Do buyers even like your gated content? Here's what the data says

B2B marketers love their gated content, their customers…not so much. Here’s what the data says:

According to research from InformaTech, 71% of B2B buyers are either often (23%) or sometimes (48%) disappointed in the value of B2B gated content. That’s a pretty meh response to everybody’s favorite lead generating tactic.?

B2B decision making buyers are constantly flooded with ebooks, whitepapers, thought leadership and research studies, and for the most part, they’re still downloading them. But once they get past the gate, they’re usually disappointed. The most common complaint from buyers (42%) was the content was “too general.”?

Beyond being disappointed, buyers start actively losing trust in the publishing brand when they see content with dated or often-repeated information (33%) or content that leads with a sales pitch (29%). And 22% really hate it when you call them right after they fill the download form. (That’s not a content problem, but who’s still calling people! Savages!)

If you’re looking at this data and nodding along, you’ve probably already figured out that you need to make your content less general, more detailed, more helpful, less salesy. And here are a few more stats on what buyers really love to read:

There’s a common theme running through these trust-building tactics. It’s a mindset I like to call “Content as Currency” and it’s a great way to evaluate the quality of your gated content.?

Put simply, currency is valuable, and scarce. That’s why you can use it to buy things you need, which in this case is the customer’s attention and consideration. For content to be currency, it has to give the reader information they don’t already have (valuable) and can’t easily get from somewhere else (scarce). It pays then, to invest in proprietary research, interviews, case studies, and how-to-win guides that aren’t simply “buy my product and you’ll win.”

These things are resource intensive, and you can’t put them out as often as you’d like. But in a landscape where everyone’s going to be using the same AI to put out the same content based on the same information, you’ve got to give up currency to get it.