Ebook publishing is an option that people often overlook, but that can be a very profitable way to generate ongoing passive income for yourself.
Creating ebooks, along with other information products, can also be a great way to monetize your blog, establish thought leadership, and make a name for yourself as an authority in your industry.
Unfortunately, selling ebooks isn't a set-it-and-forget-it kind of a thing.
While you may eventually reach a point where your book sales stay consistent and substantial overall, you'll still need to put in the legwork at the beginning in order to make that happen.
In a recent blog post, the Content Marketing Institute organizes creative marketing ideas according to which phase of the sales funnel they're targeting.
Sometimes, the middle of the funnel can be one of the trickiest groups to target.
So, here are some interesting and effective ways to promote your books to people who already know about your brand, but who aren't quite ready to open their wallets just yet.
Middle-of-funnel promotion
If you generate a thought leadership, top-of-funnel e-book, you might think your promotion efforts stop at the top of the funnel.
That is not the case.
Other departments and audiences can benefit from your e-book, which will ultimately lead to revenue for your organization, which should be an end goal for you, too.
The middle of the funnel is where you get existing prospects to raise their hand and move closer to the sale.
This is probably the toughest part of a marketer’s job.
If you have great content and a strong reach, it’s not hard to get net new leads into your database. A simple download is all you need to get the process started.
However, to get those leads to commit to a demo or free trial takes more work.
Your e-book can help.
Consider these middle-of-funnel ideas:
1. Work the e-book into your nurture program(s) or drip campaigns.
2. Share on your organization’s forums or community site.
3. Create a content pack for existing prospects, including a case study, e-book, one-sheet, etc.
4. Include the e-book in your newsletters.
5. Provide the e-book to employees in many ways so it’s easy to access and share, including:
6. Post or file on team collaboration platform
7. Link to landing page
8. Give direct link to e-book (e.g., after-form complete page or PDF link)
9. Shelve in content library
10. Click to tweets and click to share on LinkedIn
11. Ask partners to send it to shared partners and networks.
12. Print it and include it in a care package to customers and prospects
You can find more creative ways to promote your ebook to people in each phase of your sales funnel over at the Content Marketing Institute.
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