The world’s most successful subscription publisher - The New York Times - regularly gives some of the most valuable real estate on its homepage to free articles - and, crucially, makes sure readers know they’re free.
It’s a smart strategy, particularly for paywalled publishers. Here’s why.
If you’d like to work with me, you can find all the details on my consulting website - Tomorrow Consulting.
Why this matters
1. Free content maximises reach
Not every article needs to drive an immediate subscription. Nor is it going to. Making selected articles free-to-air helps publishers maximise reach around important, highly competitive stories.
It also gives subscription publishers a better chance of competing in Search against non-paywalled competitors. If engagement metrics are Google’s most important ranking factor (they almost certainly are), then the enhanced bounce rate and suppressed time on page associated with paywalling makes reaching a new audience more challenging.
A having your cake and eating it too situation.
2. Labelling free content encourages clicks
And the problem with being a subscription brand is that, over time, you become known for having a paywall. As the cesspit of the internet evolves and the value exchange continues to erode, people will have to get used to paying for news.
But that creates a problem: even when you make an article free, readers might assume it's paywalled.
Users won’t automatically know that an article is free. You have to tell them. Label your content. It will improve engagement and subsequent reach.
The entire point of free-to-air content.
Live blogs are a great example. Many subscription publishers make them free because they’re exceptionally competitive in Search and act as an entry point for new audiences.
But how often do those publishers explicitly label them as free? It’s an obvious, relatively inexpensive experiment.
3. Reach today, subscribers tomorrow
Marketing is all about touchpoints.
A user needs to encounter your content at the right time and - crucially - enough times, to warrant a registration or subscription. The less flexible your monetisation strategy, the smaller your pool of future subscribers IMO.
So don’t think of free content as lost revenue, think of it as an introduction to a cold, cool or slightly warm audience. A future opportunity.
How can you test this?
It depends where you are in the ecosystem and subscription model maturity matrix. Which is some bullshit I just made up, but it sounds brilliant.
If you’re a free-to-air brand dipping their toes in the premium market, you don’t need to worry about this yet. Although having the ‘free to access’ block on your homepage is still sensible.
If you’re a legacy premium publisher, you should consider
Labelling: make it clear that free-to-air content is accessible to all
Prominence: The NYT uses prime real estate. The most trafficked section of their entire website is free. Their goal is eventually to funnel people through to the app - consider what yours is and how prominently you want to feature freebies
Measurement: what does success look like? Most companies have moved traffic to a B or C tier KPI, which is absolutely right. But what measurements actually predict a future subscription? Session duration? Returning visits? Establish what really matters to your brand
Visibility and engagement: Experiment with free-to-air badges on the featured image and/or in the structured data and OG images (less consistently applied on third party platforms) to maximise CTR in Search and other surfaces
There are very few brands that get away with hard paywalls. You’re unlikely to be in that bucket, so really think about how free content can be part of a deliberate audience acquisition strategy.
And if you’re already making content free, make sure people know about it.