Think Carefully Before Gating Your Content With Online Registration Forms

With consumers tuning out traditional advertising, many companies are redoubling their content marketing efforts to lure customers. This has fueled a seemingly exponential increase in the volume of free reports and white papers available. Google, for example, listed 163,000 results for healthcare accountable care organization (ACO) white papers. That’s a lot of competition for just one focused term.

Given the flood of thought leadership, when does it make sense to create another barrier to readership by adding online registration forms, and when should your content be available without any strings attached? While lead generation from gated content is critical, your decision depends on who you’re trying to reach and where they are in the sales cycle.

Example of a Two-Tiered Approach

Let’s say that your company wants to position itself as an authority on electronic health records (EHR) solutions for ACOs. First, consider your sales targets and their priorities. Busy healthcare CEOs may be primarily interested in the business impact of their EHR decisions, leaving the details of compliance, IT integration and other issues to department heads.

Given this dynamic, one approach is to offer select, high-level EHR content without requiring online registration. This strategy can increase the likelihood that time-strapped executives will read your piece rather than leaving your registration page to find a competitor’s white paper. And in addition to helping to raise brand awareness, quality content can entice readers to register for additional company information.

For example, if you create a survey on ACO IT integration challenges, you could develop a high-level report and infographic that promotes your findings – and make it available without registration requirements. Also use public relations and social media to help promote your new report. Online registration, however, is ideal for a webinar that provides added insights based on your research, as well as related reports with deeper levels of content. This could include separate ACO-themed reports designed to reach distinct decision makers, such as:

• Compliance executives:  “Spotlighting EHR compliance mandates for ACOs”
• IT executives:  “How to ensure that your hospital’s IT strategy has the flexibility to support emerging care models”

Registration is also suited for prospects further along in the buying process who are looking for product and pricing information. And many companies gate their older reports to capture new prospects.

Key Takeaway

While it can be tempting to gate your content to help quantify sales leads, consider making at least some of your content as widely available as possible, especially if you are a growing company that needs to build its market visibility. Marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, and prospects need to be targeted based on their purchasing authority and their timeframe for selecting new products or solutions.

(Image courtesy of twobee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)