Hi, my name is Elise. I’m a web strategist at TinyFrog Technologies and I want to talk about whether or not you should gate your educational content. What does that mean? Let’s talk about it.
So, your website offers you really, really valuable centralized hub for sharing educational content with existing and potential new clients. Whether you write articles, film videos or record podcast episodes, you can use your website to keep everything organized and accessible for people. But should you give everything away for free?
Now, we definitely don’t recommend charging people in order to access your content, but there is another effective way to limit accessibility to more valuable pieces of content that you offer. That’s a tool called an incentive based opt-in, other known as a lead magnet, which is a piece of content that requires somebody to input their contact information in order for them to access the content.
And so this serves as a win-win because the people who access the lead magnet are receiving valuable insights from you and learning more about your expertise and you’re getting in touch with somebody who’s a potential new lead and is clearly interested in the content that you’re sharing.
You’ve probably seen these yourselves whether you realize it or not. They’re often set up as a pop-up which is when a box pops up on your screen often in the middle of scrolling that offers you a discount or access to something exclusive in exchange for your name and either your phone number and/or your email address.
I’ll be the first to admit that these popups are a little annoying as we’re scrolling down websites and while they do have their place, we definitely recommend creating more of a static setup for your lead magnets and including a section on a few of your key pages to share this content.
Now, research shows that an email address is worth about $10 and so what this means is that the content you’re sharing should be perceived in value as about $10 in order for people to be willing to provide their personal information in exchange for it. You shouldn’t set up every single piece of content on your website as a lead magnet. That’s a little bit of an overkill but I definitely recommend choosing two to three pieces of more compelling or intriguing content and gating them on your website.
Now, this should only be done if you’re actually going to do something with the contact information that you’re collecting and the number one thing is if you have an email marketing platform where you send out newsletters or emails. What you can do is set up your lead magnet form to connect with your email platform so that people are automatically added to your list and continue to receive content from you.
If you don’t send emails, you can also set up the form to connect with your CRM and therefore you have a hub of the people that have reached out through your lead magnet and you can in turn reach out to them directly.
And so it’s only valuable if you’re actually going to keep in touch with the people that sign up for your lead magnet. It”s a really great way to engage with potential new clients and we think it’s a great option for presenting different educational content on your website. If you need help with a lead magnet and implementing it onto your website feel free to reach out to us!
