“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”
Charles Darwin said it. And we believe it.
That’s why we’re making a HUGE change: We’re ungating our content.
Gating Our Content Doesn’t Align With Our Mission
Bottom line: We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Our resources can help healthcare communicators do their jobs better. We want you to have access to those resources.
As Mark Schaefer mentions in his thought-provoking blog post on the topic, research shows people hate gated content. An astonishing 90% of people won’t download content if it requires an email address.
Will Ungating Our Content Help Us Build Meaningful Relationships? We Hope So
The No. 1 reason we’re doing this is to service our industry and help others. We also believe that this approach might lead to more meaningful business relationships than the old method of bartering email addresses for content.
If healthcare organizations get value from our content, they know where to find us and will reach out.
We Want Our Content Out in the World, Providing Value
Our tools can help healthcare marketers create educational, empathetic content. So why should it sit behind a form on our website? We want our cheat sheets printed out, tacked on your board. We want our eBooks and checklists bookmarked on your browser for easy reference.
So, if you haven’t downloaded any of our publications yet, please help yourself!
Here’s some content that may interest you:
- Checklist: How to Create Content About the COVID-19 Vaccine
- eBook: 7 Best Practices for Long-Term Telehealth Success
- Cheat Sheet: How to Be Clear During COVID-19, Part 1 and Part 2
- eBook: Writing About Difficult Healthcare Topics
- Infographic: 5 Steps to Fight Fake Healthcare News
Why You May Want to Ungate Your Content
We were inspired to ungate our content after reading Mark Schaefer’s eye-opening post.
Here are some reasons you may want to consider doing the same:
- Remove roadblocks: Schaefer likens asking for an email before providing content to putting up a stop sign in front of it.
- Increase shares: No matter how great a piece of content is, it’s unlikely to gain traction on social media or get forwarded if it requires people to give up their information.
- Build trust: We all want to deepen our relationship with our customers. A more meaningful, effective way to do that is to give them something freely rather than make a trade.
- Invoke reciprocity: If you still want those email addresses, ask for them after you’ve provided the content. Roger Dooley of Neuromarketing suggests that because you’ve given something of value to people, they may be more likely to complete a form.
We’ll Share the Results of Our Experiment
As marketers, we’re always interested in understanding ROI and meeting business objectives too. So, although we’ve made this decision so we could be of service, we’ll still keep an eye on the data. In a few months, we’ll let you know if this change affected our results. For now, it’s the right decision in our hearts, so that’s how we’re going to proceed.
