You have an eBook, or you’re making your first one. It’s supposed to boost your business and be a high-value product that will generate new leads. Before you put in all of that work, make a plan. What will make your eBook a resounding success?
Understand Your Audience
When you’re writing an insurance eBook, who are you writing for? Don’t write an eBook for everyone, write it for a segment of your audience. If you’d like to sell auto insurance to seniors, write an eBook for them. Your intended audience should be wide enough that your eBook is an effective way to reach out to many people, but it also needs to be targeted enough to have a strong appeal and motivate people not only to download the eBook but to read it and take action.
Know That You’re Marketing
While you may be giving your eBook away, it’s still a piece of insurance marketing content. You need to treat it as such. Focus energy on the title and cover, making it attractive and catchy so that you can draw readers in. Make sure that your content is focused, well-written, and gets to the point. Use your eBook layout to draw attention to the most important points and make it easy to read. While your eBook isn’t necessarily written as a sales pitch, you need to design it as if you were designing an advertisement for your business: exceptional design, writing, and a solid first impression will attract people to your business and inspire them to learn more.
Know What Content Your Visitors Want
Reading an eBook is a time commitment, even if it’s free. Your readers need to have a compelling reason your book, and part of your insurance marketing is understanding the motivations that drive your insurance audience. One way to gauge interest in specific subjects is to develop a strong blog. Look at the posts that get the most shares and visits. This will tell you what content is really attractive to your readers. Can you expand upon some of these posts?
Help Your Readers Take Action
A good eBook gives advice, and a great one helps readers take action on that advice. Whether it’s a checklist that they can print out or a 5 step program to reduce their auto insurance rates, your readers appreciate advice that’s geared toward action. You can also connect your eBook to other resources, such as visuals or a webinar.
Give Them the Next Step
Insurance marketing is one of the reasons you have an eBook, so be sure to give your readers that next step. You’ll need to strike a balance between being informative and giving a sales pitch. Content-oriented Millennials are especially wary of any direct sales language. Instead, focus on how your services can support your customers. Help customers turn to you as a paid resource by positioning your eBook as one step in a series of decisions that will lead them to their goal, such as the goal of having a safer home.
Is an eBook the Right Choice?
First, decide whether an eBook is the right value-added product choice for your leads. As you move from the top of the sales funnel strategies like blogs and social media posts, the next logical step is an eBook. However, once again you need to examine your audience. If you have an audience of busy people who prefer visual content to reading, a webinar could be a better choice. Of course, you want to connect with all of your potential visitors, but if you have a choice of strategies, make sure that an eBook is the best way to begin engaging with your audience.
You’re reaching out to your customers. How do you develop the skills and insight needed to create the blog posts, eBooks, and webinars they want? At the American Agents Alliance, we’re here to support the development of independent insurance businesses like yours. With our continuing education opportunities in insurance marketing and our annual convention & expo, we give you the chance to upgrade your skills and network with others in your field.
