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Should We Give Away Content For Free?

By Elmar Sandyck

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 25Sep2011 Word count: 486 Viewed: 56 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

"He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open."Rabindranath Tagore

Have you heard of content gating?

Technically, it's that thing you do as an online marketer to force potential clients or prospects to reveal their contact details first in order to get free downloadable content. You literally put up some sort of gate to block any interested person to automatically get free content without getting something in return for it. There's a Latin maxim that fits this description to a T: quid pro quo, which literally means "this for that" or "something for something."

Content gating is one of the most popular ploys that online marketers or entrepreneurs would use to build their email list. It's a white hat marketing practice but the thing is; it may not really be helping you in your business at all!

In an article written by Ericka Chikowski for Entrepreneur magazine entitled, "Why You Shouldn't Wall Off Your Web Content," marketing strategist David Meerman Scott remarked that marketers who apparently force this practice of content gating are doing their business more harm than good!

Here's a quote from the article:

"The author of Real-Time Marketing and PR, Scott believes content gating doesn't make for a good getting-to-know-you phase between marketers and potential customers. "I liken it to a singles bar where some guy comes up to you and says, 'What's your phone number?' without even introducing himself. It sets up an adversarial relationship," Scott says. Instead, consider collecting information after prospects get a taste of your expertise--and realize how much they can learn from you.

Scott has found that ungated content gets between 20 and 50 times more downloads. He says a gated piece of content that would be downloaded 2,000 times could skyrocket up to 100,000 downloads if you open the lock. So, when do you get to ask for their information? List a secondary offer at the end of the freebie. But before prospects can view that webinar or download the next PDF, they'll need to pony up their e-mail address. Even if just 5 percent of the 100,000 go for the offer, you'll end up with 5,000 leads.

And, adds Scott, "you know every one of them has read your white paper. When I talk to sales people, they want to have a person who has already read the white paper and wants to learn more rather than someone who just traded an e-mail address to get a white paper and has never seen it before."

So, should you or should you not do content gating? I'd really love to hear the comments of those who are practicing this and those who do not.

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