It’s been almost 20 years since HubSpot invented the concept of INBOUND Marketing.
And it’s taken almost 20 years for all of B2B to execute the same strategy—create content to drive traffic to your website and then do everything in your power to convert that same traffic.
[Join The Juice, Spiff, Tourial, and Goldcast as we discuss this question on January 26th: The State of Gated vs. Ungated Content]
For many, this looked like gating content. Putting a piece of content behind a form that led your visitors to:
- Abandon the site altogether whic happens more than 80% of the time (a conservative estimate).
In the rare case your visitor does fill out the form you’re often receiving…
- Fake data. I’ve filled out a few forms as “Daffy Duck” (sorry Forrester, I’m not a buyer) or “James Bond”
- Unqualified “leads” that aren’t ready to buy nor do they want to be a part of your buying process
- Poor fit “leads” that your sales team is going to waste their time on
And on the very rare occasion you do get an in-market buyer, you’ve just put them through an experience they don’t want.
But…it worked. For a while. Now, buyers and content consumers are on to the game and marketers know this is not the best experience for their readers.
Yet, marketers are still often fielding the question from their leadership:
“Should we gate our content?”
This is not the right question.
In fact, The Juice has answered that question for you. We reviewed 300,000+ pieces of content and over 20,000+ gated pieces of content to answer this question for you.
You can read all of the data in our latest Trends Report: The State of Gated vs. Ungated Content.
The punchline? Ungated content is 26% more engaging than gated content.
(There are a lot of other great data points I’d encourage you to still read the full report. It’s ungated)
This question is too binary. It’s a tired question that we all know the answer to. And it’s not the right question.
Instead, we should be asking, “is this content experience is right for our audience?”
Since the invention of Inbound marketing, technology and buyers have evolved in big ways. Our content strategy has not evolved at the same pace. There are now so many more ways to engage with your audience—this includes content but goes beyond the traditional inbound motion.
Is your audience more likely to engage with events? (we use Goldcast)
Is your audience more likely to engage with an interactive demo? (we use Tourial)
Do we have proprietary data that we can share and should be gated? (we do this ourselves. Spiff shares awesome sales data without gating their content. Impressive stuff.)
These are the questions we should be asking. On Thursday, January 25th we’re going to ask a few of the best marketers we know these exact questions.
The Juice will be hosting a panel with:
- Andy Binkley, CMO at Tourial
- Molly Clarke, VP Digital Marketing at Spiff
- Lindsay McGuire, Associate Director of Content and Campaigns at Goldcast
We’ll discuss the gated vs. ungated report and go beyond the 2D decision of gating vs. ungating. I’m genuinely looking forward to the conversation. We’ll arm marketers with helpful data and discussion on all things content strategy.
