Writing an eBook can seem daunting if you’ve never done one before, but they can be extremely effective for attracting and engaging new leads. No matter what your budget is or what industry you’re in, consider an eBook when developing your marketing plan. Here are seven reasons why eBooks should be part of your content strategy:

1. You’re Halfway There Already

The good news is that you’re not penning the great American novel, you don’t need to stare at an empty word document and pray for inspiration. If you or your company has a blog, chances are you already have most of the content you need to create an eBook.

By repurposing your content, you don’t blow your entire marketing budget for the year and you don’t stress out your copywriters with the task of writing an entire book.

2. They Build Your Credibility

One of the main selling points of WordPress and Blogger is the fact that they’re free. Anyone can sign up and start blogging, which means you have a lot of competition. Creating an eBook establishes your credibility above your competition – or on-par with your competition – and builds trust.

When you create a quality eBook, you’ll attract your target audience and become more appealing to the search engine robots.

3. They Open New Mediums to Promote Yourself

Your current marketing strategy might include posting regularly on social media, sending out a weekly newsletter and contributing to other blogs in your industry. While your audience grows in each of these tactics, you’re not reaching sets of completely new people who are interested in your work.

4. You Can Go Into More Detail

EBooks give you an opportunity to really flesh-out your ideas, give all the examples you want, and go into the detail needed to fully explain your concept. Ebooks tend to give back as much as they take. You can reference the eBook in future blog posts to guide readers to learn more about a certain subject.

5. They Require Little to No Special Skills to Create

Creating an EBook doesn’t have to be a project that takes all of Q3 for your copywriter and graphic designer to assemble. Yes, a quality eBook will take time to compose, but you get to determine how easy or hard yours is to publish.

The number of bells and whistles needed to launch your eBook can be dictated by your time, budget and resources. They’re one of the most flexbile marketing tactics out there.

6. They Show The Differences Between You and Your Competition

You might be wondering how this is different from building your credibility. After all, you wrote an eBook, they did not, ergo: your blog/site/company is better. However, this point relates to industry practices and your company’s personal tastes and preferences.

Your eBook should be a resource that anyone in the industry can learn from, but can also promote your company’s vision, techniques and products to potential clients. Which brings us to our final reason.

7. They Bring in Leads

In a more specific measurement manner, eBook sign-ups can help grow your mailing list for newsletters, news and coupons. When you release your eBook, be sure to have analytics tools set up to track the progress and calculate how many conversions you have made from the eBook. All of your work could be for naught if you can’t prove the ROI of your efforts.

eBooks help bring more business to your company. The purpose of the above steps – raising your search ranking, getting in front of a different audience, showing off why you’re better than the competition – is to convince potential clients that you’re the company they want to hire. You know what you’re doing and you’re going to produce a product that’s as high quality as the eBook you created.