You are sitting in front of a powerful machine that’s capable of creating a vehicle that will spread your brand’s message around the globe.

This post is going to prove it to you.

The computer you’re using is capable of creating powerful PDF documents — ebooks — that can communicate, captivate and convert prospects to customers. Read on to discover seven reasons I’m bullish on ebooks, and why you should be, too.

7 Reasons Ebooks Rock

First, let’s define what I mean by ebook. In this post, I’m speaking exclusively about PDF ebooks, not ebooks that are formatted for the Kindle, iPad, Nook or any of the other readers out there. We’re going to cover what makes PDF ebooks the ideal brand ambassador for your business.

A warning: if you’d rather delay that ebook you’ve thought about writing, you’d best not read today’s post. Because my goal is to get you so fired up about ebooks, you’ll be ready to start writing one this week.

1. Ebooks look consistent on all operating systems

PDF ebooks can be easily read on Windows OS and Mac OS computers, and they have a consistent look on both machines. They also look the same on an iPad, Kindle, desktop or laptop computers. There are no limitations on sharing an ebook between these devices, either, so your readers can open and view the same ebook in all of these devices if they’d like.

2. They can be all digital or all paper, or a combination of both

Have you done this before? You’re reading an ebook on screen, and there are a few crucial pages you’d like to have in print. Maybe they’re worksheets you want to print and fill out, or a few pages you’d like to keep for reference, or post next to your desk so you can remember them.

With a PDF ebook, it’s easy — you just send the pages you need to your printer, and you’ve got them on paper. Try doing that with pages from a Kindle or iPad! (Trust me, you can’t).

Your readers will appreciate this, too. As a creator, you can build a versatile brand messenger that not only communicates information, but encourages interaction through quizzes, checklists, reference sheets and forms.

3. The sky’s the limit for graphics

If your topic is visual in nature, or you simply want to make your pages more interesting by adding photos, illustrations, charts and graphs, ebooks are a perfect vehicle for you. You can have graphic-rich, full-color pages that display consistently no matter where they’re viewed.

When your only option was a printed book, pages with full-color photos and graphics were expensive to produce. But now, the sky’s the limit!

4. Ebooks are easy to make by yourself and simple to update

When you create your PDF ebook using software you have on your own computer, editing and updating it is a breeze. You just open up the original document, make your edits and save a fresh PDF. You don’t need to depend on someone else to make minor changes.

I like OpenOffice for creating PDFs. It’s cross-platform compatible, so you can install and use it no matter what operating system you have on your computer. It’s also open source, which means the powerful suite of word processing, graphics, spreadsheet and presentation software is absolutely free.

5. It’s easy to share and spread your ideas

Need to spread the word about your company, your new idea or your groundbreaking solution? Use an ebook to communicate it to the world. They’re the ideal brand ambassador because they “cross borders” between computers, countries and operating systems.

Spreading them is simple: add a link on your site, send them as an email attachment or post them on social media. There’s no passport or red-eye flight required to get them to the other side of the world.

6. Ebooks are shape shifters

Ebooks can take many forms. They can be formatted with vertical or horizontal pages. You can set them up to be folded into a pocket guide, or create them with the idea that they’ll be used as mini posters.

They can be all text, or all photography, or a mix of both. You can make ebook checklists, guides, presentations, white papers, special reports and even comics. Ebooks are shape shifters, and that frees you up to pour all your creative thinking into how to make them deliver your message in the most compelling and effective visual format.

7. They can be shared virally, exchanged for an opt-in, or sold

Want to share a new idea, or stand up and state your purpose to the world? Create a helpful, shareable ebook that can be downloaded and passed along.

Trying to build an email list? Develop a resource-type ebook that answers the pressing questions your target market has about your area of expertise. Ask them to share an email address in exchange for your ebook, and build a list of people you can stay in touch with, and offer your products and services.

Want to create more income? Write an ebook with valuable information that will make your readers’ lives better, build their businesses or change their futures. Create a launch around it, and market it over time for ongoing business income.

Ready to learn how to write, create and launch an ebook for your business? Register today for my brand-new free class: The Ultimate eBook Kickstart. You’ll learn how to pick a compelling topic, how to get your ebook written, graphic tricks for making your pages look great, and ways to market your ebook to get it into as many hands as possible. Attend the free Ultimate eBook Kickstart class

You filled in your name, mailing address and phone number in exchange for finding out about their special customer-only sales, or priority notification when high-demand merchandise arrived.

Those days are gone. Now, everyone wants to build an email list, not a snail mail one.

It makes sense: email is more cost effective, faster and easier to create than printed postcard or letters. But what kind of business should have an email list?

Why Collect Email Addresses

Almost every business can benefit from building an email list. At a minimum, it’s a good idea to have one list for current customers, and another for prospects. This allows you to send slightly different information to each group.

