You want your website visitors to complete a registration form in order to receive articles, white papers, and e-books. That’s the point of having a website – to capture leads, right?
Not so fast.
David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, argues in a blog post “Say NO to squeezing your buyers” that a registration form will severely depress content downloads. On the other hand, visitors are far more likely to download content without a registration form. Key points:
- Your prospects may not register so they can avoid being put on email lists
- They don’t want to get calls from pesky salespeople 10 minutes after completing a download
- Visitors who like your content will “distribute” it via blogs, increasing both your credibility and visibility
- After seeing your content, site owners will link to your site, thereby increasing your traffic (and potential leads)
The bottom line: the visibility generated by distribution is far more valuable than capturing a few names. Besides that, those who do register may give phony business names or personal email addresses, making it impossible to contact them.
I tend to agree. A client of mine published a study last year and initially required registration. After seeing relatively few downloads, we decided to eliminate the registration form. The downloads increased dramatically.
The dilemma: it’s easy to measure leads captured and very difficult to measure the value increased visibility.
