Updated Aug 2023: Attracting quality leads with B2B content is the #1 challenge for content marketers, according to a 2023 study by SEMRush. To overcome this challenge, marketers need to come up with great ebook ideas because these long-form content assets make excellent B2B SaaS lead magnets, offering valuable content that drives leads and sales.
Generating and executing on ebook ideas enables your SaaS company to consistently move prospects through your pipeline so it’s important to have a few killer ebook topics up your sleeve.
How to generate ebook ideas for SaaS
As a SaaS marketer, you’re under pressure to produce high-quality, high-performing ebooks regularly—but you’re also tight on resources. And how are you going to entice your audience to download the ebook if you keep creating content on the same topics?
Coming up with new ebook ideas that will resonate with your target market can be tough. Thorough research is key. You should also try to narrow the topic so the focus of your ebook isn’t too broad. Often, more specific content delivers greater value to your readers.
With that in mind, here are 5 tips to help you generate the best ebook topics:
1. Determine the goal of your ebook
The highest-performing ebooks have a clear and measurable goal that aligns with your business objectives. Consider what action you want your audience to take after they’ve read your ebook. For example, you may want them to book a demo.
2. Understand the problem you want your ebook to help solve
Having deep knowledge of your audience’s challenges is essential to generating ebook ideas that will resonate with your readers and help you achieve your goals.
To ensure you know what makes your customers tick, conduct surveys and focus groups, ask your sales team what topics and questions come up in their conversations with prospects, and tune in to social media and online reviews to scan for issues that come up repeatedly.
3. Audit your current content
Reviewing your existing content can enable you to figure out which pieces you might be able to repurpose into an ebook, or at least get SaaS ebook ideas from.
Look at your data to see what content performs best in terms of impressions, click-throughs, time on page, exit rate and conversions (downloads, demos, etc.). This high-performing content is likely rich in ebook topic ideas.
4. Keep up with industry trends
Leverage news aggregators and stay active on social media platforms to learn what your audience is reading, commenting on and sharing. This will also allow you to get a sense for the topics your competitors and industry influencers are creating content on—and will also give you excellent SaaS ebook ideas.
5. Conduct keyword research
Identify keywords with solid traffic, as this indicates interest in an ebook idea or topic. Choosing these keywords for your ebook will improve your chances of driving traffic to the landing page where people can choose to download the ebook. This is a great way to check if the ebook ideas that you’re keen on are also ideas that your audience wants to read about.
Want some help with ebook ideas?
If you’re hitting a wall as you try to identify ebook ideas, download our topic generator worksheet. This ebook idea generator walks you through our ideation process as if we were brainstorming together.
It includes 9 questions to ask yourself to help you land on the best ebook topics, as well as real-life examples of answers from other SaaS marketers that will enable you to whip up solid ebook ideas with flavor. Download the worksheet.
