The Anatomy of Generating a Lead Using an E-Book

by Steven Leung

Realtor, Internet Entrepreneur

Author website

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.