Free, Gated or Paid Content?

Why is McKinsey Quarterly free when an annual subscription to HBR costs $99? Why does Hubspot gate practically everything when its marketing advisor, David Meerman Scott, is one of the highest profile, outspoken advocates for never gating anything? Why does a solo management consultant charge upwards of $200 per person for access to a one hour webinar (live or recorded) while the largest consulting firms in the world give away virtually all their thought leadership for free almost every day?

In this article:

1. “People Expect Free” is a Fallacy
2. Price Implies More Than Value
3. Free Content: 2x To Give It Away
4. Gated Content: 3x To Put It Behind a Form
5. Paid Content: 5x To Charge For It

Content marketing continues to be a hot topic these days. But, all anyone ever talks about is using content as a lever to sell something else. In the professional services arena, good content is a proven and effective tool to create opportunities to sell high value consulting services. Yet, sometimes the content itself is worth something, isn’t it? Maybe it’s worth a small exchange of information? Maybe it’s worth a substantial exchange of money? But, how do you know when to give it all away? Or, when to hold a little bit back? Or, when to charge an actual fee for it? We’ll cover all that here, but first…

“People expect [______] to be free.”

This is a common refrain that has plagued the Internet almost since its first commercial use. Thousands of start up companies failed during the dot com bubble often due largely to this simple sentence — people expect {THAT} to be free (whatever THAT is). Yet, we’re all taught at a very young age that nothing is free, and this too applies to content.

No one really wants content to be free.

What they want is content to be valuable. They want it to be useful. They want it to be applicable to their unique situation. They want it to help them solve a problem they’re struggling with. They want it to help them capitalize on an opportunity they see before them. And, they recognize that there is a cost to produce high quality content that does all these things.

So, while they’re appreciative when it’s given away, they’re also many times willing to pay something commensurate to the content’s perceived value (this payment could be an exchange of real dollars or simply an exchange of information).

Price Implies More Than Value

Imagine I published a FREE eBook titled, “The Professional Services Firm’s Guide to Selecting the Right Marketing Automation Platform.” The guide provides a comparison of the core feature sets in each leading technology along with pricing comparisons, interviews with existing customers and a step-by-step worksheet to help a firm select the right platform based on their type of firm, their size of firm, and the unique make-up of their marketing and business development team. Sounds like a pretty good piece of content (maybe we should create it). It’s absolutely free. Anyone can get it without paying a cent or sharing a bit of information.

Now, imagine I took that exact same eBook and charged $99 for it. If you were presented with both options, which version would you believe is more likely to be useful to you? Which one is likely more valuable? Which one are you more likely to read? But, let’s take it one step further — both documents essentially guide you to a business decision; which decision are you more likely to implement — the one provided to you by the free eBook or the one provided to you by the $99 eBook?

I’m willing to bet you said the $99 eBook on almost all accounts. This is because there is a direct relationship between price, perceived value and perceived risk. As it turns out, by charging $99 for that eBook, I’m placing a rather substantial value on the content itself. Your experience probably tells you that the majority of eBooks are either entirely free or just posted behind a gate. Since my $99 eBook costs more than similar content you’ve encountered, there’s a good chance you’ll assume the content to be much better than other similar things you’ve read on the topic. You infer more value on the $99 eBook. As a result, if you decide to purchase it, you’re more likely to read it and most importantly — you’re more likely to apply it.

Firms Have An Obligation to Charge for Content Some of the Time

Content we pay for we’re more likely to read and more likely to apply. It’s this last step that’s interesting to me. Professional services firms are hired by clients to perform due diligence and render advice that is applied to solve a business problem. Clients pay for due diligence and they pay for advice. It’s probably not realistic (or very wise) for a firm to develop content that renders advice, but good content can assist the role of due diligence quite often, can’t it? Charging a client something for this content is not a whole lot different than charging them for proper due diligence in the client relationship. And, by charging for it, the firm increases the likelihood that the potential client will actually apply it.

Sometimes charging something for our best content (either payment or information) is actually in the best interests of both the firm and its clients.

Free Content: 2 Times to Give It Away

Roughly 95% of a professional services firm’s content should be and remain free. First and foremost, your content is a really useful lever to help you create opportunities to sell your high value consulting services.

