When it comes to ecommerce marketing, etailers may find it difficult to create marketing materials without being too “sales-pitchy” in the content. Good ecommerce marketing contains a healthy mix of knowledge and promotion, which makes eBooks -- books that are published in an electronic format -- a low-cost marketing tool that you can use to promote your expertise in your given niche or product category.
EBooks can be articles, reference materials or even fiction, and the marketing benefit is that you can include images and hyperlinks to your website in the eBook. Online merchants can create eBooks as a part of their marketing effort and then distribute them freely to customers and website visitors.
Tips for Writing Your First Ecommerce Marketing eBookWhen writing an ecommerce marketing eBook, there are a number of considerations; who will write the eBook, what software will you use to create it, and how will you distribute it to consumers?
Of course, you will need to start the process by finding a good writer. If you have writing and marketing skills you can do it yourself, but is this type of writing talent is not readily available in-house. Consider hiring a freelance writer to create an eBook for your ecommerce business; the eBook has to be professional.
Your eBook needs to offer valuable content and be more than just a marketing brochure. You want to write something that is worth taking the time to download and read, and be interesting enough for people to share it with friends.
Turning a good reference or how-to guide in to a downloadable eBook is a great ecommerce marketing tool. Start by finding a topic related to your product category and write a reference or informational guide.
For example, if your ecommerce business is an online garden center, you could write a seasonal gardening eBook, or an eBook that focuses on specific gardening problem customers may have -- such as a guide to preventing deer and wildlife from eating your perennials, or a guide that offers butterfly garden designs and tips for which plants to use. The idea is to offer valuable, expert advice; however you should concentrate only one specific topic in the eBook to cater to niche knowledge seekers. You can add a library on your website over time and cover other important topics.
Within the content you’ll want to scatter product images and your company or website logo. Always add direct hyperlinks to your website in addition to your company and contact information. You can provide direct links to products you discuss in the eBook, but that will make it more “sales-oriented”. To stay focused on presenting consumers with knowledge, drop product links in the content and add those types of product links as a resource page at the end of the eBook.
When developing content, the most important thing to remember is that the end results must offer expert advice and be useful to the readers.
EBook Software and Distribution ConsiderationsOnce you have your eBook topic and content planned, you will also have to decide on what software to use for creating the eBook and the file format you will use to distribute the eBook.
One of the most common digital formats for eBooks is the Portable Document Format (PDF). There are free PDF viewers available for all the major operating systems, and since PDF is now such a common file format on the Internet, most people will already have a PDF reader installed. If not, you can offer hyperlinks to where free PDF readers can be downloaded.
Adobe is one company that offers PDF software, with some solutions free to download from the Adobe website. If you're familiar with other word processing software, like Microsoft Office for example, you can create your eBook using that and then convert the final document from a Word file to a PDF file for distribution. One benefit to using a PDF file is its inherent copy protection features that help prevent people from changing the content and redistributing it without your company information.
Other considerations include file storage for the eBook. Check with your ecommerce hosting provider to ensure you can host the eBook and offer it for download from your Web server.
You should also decide if the eBook will be freely available on your website or if you will offer it as an incentive for joining your mailing list or for purchase on your website. For the most part, offering it freely will encourage more people to read it and share it with their friends.
The best advice: focus on one specific topic related to your product category and make the eBook download or viewing a simple “one-click” process. Be sure to promote your new eBook on your website, Facebook Business page, on Twitter and in your email marketing campaigns.
More E-commerce Marketing TipsFrom beginner guides to expert tips, our selection of ecommerce marketing tips can help you write excellent marketing content that will promote your business, brand and products online.
Writing an ‘About Me’ PageWriting Product DescriptionsWriting a Press ReleaseVangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.
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