Here’s when you should gate your content
Before you secure your content behind a digital wall, you’ll need to first ask yourself:
Question to ask before you gate your content #1: What stage of the sales funnel is this content geared towards?
All content should be created with a specific stage of the sales funnel in mind. TOFU content like blog posts isn’t ideal for gating. But an in-depth case study on how you’ve helped another company cut costs by 25%……
That makes for attractive gated content.
The deeper the prospect moves into your sales funnel, the more sense it makes to offer gated content.
Question to ask before you gate your content #2: What will you do with the information?
Collecting leads are important, but properly nurturing those leads is what converts them into paying customers. You need to know how you’re going to separate different leads, and how you’re going to follow up. The Wordstream example we looked at earlier does an exemplary job of this.
Question to ask before you gate your content #3: What does your analytics tell you?
Another simple method for deciding to gate or not is to simply take a look at your highest traffic content.
Pick the top three popular topics/piece of content, and ask yourself:
- Do people still email/comment about questions in those high-traffic touchpoints?
- Do you have more information to give about that topic?
If you can answer yes to both questions, you’ve got a green light for a very valuable piece of gated content.