The Anatomy of Generating a Lead Using an E-Book
By: Steven Leung,
Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog,
Post Archive,
RSS FeedPosted: Saturday, April 12th, 2008, 12:51 am MST
Category: Marketing, Technology, Weblogging 101
In what must be dog years ago by now, Greg and I had a virtual conversation which sparked an idea that was successful for me, so I wanted to share some of the real-life insights I gained, with him and the rest of the Bloodhound readers.
The idea itself wasn’t completely new but there were some details in the execution that helped the campaign along since its inception May 2007. These techniques have proven useful many times over throughout the years and they’re what I’m hoping to communicate here.
The first step was to build credibility — and to test if the download was actually useful to my readers. See, the idea was to create a downloadable home buyers’ e-book from the existing content on my real estate blog.
I thought readers would like the convenience of a book with “chapters” on how to buy a home, arranged in step-by-step order. In turn, I would get a viral marketing piece that readers could forward to their friends, which not only had my contact information but linked back to my site within the content on every page.
Originally, I didn’t ask for any information in return for the e-book. The reason for this was because it was important for the credibility of the project to start with a large number of downloads. That and frankly if “no one” downloaded it, I would chalk one up for experience and move on.
The first month produced exactly 1,001 downloads. I advertised this number and began requesting a name and an email address (where an automated system would send a download link), effectively raising the price from free to legitimate contact information.
Since the price had gone up, it wasn’t a huge surprise that downloads dropped to 47 the next month. That averages out to a little over one lead per day. All but 3 registered using their real names (at least ones that closely matched their email addresses and the first step in building a relationship), two used their first name and last initial, and the third was fake. The best to come from that set was a step-up buyer, selling at around $700K and buying at about $1.5M. These numbers are common in Silicon Valley.
(Ironically, my “free” download didn’t generate any clients, or even inquiries. Zero. People might have attributed that amount of value to the free download.)
I use Google Analytics for the information needed to tune the site and keep the downloads going. The 386 total as of today is still a little over a lead a day and has about the same ratio of partial names and fake names.
The link to the right has the actual page view stats over the last month for my book’s landing page, the page that sells the reader on clicking the download link and giving me their contact info. Reading the page is a subject for another post, but the summary is it shows there are areas that are doing well and areas for definite improvement.
Using this information, I determine which pages generate the most interest in my goal and structure my site to lead people to those pages, funneling them to the book download. I had assumed that my homepage would be #1. It turns out that my article on figuring out your must-haves drew the most interest in the e-book, so I increased the links to it from my other articles. It still does a better job than my homepage.
That’s good. What’s not is highlighted in the chart above. My e-book landing page is only getting 25% of people to click on the download link. If I fix this page, I can more passively generate more leads with the traffic already there.
The download page itself is converting 37% of viewers. Considering it asks for some level of personal information, that ratio is fine for me.
When I do seminars about internet marketing or help businesses with their sites, people often ask me what the cost per additional lead is going to be. (Infrastructure and startup costs are usually handled separately from this discussion, or as the cost for the first lead.) In this case, there is no cost per additional lead because my traffic is non-paid.
But let’s assume I want to increase those leads tomorrow using search or placement advertising. Working backwards, I would need 3 people to see my download page; meaning 12 people seeing my book intro page; or 96 people seeing my must-haves article (because the stats tell me that about 12% of people who read it click on the book intro page).
As of today, an advertisement for the keyphrase “cupertino homes” costs about $1.50 per click, for example, to get Google search ad positions 1-3, if you want more traffic now, or about $0.75 for positions 4-6. Cost per additional lead? If I’ve done the math correctly, I would have to pay between $72 and $144 for each additional lead if I used my must-haves article as an ad landing page and between $9 and $18 if I used my book intro page. (Whether these are the right pages or “cupertino homes” is the right ad keyphrase is another topic.)
This cost illustrates a couple important points: why people blog and why search engine advertising has to be carefully planned and precisely targeted.
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Related posts:17 Comments so far
Steve-
Thank you so much for sharing this! I’ve been curious about this book since you published it. Glad it’s doing it’s job for you.
