According to a Marketo Report, 58% of people check their emails 1st thing in the morning. Most of them are even checking before their feet hit the ground out of their bed in the morning. So are you building an email list? One of the first things I have my clients do when they are building their list, is create an irresistible e-book as an opt-in. This serves three important purposes.
- To establish you as an authority and to give your clients a taste of how you can solve their problems.
- To use that as an incentive to get people to subscribe to your mailing list.
- To have something that can easily be expanded into a paid product.
The first step to creating your e-book is determining what it is about.
Start by answering the question “Who is your audience”? It's important to be clear about who they are so that you can determine what they want. You may have multiple audiences, pick one. This e-book is specifically for one audience.
What do they want? This is where it can all go wrong. Most people make the mistake of thinking they know what their audience needs and I agree that you probably do know what your audience needs. However, a successful e-book focuses on a topic or answers to a question that your audience is already looking for. Start by creating a brain dump of all the things you hear your audience say.
Let me give you an example. My audience is full of amazing entrepreneurs and I know that they need to focus on having more sales conversations if they are going to make more money. However, they don't necessarily want to pick up the phone. Instead what they want is to use social media to get new clients. If I want to easily get their attention I can create an e-book that is about Facebook or Twitter or Instagram.
After you determine the topic it's time to get that e-book written. Click here to check out a blog post I wrote called “5 Ingredients for the Perfect E-Book” I will share with you the different parts of an e-book and how to get started.
