You invest money to create an ebook. Research, design, copywriting. More money to promote it. You then gate it and release it in return for an email address and/or a phone number. You invested money, you want leads. It's simple math. But what if we told you ungating your content might actually bring better quality leads?
Why gated content doesn’t work anymore
Want a TL;DR? Watch this video:
Lead generation on LinkedIn has long been the bread and butter of any B2B marketer's toolkit. You create valuable content—think whitepapers, e-books, webinars—and then place it behind a form. The idea is simple enough; if someone wants access to your brilliant insights, they'll gladly exchange their contact details.
But just because this method has been a staple for many years, it doesn’t mean it’s without its flaws. You’re basically casting a wide net, hoping to catch as many potential leads as possible. Sure, you can target specific audiences on LinkedIn and whatnot, but if the quality of leads continues to get poorer and weaker, if they don’t convert even though you’ve A/B tested, optimized and refreshed your copy, and even ran it through Wynter, then you know something’s off.
There’s one crucial flaw behind gating your content - and it’s assuming that people who download your ebook are anywhere near ready to engage with your brand any further. In reality, most people are only beginning their research, some will never even be within your target audience. And when you approach them with a gated content, there are two scenarios most likely to happen:
- Idan scrolls through his LinkedIn feed and sees an ad for your ebook. He recognizes your company, finds the topic interesting. But then he sees a form to fill out, and scrolls past your ad faster than the blink of an eye.
- Idan scrolls through the same feed and sees the same ad. He sees the gate but shares his email and downloads the ebook anyway. He joins your nurture workflow automatically and begins to find annoying emails from your company he never asked for… Ugh. Clicks ‘Unsubscribe’. A phone call from an SDR? Really risky maneuver.
Your target audience goes through way more touch points than they used to before they even interact with your brand. They do their own research, they rely on word of mouth and peer reviews, they check your company from various angles–social media, website, Google, etc. Reading through your content is one of those touch points. So make it easy for them to do so.
Please, ungate your content
When you ungate your content, you're essentially rolling out the red carpet for your target audience to learn about you. By allowing people to engage with your brand on their own terms, with no string attached, you basically say: here, take whatever you need, it’s free, it’s for you. You can trust us. And that’s precisely what your audience wants to hear.
Wanna check Envy’s ungated content? It’s here.
Don’t worry though, you don’t have to ungate everything all at once. We all need new leads we can work on, that’s clear. Here’s a few workarounds that can help you offer knowledge and insights for free, and get your contacts list growing at the same time:
- Set up a rule of 3-4 months when you gate your latest piece and promote it as gated content, and ungate everything else. Don’t worry, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every few months, no one has time for that. Instead, refresh and optimize those pieces on a regular basis, and reshuffle for as long as they’re relevant to your audience.
- Only gate your most valuable piece that offers quality from another planet, something that will instantly wow anyone who gets their hands on it. Because you know what happens when you gate something people can easily read about after one round of googling or with a little help of ChatGPT and other AI friends? They’ll be even more annoyed. And no one wants annoyed leads.
- Support the gated content with other activities - think blogs, videos, social media posts - where you already offer some insights, and the ebook (or whatever form it is that you’re gating) works as a bonus that goes more in depth into the topic. That can work as a teaser where folks already know what quality they can expect, and if they share their details after reading the initial piece, you know their intent is higher.
- Wanna know one piece of content we gated that brought us CPL we last saw before the pandemic? A template. That’s right, no ebooks with lengthy research, time-bound stats or quotes from experts. A template of something we’ve already been using at Envy, that could work for others too. And yes, we keep it ungated on our resource page now 😉
I have leads… Now what?
Leads not ready to engage? Looking for a service you don’t offer just yet? Multiple stakeholders keep delaying the process? Don’t move them to trash. Nurture them–and with ungated content, nurturing leads becomes more about building relationships than gathering information. How?
- Time-based nurturing
This is pretty much how you keep your leads HOT 🔥 and make sure they don’t have a chance to forget about you. The workflows are designed to engage your leads at predetermined intervals, which allows you to deliver all your ungated content gradually. One important thing to remember about though: you don’t want to overwhelm or, worse, spam your audience. It’s better to stretch the messages over time than send over everything you have in a matter of days.
- Action-based nurturing
On the flip side, the workflows can also respond to user interactions, creating a more dynamic engagement. They’re triggered based on specific actions a lead takes, say a lead downloads an ebook about ABM for cybersecurity, you could trigger a follow-up email within 24 hours signaling to leads that you're paying attention to their interests and are there to help them along their journey.
So… Did we convince you? Try ungating your content pieces, start talking about them on socials or through email, and see how your audience will react. We bet they’ll enjoy it.
Need some more help building a strategy around it? We’ve been in the business for 10 years now, we know a thing or two. Go here:
