By Mark Smiciklas

I ended a recent post with the suggestion that all of your website content should be offered for free. I thought it would be a good idea to follow that statement up with some ideas and rationale on why free content helps create awareness and build brand equity.

“Free” content is becoming more and more prevalent and is being embraced as a way to build sales by many companies, particularly in the software sector. It’s not uncommon for many software applications to have a free version available – the idea being that offering free content will build brand awareness and result in upgrades and sales of more robust products. Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, is leading the way in establishing the business case for free content and plans to release a new book dedicated to the subject sometime in 2009.

From a marketing and PR perspective, well known blogger/author David Meerman Scott has preached the benefits of free content as a way to share your ideas, assume a thought leadership position, and build your brand. Scott’s most recent post on the the topic is about hot dogs and a Canadian indie band in New York…check out what they have in common.

Free or Gated

There are two opposing viewpoints regarding the accessibility of free content:

1. Free content should be totally “free”. Users should not have to provide personal information or have to register in order to be able to access your free content.
2. Free content should be “gated”. User should have to perform some call to action in order to access free content i.e. provide contact information such as an email address, etc.

This post will focus on the totally free model, but the debate rages on – for some insight on the gated argument check out “Opposing Philosophies on eBook Marketing” by well noted copywriter, Bob Bly.

Types of Free Content

There are many different ways to offer free content on your website including:

eBooks – Are you passionate about a topic or idea? Write an e-book and use it to:

• provide prospects/customers with useful information
• assist in solving your clients problems
• helps your target market learn something new about their business

I’m in the process of writing my first e-book. You can too – check out page 14 of “The New Rules of Viral Marketing” for some great tips on how to get started (of course, this e-book by David Meerman Scott is free).

Articles – Create an articles section on your website. It’s best if the articles provide useful information for your target audience and add value to a visitor’s experience on your website.

Documents – Become a resource provider to your target market. One of my clients, a business lawyer, recognizes that her value is in the service she provides and not the documents that are used in the process. As a result, she provides document templates such as non-disclosure agreement, contracts, etc for free. Her goal is to create a resource tool that will attract a target audience to her website, expose her brand and create word of mouth.

Some other forms of free content include:

• Whitepapers
• Blogs
• Case studies
• Research findings

Benefits of Offering “FREE” Content

• Creates brand awareness
• Builds word of mouth marketing
• Engagement – facilitates a connection with your audience and helps build relationships
• Helps develop trust with your target audience – visitors accessing your content without having to register won’t need to worry about whether they will start receiving spam from your small business
• Creates a great opportunity to expose your ideas
• Removes any barrier to your content and results in more downloads.
• Viral – free content is more likely to spread online through linking on other websites, mentions on blogs and forums, etc than gated content.
• Empowerment – gives your target audience control in deciding for themselves if your content is valuable without having to give up their permission asset i.e. an email address, etc. With gated content, people that do register may not actually be interested in future communication from your small business – they simply want to access your content to see if it of value to them. As a result, any email you send after they are forced to register will likely annoy them and be treated as spam.
• Free content helps generate sales leads. As your content gains exposure it helps build brand awareness – if your target audience likes what they see, it will lead to relationship building and new business opportunities.
• Search Engine Optimization – the more pages you have on your site, the better the chance that your small business website will be found by potential customers. More free content helps build search engine rankings.
• Becomes a business card/brochure for your small business and provides your target market with an insight into who you are.
• Your target audience has a reason to repeat visits to your website (and will usually stay longer when they are there).