Two ways free content helps you sell high value professional services:

1. Attracts Potential Clients – If you want your firm to get found online by clients looking for someone to solve the types of problems you solve, without knowing who you are, content is your most important tool. It is the backbone of effective SEO. Anything hidden behind a gate or a paywall cannot be found by a search engine.
2. Provides a Free Trial – Consumer products companies give away free trials all the time in the hopes that you’ll sample their product, like it, and buy it. This is an important role for content in your firm. A client that’s considering you wants to know how you think about issues like theirs. How do you perceive their challenges? What’s your unique perspective on them? They’d like to sample before they buy. Content lets them do this.

For the most part, these types of content should always remain free:

1. Short-Form Content: (<2k words that relies primarily on experience, opinion and observation; i.e it’s not grounded in substantial proprietary research).
2. Blogs, Onsite Articles + Case Studies: Clients just expect these content forms to be entirely free.

Gates: Your Misunderstood Friends

The idea of gating content — putting it behind a form — has been subject to a wide range of scrutiny. Critics argue that it drastically reduces the reach of the content. For every 100 people who visit the page, ~15-20 may complete the form to access the content (if that). By gating the content, you’re essentially constraining the number of people who consume the content and the number of people who share the content on your behalf. That said, for most professional services firms, neither of these things really matter all that much. In fact, in some ways, they’re actually good things.

Two ways gates help you:

• Begin Qualifying Potential Clients — One of your most important goals as a marketer isn’t just to attract any clients. It’s to attract the right clients. You’ve left 95% of your content ungated for a third unmentioned reason — to build trust. You’re offering a lot of value without asking for anything in return. Assuming they’ve already found value in your free content, good clients will quickly infer greater value in a small exchange of information to access a higher level of content from you. The contrast of this holds true as well. Chances are good that a client that doesn’t trust you enough to share a few snippets of information to get your most valuable content isn’t likely to bring a whole lot of trust into the client relationship anyway. Gates are an effective way to begin qualifying potential clients.
• Finding Your Niche — Your content doesn’t need to go viral. One of the often cited reasons not to gate content is to give your content the opportunity to be shared by the most people possible. But, chances are good you’re not Seth Godin. Most firms aren’t producing content for mass market consumption. Even really large professional services firms tend to operate in clearly defined niches. If your content is good, it should be really valuable to your niche and pretty much worthless outside of it. Let David Meerman Scott get 1M downloads of his eBook on Newsjacking. You’re looking for a handful of really great clients this year in you’re clearly defined niches. You don’t need broad distribution for that. What you do need, is to find that niche. Gates can help you do that too.

Gated Content: 3 Times to Put It Behind a Form

Obviously, we’d recommend that you only gate a very small percentage of your content (less than 5%). Some firms won’t gate anything — and that’s okay. If you are going to gate some content, you need the content to be more valuable than your free content to warrant the exchange of information. And, you need to be clear about what you will and won’t do with the information. You will add this person to your email database if they ask to do so. If they don’t sign up for your newsletter, you might send them an email to invite them to do so. But, you’ll only do it once. And, you’ll never do it again if they don’t respond. You won’t call them 5 minutes after they downloaded the content assuming they’re ready to hire you. You might call them at some point in the future to make your firm available to them as a resource. But, you won’t translate this small extension of trust from your potential client as a chance to rush into a sales conversation.

These are the types of content that probably make sense to gate:

1. Longer-Form Content: (>2k words) that is grounded in substantive research and represents a meaningful investment in time, money and resources for your firm to produce.
2. In-Depth Educational Content: Content that helps someone understand a concept at length.
3. Webinars: so you can provide timely reminders to registrants in advance of the event.

Paid Content: 5 Times to Charge For It

Now, here it gets really tough. When does the free trial stop and the paid engagement begin?

Situations where I believe it can make sense for a firm to charge money for its content:

1. Very Long Content: (>5k words) that presents the in-depth findings of a substantive, statistically significant research initiative.
2. Data + Examples: Content that provides access to useful benchmarking data or provides helpful examples of how companies from a potential client’s peer group solved a similar problem.
3. Diagnostic: Content that enables a potential client to self diagnose a particular problem.
4. Identify + Implement: Content that enables the client to both identify and implement a possible solution to their particular problem.
5. Revenue Producing: Any content that is published or generates revenue by other means (obviously books, but also content that might be otherwise exclusive to a paid speaking engagement or content that might normally be delivered as part of a firm’s client relationship).

In The End, They’re All Right

Ultimately, the strategy that’s right for you is the right one. McKinsey is right to give it away. HBR is right to charge for it. Hubspot is right to gate it. David Meerman Scott is right not to — They’re all right because that is what works for them in their business at this point in time.