B2B content: To gate or not to gate?
Content is essential to inform and educate B2B buyers. But in the era of self-service sales, should you gate content or not?
The trend is now firmly moving away from gated content to ungated content, but there is still a place for both – when done right.
You've most likely heard this debate. It's rife on LinkedIn. So let's settle the score on whether gated content is right… Starting with a quick intro 👇
🧐 Pssst. If you've landed on this blog post, you likely know why content is key to building full and sustained sales pipelines. But, if you're new to it, check out this blog: What is demand generation content? And how to write it.
What is gated content?
Gated content is when you require buyers to fill out a form with contact details, like an email address, before they can access the content. It’s a traditional approach typically associated with certain types of content: eBooks, reports, and white papers. On the other hand, ungated content is content people can freely access – with no forms, no hoops to jump through, and no friction in the buyer journey.
Why gating B2B content is a hot topic
This practice has been used in marketing for years. In fact, it underpinned our marketing strategies when we were Heads of Marketing.
So, why the big debate now? What has changed?
Basically, bad practices have put people off filling in their contact details and sharing their email addresses. They don't want to feel sold to – or a phone call straight away from sales. Plus, today, buyers are much more careful with who they trust to share their data with.
Our verdict? Gating content isn't a major no-no. It can still work. BUT, there's a time and a place. The content needs to be exceptionally valuable and you've got to use the contact data considerately.
Consider this stat: According to content marketing expert David Scott, ungated content is downloaded 20 to 50 times more often than gated content. Based on this fact, he makes his own content freely available and ungated and suggests that marketers either follow suit or at least reduce the number of fields in the forms presented to users.
Let's delve into this a little more…
Weighing up gated content vs ungated content in B2B marketing
We'll now lay out the pros and cons of both approaches so you can assess whether this approach is right. You could even run through this for each piece of content.
Gated content 🔐
Essentially, it's a way to capture contact details. Here's why this was popular for decades…
Pros:
Use contact details for lead nurturing
Show the board the value/impact of content (e.g a senior leader from a top brand)
Know who is downloading content (check targeting)
Assess the value of the channel promoting the content
It's easy to see why you'd want to gate content and why businesses don't want to let go of this approach. But, it…
Cons:
Reduces the likelihood of your ideal customers ever seeing the content, because they don't want to input their contact details (big turn-off)
Adds an extra/clunky step and friction into the customer journey
Prevents SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) because search bots can’t crawl the content as easily
Directs potential customers to competitors who may not gate content
Here's one example of when gating is effective and successful.
Best example use case: A meaty research report is perfect. It likely cost you a nice chunk of your budget (c.£10k) to create. And original data is a hot and rare property in content marketing. So, this content performs really well (we've seen thousands download research papers). People are just willing to share their contact details to receive such valuable content that they likely can't find elsewhere. It's a win-win for both sides – a mutual value exchange.
Not gating content 🤸♀️
This is when you drop the form. You let people instantly access your product sheets, white papers, guides, and eBooks.
Pros:
It's easy access - no additional steps - so more likely to get downloaded
You will get far more people reading it (if this was your main goal, it's a no-brainer)
It’s easier to repurpose in your target audience’s feed (their preferred medium) – and repurposed for social posts, flipbooks, and more
Your buyers can share it with peers more easily
Reduces web page bounce rates
There are lots of additional benefits that spin-off of this last one. To name a few, if people read your content, you've:
Demonstrated your knowledge and expertise
Contributed to helping solve the audience's problem with your tips and tricks (they'll remember you for that)
Nurtured them just that bit closer to a sale – particularly if they like what they've seen and explored other content or signed up for a newsletter or follow you on LinkedIn
Cons:
It’s harder to know who has downloaded your contact
This also means you can't follow-up with a lead nurturing program and you can't report juicy contact details to the board.
Now, this, to me, is why there's hesitance to let go.
Marketing often battles to justify spend with KPIs and ROIs. And this is a major issue because it doesn't consider the end customer as number one. So many other things like customer journey and brand experience are sacrificed to deliver this.
What makes matters a million times worse is if the marketer would be expected (or pressured) to pass these contact details to sales teams for follow up 😬
That's one sure way to scare potential customers off because you lose trust and essentially burn the lead. But the business has revenue targets and sales have commission – so you can see here why there's another issue.
So what are the key B2B content marketing best practices you need to follow? Let’s take a look.
B2B content marketing best practice tips
Here are just a few tips…
💡 Boost SEO
We've seen large enterprise businesses gating product sheets, case studies, and blog posts. You don't want to be doing this. You lose SEO for one. And the associated traffic volumes (even before they hit a form).
💡 Ensure product info isn’t gated content
Product and sales collateral HAS TO be easily accessible. If someone is looking at this content, they're more likely to have high purchase intent. So you 100% don't want to add friction to this part of the customer journey.
💡 Still keen to nurture contacts?
Well, you can without gated content. You can encourage buyers to sign up for a newsletter. You can create a lead nurturing series in your social posts. Or you can create on-demand landing pages that guide potential customers through a campaign (and through the sales funnel… through the awareness stage, consideration stage and decision stage. Think of it as a self-service lead nurturing campaign so they can access it whenever/wherever they are in the buyer journey – instantly. No waiting a few days for another email.
Settling the debate: Gated content or ungated content?
To sum up, it’s not necessarily gating content that is the issue. It's more what you are making gated content and your actions afterward. If you send data straight to sales and they follow-up after just one content download, it can be a major red flag for trust and leaves an unpleasant feeling for the downloader. It’s just annoying.
Fundamentally, this is what it all boils down to. The B2B buyer has changed – they are data aware, they like to self-educate, self-serve, and want to speak to sales on their terms.
So, maybe now is the time to ditch the content strategy of 2015 and focus solely on the customer journey to win trust and sales.
It's about applying judgement. We're never saying don't gate content! Just consider if there is a true value exchange… and whether it's worth the gamble to you if they don't read it (like with product sheets).
Key takeaway? 🥡 Think mutual value exchange. Does the content benefit both sides and will it still get downloaded if it's gated content?
Looking for more resources? Check out these demand generation content marketing blogs:
Demand generation: Why B2Bs are using content marketing to boost growth in 2023
Content and the art of demand generation: The new B2B playbook
FAQs
What is gated content?
Gated content is when different types of content (blog posts, white papers and more) are hidden behind a form – prompting a customer or potential customer needing to fill in their email address to be able to download it.
What is ungated content?
Ungated content is a marketing strategy used to provide instant access to content. It means you won’t capture contact details or know who has downloaded your content. But, if the goal is for content to get read and add value to your audience, then it achieves so much in terms of brand awareness, nurturing and more.
Should I use gated content?
It depends. Is there a value exchange? Will the potential customer get a return on sharing their email address? Or will their details be sent straight to a sales team for a follow-up? Assess each piece of content to decide whether it adds friction to the customer journey and if it will cause higher bounce rates and create a bad impression.