How to Use E-Books to Promote Your Website

Updated on December 4th, 2014 by Quertime Writer in Web Development

Advances in technology and the increasing number of online publishers have made it possible for anyone to become an author. You don’t have to jump through the hoops of traditional publishing, and you don’t have to invest a lot of money in traditional self-publishing. If you can write the book, you can format it, upload it, and make it for sale. If it’s popular enough, you might even make (a lot of) money on it.

You don’t have to be an aspiring Stephen King to want to publish your own book. Businesses of all kinds can publish e-books not only to generate revenue, but also to promote their websites and create greater awareness of their brand. Here are just a few ways that you can use e-books to promote your website and your brand:

Create a Comprehensive Resource for Your Customers

An e-book is an excellent way to create additional value for your customers by providing them a comprehensive resource. This is an opportunity for you to fully explore a problem or subject matter in a way that you cannot do on your blog. For example, if you write about personal finance, you might write a guide about the different types of investments available to beginning investors, breaking down the pros and cons of each, what a person has to know to be successful, and more.

Whether you offer this e-book for free or you charge for it, you are providing an indispensable guide for your customers, who are looking for solutions to their problems or a guide to a particular topic in your niche. By providing this resource, you are setting yourself apart from your competition and providing value for your customers.

Establish Authority for Your Brand

Whether you write an exhaustive book or a compact but thorough introductory guide, you can establish the authority of your brand within your niche. By offering your customers well-written and thorough information on a topic in your niche or by offering solutions to their problems, you are showcasing your expertise and putting yourself ahead of your competition.

As with anything you create, your e-book should be a reflection of your best work. Create an e-book that is poorly written or that offers flimsy content, and you will destroy your credibility with your audience.

Highlight the Need for Your Product or Service

E-books are another way to sell your products and services. Of course, you can’t create an obviously promotional book or no one will want to download it or buy it. However, you can create a book that provides complimentary material that highlights the need for your products or services. For example, if you sell weight-loss supplements, you can create a guide to healthy eating or more efficient workouts. Throughout the guide, you can highlight the benefits of taking supplements to enhance those efforts. Or if you sell iPhone accessories, you can create a short guide discussing how to extend the life of your phone, including tips for caring for the battery, how to protect it from hackers, and of course, how to protect it from damages by using a case or screen protector.

Your e-book doesn’t need to be promoting your products or services directly in order to increase sales. You can simply showcase some benefits of what you sell while you are providing useful information on a related topic. The information will also appear more organic, helping you to make sales more easily.

Drive Traffic to Your Site

E-books are a great prize to offer customers in a contest on your site. Everyone loves to get something for free, and hosting a contest or giveaway will drive a lot of new traffic to your site. Offer up a copy of your e-book (or a prize package of several of your e-books) and provide enough time to thoroughly promote the contest and give people time to enter.

The more interesting your e-book, or the more valuable it is, the more traffic you can expect to get from the contest. Make sure the e-book offers quality content as it may end up being the first product that your entrants experience from your company. If it’s poor quality, you’ll lose customers before they ever have a chance to do business with your company.

Grow Your E-mail List

Just like you can use e-books to drive traffic to your site, you can also use them to grow your opt-in e-mail subscription list. Offer up a free copy of your e-book in exchange for readers subscribing to your list, and you will see your e-mail list grow quickly. The better quality the e-book you are offering, the more subscribers you are likely to get.

Make the most of the opportunity to use e-books to grow your e-mail list by regularly rotating your offering. Every few months, offer a different e-book for potential subscribers. Some customers may respond differently to different titles, so rotating the offers allows you to capture the maximum number of subscribers. You may also consider offering a popular paid e-book as a giveaway to new subscribers for a limited time to create buzz and get a lot of new subscribers quickly.

E-books can be a powerful marketing tool for your website and company. Not only can you use them to establish your brand authority and to provide additional value to your readers, but you can also use them to highlight the needs for your own products and services. Used correctly, e-books can also help you to drive more traffic to your website and to grow your opt-in e-mail subscription list very quickly.

There are many other ways that you can use e-books to promote your website or products — you just have to be creative and think about how you can meet the needs of your customers at the same time.

How does your company use e-books to promote your website or your products and services? Share your tips for success in the comments!