Gated Content Questions & Answers
In an earlier article on whether to use gated or ungated content marketing, several questions emerged to help choose the right approach. Marketers want to avoid the example of the foolish CMO who blindly ungated all the lead generation content - resulting in an infuriated sales team. Ultimately, blindly ungating all content completely halted a well performing lead generation engine. Here, we delve deeper into three questions to discuss the appropriate content marketing strategy for your marketing mix.
Why use Content Marketing?
In the world of inbound marketing, enticing prospects to provide personal contact information (so they can become qualified leads), is done by offering premium content as a trade-off. Naturally, content marketing has many other benefits. CMI, the Content Marketing Institute's research (2020) found that marketer's stated their goals to be:
When these are the most significant goals, then there may be no question that the material and information are provided freely with no strings attached. But this decision must be made consciously, and strategically for your needs.
Full Ungating
Very large corporations like Salesforce have opted to go in this direction, providing all their content openly without gates. Salesforce found that for them, the education and continual brand awareness is key to driving additional sales. For smaller organizations without such an overwhelming brand recognition position, following this direction will not work for most.
For smaller brands, and companies demand generation is a very difficult endeavour. When you are a small, mid, or even large enterprise - but without dominant name recognition, hunting for opportunities is a continual pursuit. To this effect, having a blend of both gated and ungated content provides the inside sales teams prospects with whom to follow up, which are not purely cold-calls. Complete ungating for many of these companies means focusing on brand recognition growth. It also means having to rely exclusively on other demand generation mechanisms. In other words, one technique is removed from the equation.
(For a deeper discussion on DG read: Demand Generation: What Works - What Doesn't.)
Unto itself, this is NOT a solid reason to keep all your content gated. The important point here is that this has to be a strategically made decision that is taken VERY SERIOUSLY, and very carefully. The consequences are that it can seriously damage your new business generation capabilities, or slow them down - if the decision is taken at the wrong time.
How does it all work?
Beyond brand awareness, education, and credibility building; marketers most often use content marketing as a demand generation mechanism. The idea being that the organization provides useful information in exchange for the reader's personal information. Naturally, the organization develops premium content they believe to be interesting to their target market. Types of content include white papers, case studies, guides, datasheets, infographics, industry reports, briefs, brochures, blog posts, core research, benchmark studies, and so on.
Given that this material should be interesting to the marketer's target audience, the recipients are often willing to provide their email address and contact details in exchange for the tantalizing content. In this regard, marketing campaigns are created with landing pages describing the material, ready to capture the reader's information to compile a contact or email list. In effect, this is an entry point to creating the sales funnel.
Why use Gated Content at all?
In this case, the gate is on the landing page (typically). Here the material is described briefly, and a form requesting the reader's information - is available to be completed. The material is not provided unless the reader completes the form with their personal details, in exchange for the content. Hence the gate.
Scoop.IT points out that:
As such, it is a standard practice among marketers, and it works. But there are times and reasons when you should consider ungating certain content, instead. This leads to three questions for consideration.
What is your Objective?
Consider first, what you want to achieve. Most marketers are given the dual responsibility of driving demand generation, while also growing brand awareness. For your content marketing strategy, will you use it to build trust and presence (branding), or to grow your lead generation efforts?
Most marketers are given the dual responsibility of driving demand generation, while also growing brand awareness.
Most readers will realize that prioritizing one over the other will provide your answer. If presence and credibility building are the keys, then guide your content marketing toward primarily ungated content. Examples, include blog posts, brochures, pillar page details, videos, webinars, and bylines.
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On the other hand, if your primary focus is on demand generation, then focus your efforts on the traditionally gated content. Part of your content marketing strategy here will be to determine what information you need to request of your prospect. Generally, you will want to limit the amount of information you need from your reader. In most cases, too much information requested will merely put-off the reader, and you will miss a lead opportunity. It's a balancing act.
If you will gate your content, then investigate sound landing page practices, connecting the forms to your marketing automation engine (for lead capture), and conversion rate optimization (CRO). CRO specifically, is an entire science developed on how to create landing pages that maximize your lead capture capability.
What are the Competitors Doing?
No company exists in a vacuum. Whether direct or indirect, it is important to know how your counterparts are treating their content. Simply put, if the competitors are gating their premium content, then the answer is easy. Follow suit, and do the same. You will have a lead capture mechanism set up, and will start generating demand for your offering.
However, you may want to be disruptive, and vary the content that you offer freely without registration or personal information exchanged. This strategy may reduce some of your initial leads potential, but may increase readership, findability, and boost your brand enough to super-compensate.
If your competitors are offering ungated resources, then you be forced to mimic this tactic, to continue as a consideration
Finally, if your competitors are offering ungated resources, then you may find that you must mimic this tactic. If there is a substantial difference between your organization and the competition - you may still be able to zig when all the other zag. If your research is substantially better than the competitors for example, they might give theirs away, whereas you have reason to provide yours as the gated information exchange. Don't make a decision purely based on what the competitors are doing.
Is your Content Worth It?
Does your content provide enough value to be gated? In the previous article titled: Should you use Gated Content Marketing or Ungated? - I provided some personal observations from my experience in content marketing.
Content marketing is an excellent way to build your brand. Even if you are gating much of it, providing premium quality material, with information your customers find genuinely useful - is an important way to establish your brand credibility. Entice prospects to engage with your content to the extent that they are willing to provide their contact details. It means you need to provide substantial value in return.
If your brand and content are well known for providing what the market wants, then read no further, gate your content as you see fit. On the other hand, while building this reputation of trust, most people will perceive the value of the information based on their relevance, and usefulness to them (your target market).
From personal experience, lighter content pieces (1-2 pagers) were not generally well received as gated pieces. Very few people provided their contact details with the interest of downloading the item. Worse yet, would be to have this information exchanged, with the reader then feeling that it was NOT worth the exchange of their information for it. This WILL erode trust in your brand.
Marketers should focus gated assets as those that provide readers with a deep guide on 'how to do something' or provide information the reader will be able to use in their job (benchmarks, research, ROI calculations, new concepts, and so on). Ultimately, you want the reader to feel the material was worth reading, and worth providing their personal details in a fair exchange.
The Combination
At the end of the day most marketers are going to use both gated and ungated techniques for their content marketing. Use the chart to the left as a rule-of-thumb guide to consider, but make your own choices based on your unique organizational circumstances. Remember, the right answer on whether to gate or not, should be based on the balance of value you are providing to your prospective customer.
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3yWell written and with good examples. Very hands on. Keep up the good work 👏👏👏
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3yVery useful & informative article.Thanks for sharing.
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3yVery insighful article Charles. I enjoyed the analysis of the topic from multiple perspectives and the last figure summing up your recommendations for the different content types is something I will treasure.