How to effectively use gated content in B2B marketing

Gated content is one of the key pillars of many B2B marketing strategies. But is it as effective as it seems? Let’s explore the concept of gated content, its pros and cons, and evaluate its overall effectiveness in achieving marketing goals. When you understand the benefits and drawbacks of gated content, you can make better informed decisions when implementing this approach.?

What is gated content??

Gated content is a marketing strategy where access to premium or exclusive content is granted only after visitors provide their contact information. While most marketers would tell you it is only one-time access to a specific content piece – for lead generation – it can also be registration for permanent access to some assets. This technique is typically implemented through a web form – the gate, which can range from a simple email address request to a comprehensive registration form.? ?

Most popular content types locked behind a form include whitepapers, ebooks, checklists, infographics, or videos. But it can also have the shape of exclusive application demos, trials, software free versions, or online services accessed through portals and intranets. The key here is that visitors must value the content enough to be willing to provide their contact information to access it. At the same time, the organization must want the contact information so much that they sacrifice organic traffic and decide to lock the content.??

Why do we use gated content??

There are several reasons why we use gated content. Here are four examples that you may consider when developing your marketing strategy:?

Lead generation?

This is the most common reason for gating content and, for many digital marketers, the only one they imagine when speaking about it. For lead generation, marketers can create leads in a contact management system or a CRM by collecting email addresses and other visitor information.???

This data enables contact segmentation, lead scoring, persona profiling, and can serve as input for content personalization, marketing automation, or sales engagement. Along with email addresses, you might also want to collect information about visitors’ country, company, phone number, industry vertical, role, seniority level, interests, gender, age, and more. However, always keep in mind that the more information you request, the lower the conversion rate will be and the fewer leads you will collect.?

Contact enrichment?

Gated content can be used to augment contact information about visitors who have already provided their email addresses. You can encourage your visitors to share more by offering another exclusive gated content piece (ideally using smart forms that request only the missing information). This technique will enhance your understanding of your visitors.?

Registration and authentication?

In this case, membership and other organizations require visitors to register and become "members" to gain access once authenticated. Registrations may be approved automatically (based on predefined criteria, usually including email confirmation) or individually by a specific administrator to verify the genuineness of member candidates. Access can be limited to contractual business partners, members of early access programs, beta testers, specific community members, external contributors, editors, or analysts.??

Moreover, various user roles and access tiers can be applied to these groups (role-based access). This approach allows you to channel different content to different roles, which ensures content relevancy and enforces access permissions. On top of that, it also enables you to track the engagement of specific roles, companies, personas, gender, industry verticals, etc., thereby giving you a better understanding of your visitors and members.?

Employee portals?

Sometimes solutions like Microsoft SharePoint may be too extensive, and companies prefer to offer their employees a smoother and more effective communication channel. In such cases, employee portals are ideal. Employers can manage access to the content via access-control lists or role-based access rules, so different members have different access privileges and see relevant content.?

These are all popular reasons for locking certain content behind a form. But is it really effective???

Continue to our blog and learn how to turn gated content into a powerful tool that will shoot your result curve through the roof.?

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