Gated Content vs Non Gated Content

Before we start the discussion, I’d like to clarify the two terms:

Gated content refers to content locked “behind a paywall” or barrier, i.e., it can only be accessed if personal information, such as one’s e-mail address, is given beforehand. White papers, e-books, webinars, and online courses are prominent representatives of this strategy.

Ungated content, on the other hand, is freely accessible and can be consumed without any registration. Blog articles & infographics, but also videos, are typically distributed “unrestricted.”

Now let’s look at the respective advantages and disadvantages of these two B2B content marketing approaches.

• Qualified leads: Especially in inbound B2B Marketing, gated content is used to generate qualified leads. This allows you to collect a lot of valuable contact information, which allows you to understand the target group even better and address them in a targeted manner.

• Better tracking: If users must identify themselves at the various touchpoints, it’s also easier to track their interactions and the success of the shared content. If you need to deliver a certain number of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) per month, there’s no possibility of not identifying your users.

• Targeted follow-up activities: Anyone who has collected a lot of data by gating content can respond more precisely to the (supposed?) needs of the respective target groups and develop tailored marketing campaigns (we like to call this “nurturing”) or initiate concrete sales activities.

• Higher reach: The fewer access barriers there are, the wider the audience that can be reached. That’s what makes viral content distribution possible in the first place.

• Positive user experience: Many users find it pleasant when they are given free access to valuable content. There is a high chance that this positive experience will also transfer to the lower levels of the sales funnel and that users will “knock” on the company’s door of their own accord when the time is ripe for the purchase decision.

• Ranking in search engines: Freely accessible content is also more easily indexed by search engines and can thus improve the organic ranking of the website hosting the content – and thus also generate more traffic.

It can be seen at first glance: the advantages of one strategy correspond simultaneously to the disadvantages of the other. So, we must clarify which measure is more promising in the respective case.

At Canon, we have been using a marketing automation solution in the B2B environment for over 5 years now (read more here). The software provider recommends generating as many leads as possible: ideally via gated content – which “in the world of marketing is as good as cold, hard cash”.

Obviously, the more data I collect, the more informed the decision I can make based on that information. The following chart shows what information is requested.

Our central DLG team (Demand-Lead-Generation) therefore explicitly recommends the use of so-called “Progressive Forms”, where we learn a bit more about our visitors with each interaction: because already known data fields (like an address) are replaced by others (such as industry, company size, phone number, etc.) with each new.

This way, the forms remain reasonably compact, but you keep learning. And yes, this is also quite practical from the user’s perspective.

However, the fundamental dilemma remains:

As a B2B Marketing decision maker of an international corporation – hence a possibly attractive “target” – it has happened more than often to me that I was contacted almost immediately after such a download to “specify my needs”. Heck, I might not have even read the whitepaper yet.

I understand that AQLs (Automation Qualified Leads) should become MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SALs (Sales Accepted Leads) promptly (find definitions here), but that doesn’t mean you have to escalate every e-book download directly to Sales as a “hot lead” right away – most often you’re wasting time.

Especially if the marketing department is evaluated by the number of MQLs per period, this can quickly become problematic. I’ve proof from within my organization: such an automatic action won’t lead to the desired success but only to frustration on all sides… for marketing, sales, and your customers!

We recognized this very soon and switched to mutual (sales) targets for the marketing department as well:

Undeniably, gated content helps generate “qualified” leads by prompting visitors to share their contact information (and sometimes even more).

Of course, it would be good if the content offered is of such high quality that interested parties are willing to pay for it with information such as their e-mail address or job title.

This has worked very well in the past (in 2014, 80% of all content required registration), for example, to build up email lists for newsletters and to initiate targeted follow-up measures. Following the Amazon example: customers who have bought/downloaded this are also often interested in…

However, we are finding that the more (average) content is available on a topic, and the earlier in the buying cycle, the more difficult it is to get data for it. ChatGPT (1.8 billion hits in April 2023) and the like will cause a veritable content explosion – Gartner expects that by 2025 around 30 percent of marketing messages from large companies will be generated synthetically (last year, it was less than two percent).

We experienced this first-hand: fewer and fewer prospects want to be contacted via outreach strategy! Not at all via phone (the calls-to-meeting ratio is getting worse every quarter), but not via e-mail either. Today, users have become more self-determined; they specify when and how they want to contact a company – and when not. The number of invalid entries in marketing automation systems is a clear indicator.

I’d like to confess: in the past, also I “registered” downloads and the like via fake e-mail addresses like no.spam@mail.pls… they just needed to look like one. That did the job for quite some time – until e-mail validation via double opt-in procedure was introduced.

So, it’s no wonder that tools such as “10-Minutes-Mail” popped up like mushrooms. These e-mail services can be used to undermine a double opt-in process because they make it possible to use a temporary disposable address for both: registration and the subsequent confirmation e-mail. Follow-up activities, so-called nurture emails, then literally end up in nirvana. Clever but annoying!

To counteract this, some organizations reacted by excluding certain domains often used for private purposes (e.g. @gmx.com). Again, tedious for both parties and expensive for the company if you rely on real-time validation solutions.

Wouldn’t it be better if users contacted you willingly because they were interested in purchasing? In inbound B2B Marketing, we refer to this as a “hand raiser” – someone who literally “raises their hand” to indicate that they want to contact a salesperson.

So, if Ungated Content is reasonably valuable, wouldn’t that be enough to initiate business in the first place?

In our CRM, only contact forms trigger an immediate follow-up activity on the sales side. All other digital activities are still recorded, but they don’t trigger a lead process.

The quick answer: nope, not entirely!

Yes, ungated content has its advantages: especially in terms of reaching a wider audience and improving brand awareness at the top of the funnel.

But that’s not always enough to initiate (new) business.

This could cause many potential leads to be missed. Especially those where the “pain” was not yet great enough. Missed opportunity, anyone?

The decision on which assets should be gated and which ones ungated depends on your marketing objectives, the type of content, and your target audience.