.”

“There needs to be some level of understanding of the content if there’s to be any chance of getting a meeting booked. This is why marketing needs to invest time with the sales org to enable them.”

So how can marketing and sales get on the same page regarding how to follow up with eBook downloaders?

Tom said:

“Your prospects might not be ready to buy right now, but the sales team needs to have a process for where to go from there.”

In other words: 

• What’s the long-term play?
• How do we keep this prospect in our orbit until they’re ready to buy?
• If they’re not ready to buy now, how can we stay in touch?
• And how can we incentivise or educate the sales team on the benefits of a long-term relationship with prospects?