Why is an email list powerful? Email is an efficient way to:

• Establish your authority by sharing information about the service or product you offer
• Create a communication link to your audience: a simple click to reply is all your prospect needs to do to send a question
• Track interest by checking which kind of email messages get opened most frequently
• Keep your business “top of mind,” so when your prospects are ready to buy, they think of your business first

How NOT to Ask for an Email Address

Have you ever met someone who’s worried they don’t receive enough email in their inbox? Me neither. Most of us are dealing with too many messages to sort through and act on.

Because of this, most people are reluctant to add their name to an email list unless they’re convinced the benefit will outweigh the bother of having to process more messages.

That’s why I cringe when I land on a website that says “Sign Up For My Email List” — and offers nothing in return. If you want to build a list, you’ve got to give people a compelling reason to hand over their email address. Read on for how to do it right.

How to Collect Email Addresses the Right Way

The most effective way to get an email address is to offer something in exchange for sharing it. People won’t sign up for the sake of signing up: they’ll sign up to get something. Your perk should be free, instantly accessible, and valuable.

Here are some perks you can offer in exchange for an email address:

• An ecourse delivered over several weeks via email autoresponder (timed, automated emails you set up once and let run as long as you’d like)
• An offer to find out first about new merchandise or get a discount on upcoming offerings
• An exclusive audio or video recording

My favorite perk of all? An ebook. There are so many solutions you can deliver in an ebook!

• Answer a pressing question your prospects have
• Create a buyer’s guide for your product or service
• Write a resource guide, white paper or special report about what your business offers
• Create a helpful quiz that guides your prospects through the decision-making process they need to go through in order to make a purchase

(Want to know more about ebooks? Sign up below to find out first about The Ultimate eBook Kickstart: a free class that will teach you how to write, create and launch your ebook.)

The best perk may be a combination of two or more of the options above, which is what I offer in my Marketing Toolkit. It contains an audio and a free ecourse that delivers an ebook at the end. The advantage of offering a combination perk is that people can get your information in the format that suits them best.

How about you? Are you working to build an email list? Need some ideas for compelling opt-in perks you can offer? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Do you have that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach?

That suspicion that your brand isn’t measuring up, but you’re not sure why, or what to do about it?

The first step to all significant change is identifying the problem. Use the list below as a guide, and have hope: there’s help here at the Big Brand System, and more help coming in the near future.

Read through this list. When you get that sinking feeling, make a note.

Don’t ignore the message! It’s an area that needs attention, and if you make it a priority this year, you’ll see results — and get rid of that sinking feeling, too.

1. You look at your website and hate it
2. Your brand looks like all the others in your field
3. When someone shakes your hand and asks you what you do, you can’t tell them in one sentence
4. You’re not getting enough business to keep you in business
5. Your head shot is ten years old
6. Your website says “best viewed in Internet Explorer” on it
7. No one remembers your tagline … or what your business offers
   
8. You use whatever font looks good that day
9. You don’t get the whole branding “thing” so you’ve ignored it since you started your business
10. When you check your website analytics, your bounce rate is over 70%
11. You don’t know what “bounce rate” is, and aren’t doing any website analytics
12. Your color palette changes with each project or designer assigned to the job
13. When people arrive on your website, they’re greeted by a Flash animation, and music starts playing automatically
14. You haven’t updated your brand image since 1990-something
15. You’re not attracting the right people: the ones you dream of working with or selling to
    
16. When you ask someone to describe your logo, they can’t remember what it looks like
    
17. Your “About” page talks only about you, and goes on and on and on …
18. On your website you ask people to “sign up for my email list” but offer them nothing in return
    

Repeat after me: the first step toward significant change is identifying the problem.

If some of the items on this list hit close to home, don’t worry. You can strengthen your brand by tackling them one by one: use the resources here on the Big Brand System, and make it your goal in 2012 to focus your attention on these areas.

Want more? Let’s talk about your challenges in the comments.

Whether you’re running a race, or marketing your business, the first step is always daunting. You look ahead and see nothing but the work that needs to be done, and the progress you’ll have to make. You can’t see the finish line at all. You might not even see the starting block.

This post is about the starting block exclusively. Because if you get your marketing off to the right start, the whole race will be easier, and you’ll increase your chances of winning it.

Adjust Your Aim

The marketing starting block is all about pushing off into your marketing race with a firm understanding of who you want to reach.

I can hear the collective groan right now. Yes, we’re going to talk about your target market. Stick with me here!

For some reason, most people don’t want to do the work of thinking through their target market. I think it’s because deciding who to aim your marketing efforts at means you’ve got to determine who you don’t want as a customer. Some people may be afraid to leave anyone out. They’d like to think their product or service is ideal for everyone.

But something magical happens when you become very clear about who you’re aiming for.

Your marketing messages are more compelling, because you’re not trying to please everyone. Your materials are attractive and consistent, because you know who you want to appeal to, and you let that knowledge guide your decisions.

And the most amazing thing is that you actually start attracting that group who will be best served by what you offer. They’re interested in your service or product, and you don’t have to try so hard to sell it to them. It solves one of their problems, so they want to hear about it.