Steve - Do you think you could write about the step-by-step mechanics of creating the ebook? Did you copy and paste your web content page-by-page into a word processer, and then print-to-PDF? Or did you use some kind of compiler/converter thingie? Or? Thanks!
Wow! That is the first time I have seen an actual “real world” description of the value / cost relationship of publishing a free ebook. Thank you for publishing your data and analysis.
Steve, I actually downloaded your book last week. I thought it had silicon valley real estate stats so that I can educate my self on buying in the silicon valley area, but the content was not the case. I did make a comment regarding a topic on your blog and Alex Wang responded that we can chat on the phone if I needed to get more info (I sent him my phone number, but did not hear from him). The reason I was interested is because I was interviewing for a job in the area but since the job did not go through, everything is on hold now. So to make the story short, your blog and book brought you a lead.
by the way steve, I live in the Phoenix area
Steve we published a web based calculator on our website and it has been accessed over 8,000 times in just 3 months..you are spot on..going to try and ebook next
Steve — You are already proving to be a superb addition to BloodhoundBlog. This post is magnificent — thank you.
Teri -
Thanks much, I think the best part of the campaign is that it’s mostly passive.
Cheryl -
I used Word 2007 and its downloadable Save to PDF function. The hurdle I’d look out for is that a number of PDF converters won’t include your outbound links: they look like links but they won’t be clickable in the PDF version.
There are a number of ebook converters on the market but the reason I chose Word was because I wanted a two-column format. The left for the chapters and the right for comments that draw people who are just skimming.
Tara -
Thanks, more to come, there’s a lot of theory but not a lot of data being published. I want people to know about techniques that real people use.
Frank -
Thanks for contacting us and talking about your download here. It’s funny about how small the world is: Alex and I actually chatted over email about your situation and I know he was interested in following-up.
The e-book does have a chapter on typical Silicon Valley market cycles (over a 10-year period) and how medians tend to fluctuate over the course of a year.
The reason I don’t publish stats in the book itself is because they go out-of-date so quickly. That makes the blog a better format for statistical analysis than the e-book.
Barry -
It’s definitely important to have something that sets your site apart from the crowd. Feel free to contact me if you want to throw around ideas or techniques for your ebook.
Jeff -
Great to be here, I have so many ideas, I wish there were a way to telepathically type them into the blog
Y’know, I drew some inspiration from your earlier post and a passing conversation I remembered with a random, multi-branded foreclosure lead gen “firm”.
Their approach was to pray-and-spray so much search engine ad coverage, and send a certain number of those people to agents in a local area for a monthly fee (to cover their ad costs and profit). Every agent here’s seen something like this.
Of course, the leads are completely unqualified, which generates a lot of effort for not a lot of results.
The beauty of the web is that if you shape your content and drive your traffic to the right places, you should be able to call your pitch for most at-bats.
Being able to pre-qualify your leads and have your audience self-select is one of the most powerful ways of reducing the amount of work needed to get more done. I have some data on this.
[...] The Anatomy of Generating a Lead Using an E-Book, by Steve Leung. [...]
Steve–
Nicely done! Thanks a ton for sharing the details in toto with us on how it has worked out. Great stuff.
You did it IMO the EXACT right way–find out what the customers want, give it to them, test and evaluate delivery models to see how comfortable they are with it, measure the cost and the ROI.
Solid work. Kudos.
Best;
Eric
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Eric -
Thanks, to me the analysis is the difference between building monuments and getting results.
All entrepreneurs make assumptions at one point in time or another about their customer base, I think the key to not overrunning the budget (minimizing downside) and getting the highest returns (maximizing upside) is being versatile enough (and willing!) to change based on what the market tells you. Change can be scary but the data is a great safety net!
Bravo! A masterpiece!
John -
Thanks, kudos much appreciated.
Guess I am late to the party, but found your article most interesting.
I have Adobe Professional and wondering if I create the book in Word 2007 can I convert it into a PDF document with the links being clickable?
Glenn -
That’s what I use.