Should You Use Gated Content Marketing... or go Ungated?
It is a hotly debatable subject. Demand generation focused marketers will argue that the only way to capture leads, and fill the sales funnel is to use gated content marketing techniques. Branding oriented digital marketers will veer toward ungated content arguing that it is all about driving maximum visibility to the buying market. Yet the truth lies between these two polar ends. Instead of thinking 'either - or', think of using both options where they make sense. There is a place and need for both gated and ungated content in every marketing mix.
Needing Qualified Leads
Inbound marketing is a powerful tool that every modern B2B company needs to use. Inbound is all about being find-able digitally, and providing value to your prospective clients. Our first thoughts are that inbound is focused on rock solid SEO (search engine optimization), and creating useful blog posts that customers find engaging. While this is true, inbound provides value through other means as well. And, an important element of it is the lead generation part of the equation. If somehow you don't generate demand as a marketer - then eventually your company will fail, or the value of your role will quickly come into question. Neither option is favorable.
An exceptional blog post that offers varied examples of gated and ungated content landing pages, is a post by Instapage. Of course, landing pages are key to marketing and distributing the content, while capturing a prospect's personal information (like a person's email address), for the lead generation campaign. In the post Instapage defines the reason for gating content being to,
"build brand awareness and develop trust with prospects. As prospects become more familiar with your brand through ungated content, they will be more likely to give you their contact information, fill out a form, or request a demo at a later date." (What is gate Content, Instapage)
Ungated Content
Instapage makes a strong case for ungated material. Build trust, confidence in the brand, and credibility in your offering - through ungated information. In this light, Mark Schaefer also builds an argument against gated content in the his post. Schaefer states that, "the economic value of content marketing is not in the content, it is in the transmission of the content." From this perspective he argues that the type of content from which prospects benefit, is that which is freely and openly available without barriers. Schaefer builds his case showing that being able to access information freely means far more buyers will see the brand, to start the trust building exercise.
No argument here, ungated content does provide much greater exposure potential. In this regard, ungated material can be a more powerful tool in the branding toolkit, than gated content. Using this angle, I suggest that
Content marketing's value does not come from the content itself. Rather, value comes from the practical application and use of the information, concepts, or guidance provided by that material.
It is a valid case that if content is never found, then it has no practical value. It will remain as good material retaining untapped potential. However, in any business environment untapped potential is NOT useful. As such, ungated content meant to draw attention, awareness, and grow credibility - is an important element of the marketing mix.
Why use Gated Content?
Two useful statistics from Scoop.IT provide evidence pointing to the fact that gated content marketing isn't dead.
- 91% of B2B companies use content marketing to find new customers
- 80% of B2B content marketing assets are gated (require registration to access)
Whether these marketers are using case studies, white papers, research, or product demos to entice prospects to speak with them, they are using gates to capture the prospect's information. Gates being the forms used to collect user information before providing the material - which builds the email lists as a demand generation first step. So it isn't a lost cause, nor is it an old marketing tactic. In fact, if it weren't working, then lead capture gating would not be such a heavily used technique in B2B.
Avoid the Error of Unguided Ungating
After successfully helping sell a small organization to a much larger enterprise, the very question about gating came up. The gated content marketing approach had served the smaller company exceptionally well. The marketing automation engine captured leads, fed them to the SDR team (sales development representative), and the contact was then part of the email marketing efforts (with the prospect's permission, of course). The small company did so well with this strategy, that almost 100% of its sales were inbound sourced, resulting from the gated content strategy.
However, the CMO of the larger organization had read an article about how 'ungated content' was the latest new trend in marketing approaches. So, she opened (ungated) all the content pages, making all the material freely available with no strings attached.
While this provided a short term increase in web traffic, it had immediately and completely stalled the lead generation engine. Without a sound approach, the content was provided to any reader, without thinking through how to connect potential buyers to the sales team. Now, there was no way to reconnect with the prospect, after they had taken the material away. Within the quarter, the source of several hundred leads per quarter became zero. From 100% inbound sourced opportunities, the company reverted to 100% outbound hunting.
The moral of the story being that ungating content must be done with forethought, with thought given to the demand generation approach.
Blended Gates
What is the solution? The demand generation marketer needs leads, and needs to fill the sales pipeline. Unlike the CMO of the real story above, this suggests gating at least some of your more valuable content. Yet, there is also a case for ungating other B2B material. In this case - do both!
Part of the marketing mix strategy is to work out what content to provide freely to bring awareness to your organization, and what part should be gated to help capture prospect leads. Instapage suggest asking three questions to determine whether to gate or not to gate:
- What is your objective growing brand awareness, or generating leads?
- Are your competitors already offering similar content ungated?
- Does your content provide sufficient value to be gated?
The answer to these questions will help guide whether you gate or don't gate your material. Although the first two questions are fairly straight-forward, the third does provide room for debate. Before answering the question, put yourself in your customers shoes. Most people get upset at providing substantial personal information, only to receive 'light' content that did not substantially help or educate them.
My findings with B2B buyers has been that lighter pieces (typically 1-6 pages) are often not something that people are willing to provide their personal details to receive. Or, if they do they are often not pleased by the perceive light nature of the material. Right or wrong, there is a perception that a heftier (often based on number of pages) guide or white paper is worth the exchange of information. Although page length is not a good proxy for the value or quality of the content - it conveys the point.
Options: to Gate or Not to Gate
To the right is a chart with a list of various content types. Many elements are best left ungated, or can be used to draw in awareness. Use the 'open' items to move up in the Google/Bing SERP ranks, bringing traffic to your site. Naturally, with that traffic you should find an increased number of prospects interested in your offering.
Open materials are used to draw in traffic, and to build trust and credibility in your brand as an authority in your particular field. Then use the 'gated' category below to cater to your demand generation side. After building some level of trust with the prospect in the ungated categories, it will be more likely that they will share their personal information to obtain the gated content. In other words, the prospects think that the information you provide in a white paper is interesting to them, and worth an exchange for their personal contact details.
Items that need consideration are a few identified as 'both'. Datasheets are often a point of contention. Nobody wants their company secrets to be handed easily to the competitor. In this case, compromise. Datasheets for the 'latest and greatest' developments may be kept gated - to make it more challenging for the competitors to download. But, don't delude yourself ... competitors will get these if they are interested and determined enough to do so.
Gated Content or Ungated?
Balanced marketers will not tie their strategies and tactics to either polar end of this spectrum. Rather, be selective of what content you decide to ungate - to draw attention, build trust, and increase your brand exposure. Then remember your need to keep the demand generation engines running, too. Gate the particularly valuable content that prospective customers are likely to find useful. Balancing your gated content marketing and ungated approach is your best bet for success with your B2B marketing.