Every marketer wants to have unique content that can help them grab eyeballs and make their audience come back for more. It is not easy to create content that can inspire the audience and motivate its sharing.
Exceptional content can propel you ahead and above your competitors and create a positive image for your brand. Every effort at content management has the core objectives of maximizing reach and boosting leads. This has led digital marketers and content management experts to debate whether they should gate their content or provide everyone easy and unrestricted access.
If you too are battling with this issue, we can help you find the answer here. But before that let’s find out what exactly is gated content.
Gated content, also known as locked content, is online content that offers restricted access to readers. Gated content can be in the form of blogs, articles, videos, presentations, white papers, etc. The creators of the content may request you to perform specific actions such as providing your email address or subscribing to their newsletter or providing personal information to give access to the entire content.
When it comes to modern-day content, it is always quality over quantity. High-quality content attracts better rankings. By offering a teaser and enticing readers with a gist of the content that promises to deliver information that will be of great value to them, you can achieve better engagement and wider reach. Make sure the pre-gated piece of content provides enough value so that visitors have no hesitation in sharing their treasured contact information.
Gated Content is a great way of offering something valuable to readers when they exchange their email addresses and contact details. They will view your content as premium stuff that not everyone has access to. Studies show that gated content strategy, when done properly, can increase email signups by a huge percentage can also generate impressive direct sales.
Gated content can have great marketing power but it also helps you attract leads from a specific segment depending on what topic the gated content is focused on. This data can be utilized to reach out to buyers from a specific category through tools such as email marketing. The end result can be a huge increase in revenue from that specific category.
Like all good things, gated content comes with a few cons. Not all types of content can be gated. You must know when to use this tool for boosting your marketing efforts. When done without applying proper thought, you might damage your lead generation prospects. You must have a clear picture of who your main audience is and what are their needs before creating your content. If your product is connected to something like this https://healthy-chews.com/super-snaxx-twists-cheese-bacon/ and your targeted audience is poultry farm businesses, the whole purpose of using gated content will be defeated.
The decision about gating or not gating the content must also be arrived at after taking into account their motivation for reaching out to your content and whether they will find it valuable enough to put a price on it by way of sharing their personal details.
Let’s assume you have some great content and you have decided to gate it because it’s unique, of exceptional value and the data/information you plan to share is not available elsewhere online. But have you given a thought to what you have to offer in the gated segment?
Your lead will subscribe to the gated content when your pre-gated content shows that they have some brilliantly informative information waiting for them ahead. Do you have that value in the gated part of the content or will it fall short of expectations? Make sure you do not disappoint your audience as it can have terrible consequences for your leads and revenue.
It is apparent that content marketing is changing and what’s great today might be of lesser consequence and importance tomorrow. Content alone is unlikely to give you the SEO and conversion results as it did in the past. By strategic use of gated and ungated content, you can rise above your competitors.
