How to Create an Ebook that Drives +1,200 Organic Downloads in 1-2 Weeks

How to create an ebook that drives 1,000s of leads and how to turn them into revenue opportunities.

This is a playbook for creating quality gated content that drives significant organic downloads.

If you’re building a start-up and want to make a big brand splash, or you’re wanting to fill the top of your marketing funnel and begin driving revenue, then this playbook will get you started.

Strategy in a nutshell: Write an eBook that has 12 chapters, get an influential person in your target customer profile to write each chapter.

Previous results from those using the strategy:

• +1,200 organic downloads per book, on more than one book, in 1-2 weeks.

• Contributors from industry leading companies (Deliveroo, TransferWise) writing the book for free.

• Extremely punchy branding.

Want to listen to this strategy? Catch the podcast interview here.

Step 1: Choosing what to write a book about

Customer research

Interview current and future customers and lost prospects and do a deep discovery. Ask unusual questions like:

- what time did you start work today?

- what do you have open on your browser?

- what’s the last thing your manager did that really annoyed you?

- what do you want to talk about in your one-to-one but don’t get to?

- which other teams in the company hate you?

- When you feel unappreciated, why is that?

- What makes you happy and sad at work?

- what do you spend time doing?

Analyse you results for substance for a book that will resonate.

Be pithy

Write something that gets clicked. Example: ‘Legal for scale-ups’. The title quickly shows who it’s for and what it’s about.

Something that stands the test of time

You have the choice of writing a book completely about you, or completely about your customer’s pain points (that don’t include you). Or something in between.

We’ve seen better results creating content for persona fit, rather than product pain. Which makes sense, if you create a book entirely about product pain, for example ‘how my software solves x problem’, then you appeal to a very small audience—perhaps even no one.

However, if you appeal to persona fit (an eBook that focuses on something very interesting your target customer) then you aim to become best friends with your customer. Showing them value upfront and that you could one day be a partner that knows a lot about their problems.

Those who do download product pain fit content will be easier to convert, but ultimately the opportunity would be reduced. We suggest you instead create big-splash persona fit content and then nurture those who download the content—add them to your community, send them other content, and capture them as customers later down the line.

SEO optimizing your content

SEO is less important with gated content but if you can rank highly for a webpage with gated content on it, you’ll drive passive downloads over time.

Step 2: Content design

How long should it be?

20-70 pages depending on the subject.

How to get influential prospects to write for you, 6 tactics:

• If you need 5 people in the book, approach 50, most people ignore you, get comfortable with that.
• Get one great person onboard first and the dominoes will fall. If they know each other then it’s an easy win.
• Show them existing content quality—it’s gonna be spectacular like this one. You should work with us because THEY have.
• Go for soft options first and then just ask others.
• Flatter them, say: ‘We are putting together a book on X subject and we think you are one of the world experts. Will you be in the book?’
• Process: make sure the time commitment seems tiny, you are gonna do all the work, there is no downside for them.

Who to ask?

You’ll want to invite anyone who you’re target in this specific campaign. For example, the economic buyer of your product is usually a solid bet. Who is the main person you need to convince? They should be who your book is for and who writes it. See Step 3 for more information on who to ask.

Creating the content:

Let each chapter be written by one person. Interview them for an hour and turn their talk with you into written insight. Let them edit it afterwards to reassure them.

Step 3: Leveraging contributors to generate downloads

To maximize your organic reach, you want to leverage thought leaders from other companies. As a small brand yourself, you’ll have to do all the work for the book, but in return you’ll reap the benefits of the brand and audience of your contributors.

Bringing in leading experts is your shortcut to credibility and more downloads. Feature experts from the most fun, interesting brands in the industry.

Secret sauce for organic downloads!

1. Target brands people know and already talk about
2. Prevet contributors: are they comfortable self-promoting? If no, they might not share your content afterwards.
3. After you’ve finished, let them know ‘this is now an authoritative text on this subject and you are the writers’, it will normally get them to share it.
4. Build a relationship with these people. Make them good enough friends that you can email them and ask them to use a hashtag and share the text.
5. Set expectations beforehand: ‘we want to make a huge splash for this, in advance are you up sharing it?’
6. Structuring your launch plan: on LinkedIn, the more likes you get in the first 5 minutes, the further the reach your post will get. Work on getting everyone to like it early on—ask your mates!

Step 4: Following up on the leads and converting opportunities

Contact details are nothing on their own. You need revenue!

A download is not intent to buy your product, but you can pick and choose the best opportunities.

If someone downloads some thought leadership that’s top of funnel, if they work for a company that is the exact same thing as a current customer then it’s likely they have a similar problem. You may be able to shortcut a sophisticated nurture process and get a sales meeting immediately.

Options for following up on leads:

1. Pass the best quality/highest possible intent immediately to your sales team
2. Invite them to opt-in to your newsletter and nurture them that way
3. Build a private Slack community, invite your perfect customers to join it from the group who downloaded.
4. Create a marketing nurture track: eBook download 🡪 Another piece of content 🡪 A product-related piece of content 🡪 A video product demo

Should you gate your eBook?

If your content is good enough (and attractive enough on the outside) people will happily give up their contact information for it. Gating isn’t dead, just don’t expect all downloads to become a customer and don’t spend all your time calling them up. Pick and choose and warm up those downloads even more.