Few B2B marketing topics lead to swords being drawn faster than gated content. Marketers
want those email addresses. Content people want their stuff out in the open. Who should you
listen to? Well, first let's do some digging into the effects of content gating.
Gated Content Is a Tradeoff
Gated content is a type of
lead magnet where a
prospective reader or viewer gives contact
details in exchange for access to a piece of
content,
ideally something they value.
In content marketing
terms, gated content is a
lead-gen (i.e., bottom of the funnel) tactic that
basically works by trading some of the
awareness an
otherwise ungated piece of content would
create in exchange for leads.
And since the end goal of B2B
content marketing is
usually leads, this can be a fair trade, in theory. But in practice there's some irritating
fine print to consider.
The Awareness Loss With Gated Content Can Be Big
It's hard to know exactly how much awareness you sacrifice through gating, but there's
data
suggesting it could be in the 50-70% range. That's a big penalty, considering that
90%
of bids are won by vendors the buyer was already aware of before the buyer's journey
began.
However, this loss will be less painful to some businesses, and in some instances,
than others (I'll circle back to this point in a minute).
Your Lead Generation Might Not Be All It Seems
Assuming your marketing and salespeople are at least remotely competent, not only are you
sacrificing awareness when you choose to gate, you're also sacrificing the leads that lost
awareness would have eventually led to.
Of course, those leads would have reached you later than the leads you get from gating,
perhaps years later, so there's a time factor to consider.
And of course, some of those leads aren't really sacrificed so much as delayed, as some will
eventually be reached and netted by future marketing efforts.
Lead Quality Might Suffer With Gated Content
When you choose to gate, you force at least some of your prospects into giving their contact
details at an earlier point than they would be otherwise inclined to. This will have two
effects on the resulting lead-gen.
One, some of your leads will be false alarms for Seymour Butts at seymour@butts.com. And two,
some leads will be prospects who either aren't on the buyer's journey yet (only
5% are
at any one time) or are on the buyer's journey but they're not ready to talk to you (buyers are
ready to talk when the journey is about
70%
completed), which could mean a lot of your subsequent
sales efforts will have little to show for them.
How's Your Marketing Data?
Some good news is that if your content marketing operations are fairly mature and consistent,
and you have lengthy and accurate data regarding your marketing funnel and past content
marketing activities, and access to knowledgeable people to interpret it, you can make reasonable
estimates of the lead-gen benefits and awareness tradeoffs of gated content.
This is especially true if you know what percentage of your awareness content readers
eventually become leads. But there's still more to consider.
Some Businesses Need Awareness More Than Others
If you're a market leader, the awareness you give up through gating won't hurt you as much as it
would a
non-leader, because leaders get plenty of
attention from other sources.
And if you're addressing a close-knit ABM type of industry where everyone knows each other, the
awareness penalty also won't hurt as much, even though the act of gating itself may be questionable
since you already know who all your customers are (with factors like turnover and reachability via
other channels relevant here).
Some Need Gated Content Data More Than Others
Email addresses aren't all that's generated by gated content. You get a variety of other information
about your prospects (assuming they're telling the truth) even if they don't eventually pan out
as leads. Such information can tell you whether your paid targeting is accurate, for instance,
or whether your value propositions are actually proving valuable to the target audiences.
Does the Topic Reveal Intent?
As previously stated, leads for prospects not on the buyer's journey, or not close to starting
the buyer's journey, probably won't be as immediately useful to you (and they may be scared off
if you press them with aggressive sales tactics).
But if you sell data center solutions and the title of your content piece is "How to Select a Data
Center Solution Vendor," you can reasonably assume that a fair number of the people choosing to
give you their contact details in order to read this are either on the buyer's journey already or
close (making the leads you win now through gating more immediately useful).
Does the Content Have Authority?
Marketing content must offer something the audience considers valuable, and gated content more so.
A good way to create that perceived value is to have a third-party consultancy create the content
(and have their name on it), and not just purely for the prestige of the name, but also for the
perceived neutrality of a third party.
And if you don't have it, there's another question you must ask before gating.
Does Your Brand Have Authority?
Are you considered a market leader, or even a noteworthy market rebel? Does what you say matter in
your industry? Are your opinions respected? If the answer is no to these questions, think twice
before gating content that doesn't have a consultancy's name on it, no matter how much you paid for
it, or how valuable you think it is.
Because getting that content in front of as many eyeballs as possible could be something that
drives a shift in the perception of your brand from also-ran to worthy of attention.
In other words, not gating your content might be what shifts those answers from no to yes. Or
perhaps getting more leads (and more resulting sales) now could be what drives that shift instead.
Only you can know (or make a reasonable guess) which is more likely.
How Broad Is the Audience?
If the potential audience for a piece of content is huge (i.e., "How AI Will Transform the Business
World"), the awareness cost of gating could also be huge. But the smaller an audience gets, the
lower its awareness ceiling.
And if a topic is very niche (i.e., "The Oil & Gas CMO's Guide to AI"), gating runs the risk of
practically nobody reading the content at all, which is something you don't want considering the
resources that tend to go into gated content. Thus, content for a mid-sized audience (i.e., "How
AI Will Transform the Oil & Gas Industry") might be a good gating candidate, or it might
not.
Frustrating, Isn't It?
I haven't really cleared up when to gate or not gate, but I'm afraid that's kind of the point.
There's a whole mess of variables to consider, and only you can know how they translate in real
life.
However, I can tell you a few things. If you want to move the needle in your industry with a piece of
content, don't gate it. If you really want to make some money now, gate it.
But don't just gate content willy-nilly. Gate the topics most likely to attract prospects already
on the buyer's journey, or who just need a little nudge to get started. Gate beyond that, and you
risk stealing from the future to inflate the present, endangering your business's long-term health for
short-term gains.
One Other Thing....
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the word "
consideration" yet, and therefore you might
be wondering whether gating consideration content is a good idea. Well, my answer is there are a
few instances where gating consideration content might be a good idea, but they're rare.
In fact they're so rare that I didn't feel the need to mention a consideration tradeoff earlier when
I brought up the awareness tradeoff with gated content.
Consideration content discusses your products and their features, a category of your products and
its features, or your advantages as a vendor more generally. The only category I see gated content
even possibly falling into is content that discusses a category of your products but doesn't mention
your products specifically (i.e., "Why Projectors Are Better Than Monitors for
Enterprises").
And even in this instance, I wouldn't gate indiscriminantly. I would only consider gating as part
of an outbound campaign (email or paid social) sent out to people who might be thinking about a
monitor purchase.
I wouldn't gate this if it were just sitting on your website waiting to be found organically. The
SEO loss could be big if you gate this way, and I wouldn't want to annoy someone already sniffing
around on your website. That's a good way to drive them to a competitor.
Good hunting.