Why determining your target market is important:

• When you know who your ideal customer is, you can craft your marketing to attract them.
• It’s much easier to sell something to an audience who wants and needs what you offer.
• Your marketing language will be tailored to how your target market speaks about their problem. They’ll recognize themselves in your marketing, and know they’re in the right place.
• Your colors, fonts and overall graphic style will work together to attract people who want to buy from you.

Afraid of Commitment?

Another reason people push back on thinking about their target market is they feel like once they commit to trying to appeal to specific group, they may regret it. What if they’re wrong? What if — it turns out — their products or services appeal to a group they haven’t identified?

They’re right to have these reservations. Once you’re out there marketing your business, you may find that you attract a different group of customers than the one you originally anticipated.

That’s OK: it’s a natural part of the process. Just commit to observing your customers to see if you need to revise your description of your target market once you’re out there using it.

Remember, you can make course corrections as you go. Determining your target market isn’t a once and done project.

4 Questions to Ask About Your Target Market

Can’t figure out who they are? These questions will help reveal your ideal customer:

1. What problem does your product or service solve?
2. If you’ve been in business a while, look back at who has hired you or bought your product so far. What common traits do you find?
3. Gender, age group and geographic location may all be important factors. But look for things like “they want to remove chemicals from their lives,” or “they want to parent successfully,” or “they’re interested in looking their best.” What phrases describe them as a group?
4. What frustrations do your customers have to deal with that’s solved with your product or service?

“My business is brand new and I don’t have any customers yet. How should I determine my target market?”

If you’re starting from scratch with no customers, you can look at the kind of work you do best, and envision the type of person that work would be most useful for.

This information will be a good guide to keep your early marketing decisions on track. Once you start working with “real” clients, you can make course corrections based on who you actually attract.

Extract Valuable Insights with this Simple Exercise

Here’s an exercise Jon Morrow shared here on the Big Brand System back in 2010. It’s a great way to extract insights about your target market you can use to guide your efforts.

“For getting to know customers, my favorite technique is to get a blank piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, I write, “What fears keep them up at night?” On the other side, I write, “What dreams keep them up at night?” Then I write down at least 100 things on each side.

The first 20 or so are usually easy, but it’s the last 80 where you find the real value. Sometimes, it’ll take me several weeks to be able to fill it out completely, but once I do, I know that I’m ready to start designing my marketing for them. It’s also great for generating ideas for blog posts.”

After you’ve determined who you’re aiming to reach, try this exercise to determine how to speak to them, and what to talk about.

How Do You Know When You’ve Got It Right?

You’ll know you’ve done this work correctly when you start seeing people who meet your description interacting with your business and becoming your customers.

You’ll run your marketing race with ease, because every step you take will be guided by your target market’s needs and desires.

It’s Your Turn

How about you? Have you gone through the process of developing a description of your target market? Are you avoiding it because it seems impossible?

Let’s talk about it in the comments. I’m happy to help you work through this essential step.

Want More? Get the Marketing Toolkit.

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A big part of what I share here at the Big Brand System is to help people to learn to see things they’re not accustomed to noticing.

Unless you were born with vision problems, you don’t need to learn to register images. You opened your eyes a few moments after you were born and started taking in the world around you.

But designers — and people who want to learn to apply design principles to their marketing materials — need to go beyond just registering images. We need to interpret them.

It takes practice, but if you know what you’re looking for, you’ll start seeing the concepts outlined here everywhere you look.

Want to harness the power of design in your marketing materials this year? Learn to notice the visual techniques in this post. Once you’ve understood them, you can apply them to your website and all your printed marketing material for a more effective, attractive and professional brand.

Contrast

Babies’ eyes are attuned to high-contrast shapes, which is why toy stores are full of baby toys adorned with black and white geometric forms.

Adult eyes gravitate toward high contrast, too. Use high contrast in your marketing materials by making sure there’s an obvious difference between the color of your foreground items and that of your background.

Size

Another way to draw attention to something is through size. When an item is disproportionately larger or smaller than everything else around it, the viewer’s eyes go directly to it.

You can use this to your advantage by making what you want your viewer to notice first larger than everything else around it.

See the examples below for how you can use size to your advantage, and keep your eyes open for examples of how marketing materials use size difference to make their messages stand out.

Color

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I recommend you pick two main colors to represent your business.

These two colors become associated with your brand. They become “your” colors over time.

But there’s a third color you can use, and if you train your eyes to look for it, you’ll notice many well-designed marketing materials implement it. It’s the accent color.

The accent color stands apart from your two main colors. It’s different for a reason: it’s the color you should use when you want to draw attention to the most important information on your page.

Hierarchy

When you use contrast, size and color together, you’ll structure your information to be grasped quickly and digested with ease. You’ll start using visual hierarchy to your advantage. Visual hierarchy creates web and print pages that just “look right.”

Now that you understand these four concepts, practice noticing them in the marketing materials you see every day.

If you find a good example of one of the concepts, share a link in the comments. Questions? Ask away!