What are the best practices for creating and promoting gated content in B2B content marketing?

Gated content is indeed a powerful tool for both lead generation and establishing brand authority. The succesful gated content campaign needs three things: - clear goals (you need to ask "why?" as much as possible and truly understand what you're after - is it brand positioning, thought leadership, or nurturing leads?) - audience segmentation (b2b audiences are not monolithic - distinguish between C-suite execs, managers, and technicians; each has distinct needs and content preferences) - constant optimizations and fast iterations (identify the metrics that matter, track them strictly, and adjust your campaign accordingly).

At the crux of B2B content marketing is a simple yet potent principle - 'Give, Give, Give, Ask'. Before you place that sign-up form on your resource, ensure you’ve given enough value to warrant a fair ask. Remember, behind every B2B decision is a human with goals—be it elevating their business or earning brownie points with the boss.

Creating and promoting gated content in B2B content marketing requires strategic planning and execution. Start by crafting high-quality, relevant content that offers valuable insights or solutions. Clearly communicate the content's benefits to entice potential leads. Use compelling headlines and engaging visuals. Ensure your landing page is user-friendly, with a concise form to capture contact information. Implement A/B testing to optimize conversion rates. Promote your gated content through various channels like email, social media, and webinars, targeting the right audience segments. Nurture leads with personalized follow-ups, offering additional value. Finally, analyze data and adjust your strategy to continually improve results.

Gated content's success depends predominantly on its ability to resonate and deliver actionable insights to its audience. How do you ensure that your content ticks these boxes? Start with understanding. Dive deep into your buyer personas. What are their pain points? What drives their decision-making? What are the things they "say" yes to? Your content should give the answer to these question. However, relevance isn’t just about content; it's also about presentation. Well-researched insights lose their sheen if they're not well-articulated. Prioritize content quality in terms of writing, design, and overall presentation. Data and feedback serve as your compass.

In B2B content marketing, optimizing your landing page forms is paramount. Through (lots of) testing, I've found that shorter forms, which gather essential information without overwhelming your audience, can significantly boost conversion rates. It's all about finding the right balance between data collection and user experience.

Don't gate your content. If I gated my content, I would never be where I am today. Here's ONE example. Back in the day, I wrote a post that went viral and was the most popular story on Medium at the time. I had no followers or subscribers, yet Business Insider and Inc reached out amongst a million others. Not only did I gain invaluable brand awareness from this one post but I also gained invaluable contacts. I went from being a nobody to an "expert" everyone was emailing, begging for a paid course on her post. The irony is I launched the same post as a GATED ebook with the same exact headline BEFORE the post. I got 2 subscribers — one of whom was a former professor -- from the landing page. From the UNGATED post, I scored ~1,000.

This might not be popular here, but: consider just giving your content away. The game is changing. With how SEO is shifting in the AI age, your site is the place people go when they're ready to weigh options/make a decision--NOT to learn. So give your content away to earn brand reputation. If it's good, and helpful, your prospects will find their way back to you.

Gating content can be a powerful tool for driving conversion. However, the most critical thing I have learned about this approach is to make sure you know where the key to the gate is. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to stick your arm through the gate and jimmy the lock from the outside in as you try to recall where you placed the key.