To Gate or Not to Gate? Identifying Content Strategy
Picture it. You’ve written a brand-new piece of content that showcases the incredible impact your company has for your customers and you are ready to share it with the world! The question is – do you gate it or not?
It’s a great question and there are many factors to consider. Let’s break down what gated content is, the pros and cons of gating content, and general recommendations to help you make this important decision.
What is gated content?
“Gated content” is any type of content strategically placed behind a form on a website that captures leads and contact information. Your audience cannot access gated content without providing you with the information you ask for, such as email address, name, title, phone number, or answers to questions. Companies leverage gated content as a strategy to develop leads and increase sales.
Pros and Cons of Gating Content
Like almost anything, there are pros and cons of gating content. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what the purpose and goals are of your content, then align your gating strategy with that.
Pros of Gated Content
Generate leads: The first and most obvious “pro” for gating content is lead generation. By collecting contact information, you grow your ability to reach a broader audience and build brand awareness.
Streamline sales: Ask your sales team whether to gate or not and they’ll likely vote “gate!” This is because collecting contact information through gated content quickly grows the number of warm leads they can nurture.
Identify audience trends: With a large amount of audience information, you will be able to see trends, which can help you hone your marketing strategy and identify your target audience.
Establish trust: While it may seem small, an audience member providing you with their personal contact information is an act of trust. It communicates a belief that your brand and what you offer is valuable enough to them that they are willing to give you their information.
Cons of Gated Content
Limited audience: By placing a form between your audience and your content, you are bound to lose some folks at that barrier. It is important to consider how wide spread you would like the content to be. Determine if you are okay with a smaller audience or if it’s something you want anyone to view.
Potential lead loss: Depending on where in the buyer journey you place your gated content, you may lose some leads. Whether it’s the extra time, the hesitance to give away personal information, or annoyance at a barrier, this may turn some people off.
Some traffic and page view loss: This one is pretty straightforward. If you place a barrier between your audience and your content, you will have less traffic and fewer page views.
SEO interference: By gating your content, you may lose links from external sources. Additionally, since search engines (bots) can’t fill out forms like a human can, you will lose a little SEO power.
Our Recommendation
Ultimately, our recommendation is “it depends.” Both gated and ungated content should play a role in any strong marketing strategy. Your decision to gate content or leave ungated needs to be rooted in your goals. Is your goal to:
generate leads and contact lists?
share denser content like ebooks, white papers, templates, webinars, or playbooks?
If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, we recommend gating said content.
On the other hand, is your goal to:
increase brand awareness?
improve website traffic?
share simpler content like blogs, images, infographics, or quick videos?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, we recommend leaving ungated. These are not hard and fast rules but generally speaking are reliable rules of thumb when deciding whether to gate your content.
Gating Best Practices
If you’ve decided to gate your content, there are best practices to keep in mind in order to do this well. Try a few of the tips below to enhance your gated content effectiveness.
Create a strong landing page (the page with the form) that includes a summary or teaser view. By giving your audience a small peek into what they’re getting, they may be more inclined to pull the trigger and give you their contact information. This is also a bit of a workaround to allow for some search engine optimization.
Align the value of the content with your audience’s “information currency.” Consider how many fields of information an audience member will be willing to share based on the content. Is it worth three fields or twenty? Be judicious.
Design gated content for each stage of the buyer journey. For example, at the awareness stage, a customer will likely access an ebook to learn more about your company. You’ll want to have a gated product demo or something similar for customers who are in the consideration or decision stage.
Check out the competition. Identify your competitors and identify what content they are gating and leaving ungated. This is helpful guidance for you as you navigate these decisions.
Need some support leveling up your marketing strategy? Ed2Market is your partner in ensuring your marketing efforts are a success. Our expertise is in marketing education products and services that impact teaching and learning. Connect with us today!