Lead-gen ebook for EcoVadis
Overview
EcoVadis is a well-respected global provider of sustainability ratings and intelligence, helping businesses engage their supply chains and improve performance across environment, human rights and business ethics. EcoVadis is a sustainability SaaS company with several solutions based around their digital platform, with an impressive network of 150,000 rated companies.
This was my first project with EcoVadis, and I have since worked with them on several other projects.
The brief
EcoVadis releases many ebooks, whitepapers and reports, many of which are used effectively as lead-magnets, as a key part of their content marketing strategy. However, at the time they didn’t have any gated ebooks on climate action, and they had internal feedback from their sales team that prospects were interested in this topic.
The target audience was business people in sustainability and procurement teams. The objective was to showcase EcoVadis’ expertise on how to reduce emissions and improve climate resilience in your supply chain, while attracting relevant leads for marketing their Carbon Action Manager product. The target length was around 15 pages, or 3,000 words.
When I came on board, EcoVadis already had a concept and outline for the ebook, based on a 3-step framework. I wrote the content for the ebook, with input and edits from the EcoVadis team, and they had their internal design team typeset and design the PDF report.
The ebook: Sample pages and writing techniques
Front cover of the ebook. The title clearly articulates the benefit that the target audience wants to see, and the ‘3 steps’ bit makes it sound concrete and actionable. More benefits and keywords are used in the subtitle, and the word ‘proven’ increases authority and trust.
Page 2 of the ebook. This introduction sets out the context, empathises with the challenges the target audience is facing, and introduces the 3-step framework for supply chain decarbonisation. The title for this page is a strong declarative sentence, to grab the reader’s attention and show authority.
Page 6 of the ebook. This is the first page of the main section, covering step 1 of the framework: data-driven supplier prioritisation. This page uses third-party stats to powerfully show the need for this approach and scannable bullet points. On the right, we have box-outs to promote relevant tools provided by EcoVadis.
Page 11 of the ebook. Towards the end, after the 3-step framework, this page introduces the Carbon Action Manager and explains how it helps implement the framework. Key features are highlighted in a scannable way, with benefit-focused copy under each subheading. After the main content of the ebook has provided value for free and built trust, this section positions their product as the natural next step.
Page 15 of the ebook. This final page (before the back cover) is a more direct call to action for Carbon Action Manager. On the left, the headline focuses on the main benefit (“quickly understand your suppliers’ carbon performance and engage them at scale'“) and the body copy shares more benefits. These benefits are directly mapped to the stages of the action framework, which makes Carbon Action Manager feel like the obvious next step in implementing what readers have learned. On the right are two call to actions with hyperlinks, driving readers to take the next step in the customer journey. (If I did this again, I would recommend having just one call to action, or one that is visually more prominent than the other.)
My process
We started with a kick-off call with key members of the marketing team, where they shared their brief and draft outline and I asked lots of questions to understand their needs and goals.
EcoVadis already had a solid outline for the ebook, which I agreed was an effective way to tell the story they wanted to communicate, so I didn’t spend much time on concepting and outlining for this project. (Often, developing the outline in collaboration with my clients would be the first phase of my work.)
In this case, EcoVadis had tried using AI to generate rough drafts for some of the sections. (I don’t usually use AI in this way). This was a helpful starting point but much of the AI-generated text was overly generic, so I agreed with EcoVadis that I would do heavy editing and rewriting to ensure the content was specific and valuable to the target audience, reflected the real-world expertise of the EcoVadis team, and was written in an engaging and compelling way.
I worked in Google Docs, following the outline and rough word-count for each section and delineating between pages. I also made suggestions for the images and graphics that could go on each page.
We had three rounds of revisions, with several members of the EcoVadis marketing team reviewing and leaving comments. As the outline was already agreed, the edits were not very extensive. We worked in a collaborative way, with EcoVadis team members making suggestions for how a certain sentence could be reworded, always sharing the rationale so I could suggest alternatives.
After the content was signed off, the EcoVadis design team worked on the typeset version of the PDF, and I reviewed the final designed version.
Want to chat about creating an ebook like this to attract leads for your business?