As you look through nearly any brand website, you’ll see all sort of content related to the brand. Of course, there’s information about the product including all of the brand messages and, of course, in the case of healthcare, a bunch of fair balance. Most every site in every industry goes beyond this and offers some information about their category whether it be information about LCD versus plasma TVs or, in healthcare, information about the diseases their products treat. That’s all standard.

A few go beyond this, they offer something of a service in the form of an ongoing newsletter to share new content with their customers every so often. It’s a part of many company’s relationship marketing efforts, and these vary dramatically in their value to customers. Some may offer a coupon or special offers only available to members of the program. Of course, the vast majority of these are free to the subscribers. Pharma is no exception, as each of the top selling drugs offer some type of program (whether they’re working as well as they could or not is another story).

And, of course, some companies go even further and offer applications and services at no charge. Some of these are incredibly valuable and others are pretty questionable in their utility. Now it seems like everyone has a free iPhone app for their brand. This includes companies like USA Today, Nationwide, even Chipotle. Healthcare has dabbled in this area as well and have started to offer some iPhone applications. It’s not just iPhone apps either. Other on-site tools offer utility as well from disease trackers to product selectors and even games.

So, everyone is giving more than just brand information on their websites. It makes sense, right? When it comes to healthcare, you need to include information about the disease your product treats, right? You have to include things like diet suggestions, exercise tips, or even relaxation suggestions. Or do you? In many cases, we include this type of information because we think we have to. Our competitors do, so in order for our site to be as “good” as theirs, we do it also.

But think about it for a minute. The non-brand information we provide on our brand sites in healthcare is fairly generic in nature and available from a variety of sources. That is, you can get this type of information from a bunch of different sources; sources that consumers see as more objective than brand sites. Places like WebMD provide countless disease-related articles and tips related to healthcare. Even for specific disease information, third party sites almost always go far deeper than what you’ll find on any brand site. It’s what they do.

Despite this fact, healthcare companies continue to spend a lot of money to create content that can already be found elsewhere. Often, they create applications that don’t offer much value or have limited utility. I’m not picking on healthcare companies. This is common in every industry. We don’t use what’s out there already, we want to create our own version. We don’t link to other resources or syndicate content onto our sites. We want to make our own. But how many exercise tips do we need for people with hypertension?

It’s an ultra-competitive marketplace out there and companies believe they need to “capture” as many people as possible. They want them to stay on their sites and not go elsewhere. So, what better way to do this than try to put everything a person might need on your website? Okay, but here’s the problem with this. If you’re going to make an attempt, people now expect everything they see to be of outstanding quality. You have to remember that they aren’t comparing you to your category competitor anymore, they’re comparing you to everything else they’ve seen online. If your content isn’t of high quality with a lot of in depth information, people will be disappointed. If your application doesn’t work right or is boring, they’re going to be unhappy. Disappointed or unhappy people are not the kind of customers you want.

If you’re going to create your own content, whether it be articles or an application, it had better be good. It’s what people expect. They aren’t happy simply because you made an effort. They don’t need to get it from you, there are plenty other sources. And, that’s where they’ll go if you let them down.

So, the question you have to ask is simple. Is my content seen as valuable to my customers? If it’s not, you need to ask why you’re doing it? Of course, figuring out if your content is useful or not can be tough. It requires complete objectivity and that’s not easy for anyone. I’m going to make it easy for you.

When it comes to the best content and applications, we often pay for them. We pay for them happily because we get so much value from them. So, here’s your question, if you decided to charge for your content or applications, would anyone pay for them? It doesn’t need to be a lot, say, a dollar for your application. Okay, how about fifty-cents? Two bits? Anything? If your answer is no, then your content could possibly be doing more harm than good. People might find your content and get frustrated by its lack of details, limited utility, or because your application didn’t work right.

Here’s the good news, you don’t have to set up a complex payment system on your site. You don’t actually have to charge people for your content or applications. Just use it as a test to see if what you have is good enough.

Much of the content that was once something you paid for is now moving to free. Chris Anderson famously proposed this in his Wired magazine article, Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. But many of these free things, we would pay for if they suddenly required us to pay. A few examples: if Google suddenly decided to charge for Gmail, would you pay for it? I would. If Nike decided to charge for Nike+, would you pay for that? I would and I bet that I most people that use it would do the same.

“But,” you say, “we’re not Nike. We’re not Google. We’re talking healthcare. I don’t have to worry about these types of companies. I’m worried about my competitors.” Well, they are your competitors. Everything online is you competitor. Everything is competing for your customers’ time, so they’re you competitors. Here’s the thing to remember, people ARE paying for your content. They pay for it with their time, which is both very valuable and finite. When they waste their time, they waste their money.

Is you content wasting people’s money? If so, what are you going to do to improve it today?

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