This post is for marketers and publishers who don’t believe there are any benefits to giving away free content. The truth is that giving away free content can be extremely effective, depending on your goals. Here are a few things that giving away free content can do:
Increase your market: If the content is valuable enough, it will get spread quickly and to a greater number of people than you could hope to reach through traditional means. Some of those people, if not most, must be hearing about your brand and products for the first time. Now that they know who you are, they’re viable prospects.
Raise your cachet: Let’s say you’re a trade association and one of the services you sell is a certification program for new employees. Normally, you charge companies for the educational material and the certification test. What if you gave the educational materials away for free but charged for the certification test? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if every company in your industry used your branded educational materials to train their employees, even if they didn’t pay for them? Wouldn’t it be a good thing to expand your market and raise your cachet?
Increase sales: You’ve developed a bigger market and your brand is familiar and trusted now. It has the cachet of an industry leader. If those two things don’t result in more sales, there’s something wrong with your organization. Maybe it’s your salespeople. Maybe it’s the rest of your products. I don’t know, but if valuable content gets your brand in the hands of more people, it should also result in more sales.
Here’s what you do:
Step 1: Develop the content you will give away for free. It has to be really good, valuable, relevant content. Avoid generic topics and superficial information.
Step 2: Make sure the content has your logo and contact information on it. Make sure people who read the content know it’s from you and how they can get in touch with you.
Step 3: Give it away. Let anyone and everyone who wants the content have it and use it for free. Include some terms: The content can’t be modified, and you have to be credited as the author. Other than that, let it go.
Step 4: Free doesn’t necessarily mean ‘free.’ You can distribute the content absolutely free, or you can ask prospects to give something up, namely their name, e-mail and other pertinent info you want to collect. Just remember that the more information you ask them to provide, the more valuable the information should be.
Step 5: If you’ve collected information, the next step is to follow up with information about your other products and services. Don’t be too aggressive. Just give your consumers the information and include a call to action. Don’t start barraging them with tons of e-mails, letters and phone calls.
Filed under: Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Content Marketing, Content Strategy
