?? Ending the gated vs ungated debate

Hey, Game Changer! ???

It's time to end the infamous content debate: to gate or not to gate.

Jonathan Gandolf and his team at The Juice (now AudiencePlus) recently created a report based on cold hard data and the state of gated vs. ungated content as a whole. Spoiler Alert – it's a balance of both.

[Watch the recording]

Here are the top 5 data points on whether you should gate or ungate your content:?

1. Ungated content takes the cake: When looking at overall content engagement, ungated content beats gated content by 26%. This boils down to 0.53 clicks/ ungated piece versus 0.42 clicks/ gated piece.?
2. Content you can gate: Toolkits/templates and virtual events are the top two content formats that still get above a 1% engagement rate when gated. That's because these formats are instantly actionable and/or naturally need more information to provide value (ie. sending a calendar invite for a webinar).?
3. The perfect balance: Successful brands gate less than 5% of their content. Meaning the brands that see the highest engagement rates still include gated content into their strategies. Yet, they ungate over 95% of their content to build trust and provide easily accessible insights to their audience.?
4. 3 evaluating factors: When building out your content strategy, define how you will add value to the reader's experience, include proprietary data, and target each funnel stage. These three elements will help you better understand what content should stay ungated to drive engagement while other pieces could be more valuable gated, to capture higher intent leads.
5. The 162 day content journey: It takes 162 days from first content touch point to closed opportunity. That's almost half a year! It's important to understand your own audience's journey to see where you should remove barriers and when you can ask them for a little more information – while still keeping them on the path to conversion.

"If your goal is conversion or lead generation, you should gate content. If your goal is just engagement and views, you should ungate it. We know that when all other things are created equal ungated content outperforms gated content by 26%" – Jonathan Gandolf

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[April 2nd] How to create data-driven content that drives pipeline Feat. Nivas Ravichandran , Head of Marketing at Spendflo

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See you next week!