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The issue

Many content marketers, especially those with editorial backgrounds*, yearn to create content simply to tell good stories. Even if you’re lucky enough that content’s sole responsibility is for brand building, there’s always more you could be doing to boost awareness, increase affinity, etc. The reality is, content serves a larger purpose at any organization.

Does this tension exist at your organization? Grab your popcorn and settle in.

*I come from both an editorial and full-stack marketing background, so don’t grab your pitchforks just yet.

Why gate content at all?

What is gated content? It’s any piece of content that requires the reader/viewer/listener to offer up personal data, typically by filling out a form, in exchange for the content. Types of commonly gated content include: Articles, eBooks, videos, white papers, research reports, event replays, and more.

This tactic is commonly used in organizations that have lead generation or lead volume as a key metric for their marketing teams. It’s especially popular in B2B SaaS or professional services, but we see it in every market and every industry.

When you’re incentivized to increase the number of inbound leads that come in, it’s easy to see why marketers lean toward putting content behind a form wall.

The cons of gating content

The benefit of lead capture is enticing, but gating content can create unforeseen issues. Here are a few examples.

You limit consumption of your content

…and building audience is the number one reason for creating content in the first place. We want as many people (the right people) as possible to read, watch, or listen to our content, and adding a form creates friction. How much of your target audience made it to the form and decided, “No thanks. I don’t want to share my information.”?

You generate leads with low intent to purchase

Depending on where your gated content fits into your funnel, it’s highly unlikely that your lead is ready to buy. It’s much more likely that your content fits into an awareness or information gathering stage.

I know what you’re going to say. “This doesn’t apply to us! We nurture the leads to discover true intent before we send them to our sales team.”

Kudos to you, but the other limiting factors still apply. Typically, leads captured through a gated content form are dumped into an MQL list (or worse, thrown over the wall to sales as a “warm” lead) and subsequently bombarded with “sell” messaging or other intrusive marketing, even when it’s their first touch with your brand. Talk about a bad experience.

And chances are, you’re not getting a clean list. Many content consumers type in bogus email addresses (asdfasdfasd@asdfdas.com, anyone?) or use browser tools/extensions that are designed to input temporary email addresses so that their actual contact information isn’t shared. They’re tired of being sold to when they’re simply not ready to buy.

You can hurt your SEO efforts

A lot of gated content is in a downloadable format (such as a PDF) or hidden/unlisted. It’s a two-fold problem: Search engines don’t crawl these formats well and the content is not created in a way that optimizes them for search.

Further, gating content prevents other sites from backlinking to yours, and backlinking is a key component to improving ranking.

SEO is an ever-evolving discipline, and marketers are unfortunately beholden to the whims of Google and other search engines. Are you hiding your best content and putting your site farther behind?

The pros of gating content

Is gating content wrong? The short answer is no.

There are some good reasons to gate content. Here are a few:

• You created an extremely high value asset (e.g. a detailed report using proprietary data).
• You need segmentation data. For example, you might be running a test campaign to expand your target market and leveraging the gated content.
• You’re killing it on brand awareness, meeting or exceeding your traffic goals, and connecting content to business outcomes, so you have room to worry less about negatively impacting your data and customer experience.

But (and there is a but…), gates should be used judiciously and with purpose. Gating content is asking a person to “pay” for your content with their data. The gated content should be an equal or better value exchange for a person’s data.

Convincing the unconvinced

The number one obstacle when deciding to gate less content is other stakeholders. What are some points to bring to the table to get buy-in for your strategy?

Improving outcomes for the sales team

When you suggest to gate less content, you’re improving the quality of leads that come in. As I mentioned, bombarding new leads immediately—when they either aren’t familiar with your brand or aren’t ready to buy—results in a poor first impression, high unsubscribe rates, and a lot of low quality or low-intent contacts in your database.

This creates the perception that content isn’t valuable to people who care about the budget and hold the purse strings (re: leadership), but it also causes a trickle-down effect to sales, wasting their time with leads who simply aren’t ready to engage.

