A new article on Marketing Land says that, now people have time to digest long-form content, e-books can be central to a B2B content marketing strategy.
This is the era of short, snappy sentences, so you could be forgiven for thinking that the e-book is somewhat of a dinosaur. However, the author here says although it's just a few thousand words of tightly packed information backed by a few charts and graphs, an e-book remains a vital tool in converting a prospect into a customer in the B2B marketing world. Adam Smartschan is a Chief Strategy Officer at Altitude Marketing:
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"The B2B audience is ideal for e-books, particularly during WFH [work from home] time. Candidly, we're seeing a higher likelihood of someone spending time absorbing long-form information when their boss isn't walking past their desk every half hour. B2B buyers are doing more and more research as budgets tighten - helping them along with solid, useful content is a great way for marketers to prove their company's worth."
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Like always in marketing, you need to know your target audience. That means examining data compiled during past interactions. Altitude's Director of Content Marketing is Jeff Kotran:
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"But additionally, you must determine what industry publications - what stable of blogs, newsletters and forums - do they visit to learn about the problems their business has and how to solve them? Look at your top three landing pages and determine the most likely next piece of information that a visitor would want after landing on each page. Create an e-book that provides that information. There are many sources of information, all useful for crafting a profile of a B2B prospect. Just remember that the B2B marketer is trying to hit a smaller target compared to B2C marketing. It's just a "few specific, needs-based groups of stakeholders."
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I'd also be interested to hear about how many people here still have success with e-books, and what your strategies are?
