Throughout the past month on the blog, I’ve highlighted my case study about one of our clients here at the Haley Marketing Group putting together three aspects of a sound content marketing strategy:
- Blogging Forms the Foundation
- Newsletter Takes Your Content to a Wider Audience
- Social Sharing on LinkedIn
In the Putting It All Together case study, one additional strategy this client uses (but wasn’t mentioned in the case study) is an eBook.
What is an e-book?
Linda from our Creative team did a great job this summer of outlining an e-book in two blog posts:
How does an e-book generate inbound leads for a staffing company?
Putting an e-book on your website and just giving it to the entire world is a very generous strategy but not the most effective method for your staffing company.
When placing the document on your site, ask the reader for some basic information – name and e-mail address are all that you need for an inbound lead. That inbound lead has a great chance of being a qualified lead since it’s more likely from a user who is interested in the content of your e-Book.
How do people find my e-book?
There are a number of easy methods:
- Placing a call-to-action banner on your website
- Sharing the link across social media
- Having a link in your newsletter
- Putting a link in your e-mail signature
The goal is to get people to click on the link through a visual call-to-action or because of a great headline. An e-book providing great value will have its traffic grow organically when people share the link on their own social media pages.
So what are the results?
In the last four months (June through September), this e-book generated 51 page views (and 42 unique users). While that doesn’t sound like a lot, let’s put it in perspective:
- Those are 42 unique leads the staffing company didn’t have previously
- This client averages 400-450 sessions per month, so from the start it isn’t a high-traffic website.
- The website traffic for those views was extremely good. Their average time by a user who downloaded the e-book was 5 minutes, 46 seconds, compared to 1:56 for the rest of the site – an increase of 198 percent.
Three more added benefits
The e-book helps position your staffing company as an expert and thought leader. Think about it. If you come across a well-written e-book, your opinion of the author of that content goes up and you are impressed with the company. That is content marketing.
Second, since your e-book is on a dedicated landing page on your website, you can also consider a technique called retargeting. That’s an advertising method you have seen before but might not know the name of. (Shameless plug as it’s also a topic I blogged about).
Third, all of those names you gather as inbound leads from people who downloaded your book can be added to your e-mail newsletter list. They are interested in your content and company, so why not take the extra step and make sure your content appears in their inbox on a regular basis?
Where Do I Go From Here?
In the Putting It All Together case study, I wanted to highlight a staffing company with a well-thought out marketing plan. They generate quality content through the blogging program. They share the content through an e-mail newsletter and social media. Finally, they took those quality blog posts and created an impressive document to tout themselves as an industry leader and generate quality inbound marketing leads.
Take some time to look at the goals of your company and evaluate your content marketing plan. If they are in line and you are seeing success, that’s great! If they need to be adjusted, don’t be afraid to contact the Haley Marketing Group to see how we can help!