Ungated content ushers the audience through a frictionless buying journey so that, when they arrive at gated content, it has more value and the viewer is truly ready for your sales team to reach out. You’ve made the sales team’s job easier, and you’re improving close/win rates attributed to the marketing team.

Why it works: When a change in content strategy results in positive changes for other parts of the org, leadership and other stakeholders will value it more.

And bonus: It can drive real demand gen strategy for orgs that are conflating it with lead gen.

Long game vs short game

To put it plainly, gating content keeps your team (and the larger org) focused on short-term wins that don’t contribute to long-term progress. Metrics often associated with a gated content strategy include:

• Lead volume
• Traffic
• MQLs and/or SQLs

These metrics prioritize quantity over quality—resulting in a lot of unqualified leads—and measure you against goals that may be flawed from the beginning (e.g. gated content inherently encourages less traffic because it’s behind a wall). At the end of the day, you don’t want to be caught on the MQL hamster wheel.

In contrast, when you focus on the long game, you’re building brand and creating demand for your target market, across the entire buyer’s journey.

Content is used first to create demand in awareness channels. By doing so, you’re proactively getting in front of your audience before they need you so that when they are ready to buy, you’re top of mind. You can then use product- or solution-oriented content to push them along toward conversion. And, of course, content plays key roles later in the cycle and post-sale.

In the long game, you need more ungated content so that your content is easily consumable and shareable, earning greater reach that increases awareness and positive sentiment about your brand.

Metrics often associated with an ungated or less-gated content strategy include:

• Time spent on content
• Completion rate/scroll depth
• Most involved content item
• Content sentiment

Finally, shifting to a long game strategy ensures you’re keeping org-wide business outcomes in mind.

Why it works: This is a proactive approach to connecting content to business outcomes, and leadership will like that you can prove content’s value at your org. Most stakeholders can agree that focusing on the wrong metrics is shortsighted and leads you into an endless cycle of unqualified leads and low win/close rates.

Undisruptive lead capture techniques

It’s likely that you’ll still be responsible for some amount of lead gen. So, won’t ungating content keep you from reaching your goals? Here are some ideas that will help bridge the gap.

Get clever with CTAs

Most readers won’t mind a CTA in the middle of an article or a small product plug in a podcast, if the rest of the content is educational; it’s easy to skip 30 seconds or scroll on by. But if your CTA is really compelling or the audience is ready to buy, they know where to go and you capture the lead.

Explore a freemium model

Just as software or app developers offer “lite” versions of their product, consider an ungated version of your content. Pick an irresistible section or snippet to ungate. Once they’re hooked, the audience will exchange their information to read, watch, or listen to the rest. With this freemium approach, however, the key is to make the ungated portion truly valuable and informative for your audience so that they want to engage further.

Remove friction with native social applications

If you have to gate content and are putting money behind it on social channels, explore the ad options available. Some, like LinkedIn, offer lead gen forms that pre-populate personal data in the native interface and sync to your CRM, so the process is as smooth as possible for your audience.

Create a kick-ass newsletter

Follow up your awesome content with an equally enticing newsletter. If you’re creating killer ungated content, it’s likely your audience will be interested in hearing from you regularly in their inbox, giving them a reason to opt in with their data. You can even offer subscriber-only content to sweeten the deal.

It’s ungated. Now what?

You tore down the wall. So what’s next? Take the time to revisit your content strategy. Understand your company’s business outcomes and how content can positively contribute to moving the needle.

Are you trying to…

• Build audience in your target market? Create content that appeals to that demographic.
• Increase audience engagement? Double down on your most involved content pieces across your buyer’s journey and consider innovative content formats.
• Be seen as a thought leader in your space? Explore ways to lift your subject matter experts and increase awareness.

Gating content isn’t inherently wrong, but it’s a decision that should be used strategically and balanced with plenty of ungated content to create real demand for your business.

Where do you stand on the debate? What are your biggest roadblocks to ungating content?