Gale vs. Google Content Creation Project

The Gale K-12 sales team was running into renewal issues with their Gale In Context reference databases at a number of school districts where high school librarians were being told by principals and curriculum directors that students didn't need to renew their databases because they could just use Google for school assignments. With misinformation and fake news at an all-time high, that didn't sit well with the librarians.

The K-12 sales team needed a content piece they could use with customers and prospects to illustrate why and when to use Gale In Context databases over Google.

I found a sales rep who shared a story about a teacher-librarian customer who conducts an assignment at the beginning of each school year with freshmen students that compares the school's library databases — which happened to be Gale databases — against Google, as a way to introduce them to the school's research databases. I had the sales rep connect me with the teacher-librarian and set up a call with her to learn more about the assignment and capture her story.

Based on details from the call, I developed four content pieces in partnership with our Creative team:

1). A Blog Post on the research assignment from the teacher-librarian's perspective.

2). A downloadable Comparison Worksheet that was included in the blog as a call-to-action for educators who may want to try the assignment in their own classroom.

3). A printable Pros & Cons Chart that's featured in the blog and gives a side-by-side comparison of students' research results and experiences with Google vs. Gale In Context: High School — showing how students found Gale a more reliable source for research.

4) A Contributed Article about the assignment that was ghostwritten on behalf of the teacher-librarian and would get placed with a publication. (NOTE: this article was written, but never placed because the teacher-librarian no longer had time to participate.)

The content was well received. Assets were leveraged by sales and marketing in customer conversations, email campaigns, social channels, on the Gale website, as marketing collateral, and shared with media outlets. The content generated more than 140 sales leads, $180K+ in revenue, and drove 5K+ referrals back to the Gale website. These assets were also shared with Gale's higher ed, public library, and consortia sales and marketing teams, as Gale In Context databases are sold across those markets as well.

Because I had already established trust with the sales team through virtual calls that helped them understand how PR content can help drive new business — and the role they play in collaborating with PR, like flagging new deals, identifying customers open to PR activities, and surfacing trends that might make strong thought leadership topics. My collaborations with them had already produced press coverage that helped close deals and generate revenue. Sales had experienced firsthand the power of PR and third-party validated content and knew how to use it in their customer conversations.