Bay Area Inbound Marketing Blog

Now that I have written a 5,000 word guide about my area of business expertise, what are the best practices to promote my ebook?

Writing an ebook is a great way to generate leads for your business. Pick a topic you know well, like how you solved a problem for a client, and you will position yourself as an expert in your field. How and what you write about are critically important but so is how you promote it.

Here are nine proven best practices for ebook promotion.

1. Create calls-to-action (CTA) and a landing page – Before you give away the ebook you worked so hard to write, ask your website visitors for their name and email address. This way, someone on your staff can send a follow up email with other offers and move them further down the sales funnel. Put a CTA button on your website that lists your ebook title. When a visitor clicks on that button, the hyperlink takes the visitor to a landing page. The landing page should show the title of your ebook, the cover image and a summary of the content in bullet form. Once the visitor gives you a name and email address, then send them the link to your ebook.
2. Post multiple links on your site – On every page that makes sense, post a CTA button that links to the landing page for your ebook.
3. Tweet – Twitter gives you 140 characters to post a link to your landing page and a quick thought. You could excerpt a positive review about your ebook, a highlight from your ebook, or talk about the number of downloads (if the number is high).
4. Make it easy to share – Post a Share button on your landing page so people can share the landing page link on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites.
5. Send an email blast – Spread the word about your ebook to people on your email distribution list.
6. Write a blog post – Write a blog post about a few insights in your ebook. Include a link to the ebook landing page in the blog.
7. Customize email signature lines – Have every employee in your company add a link to the ebook landing page below their email signature line. Keep the link in the signature line as long as the ebook content seems fresh.
8. Create a press release – Use a free press release service to create a press release you can send to trade publications, trade associations, online publications and local media outlets.
9. Use analytics – Free services like Google Analytics can help you identify data patterns that will tell you how visitors end up on your landing page. This information will help you plan your next ebook promotion.

The good news is that you don’t have to pay to advertise your ebook. You can integrate promotion efforts into the outreach efforts you are already doing to maximize your business’s exposure and attract new leads.