Written by: Phil Stubbs That’s the only reason why I could ever imagine keeping good, interesting content behind a myriad of web forms and making prospects unlock multiple gates to gain access. Frightened of success or maybe – ill prepared for success.There is no much nonsense written online about the benefits of gated content I thought I would give a few more examples of how silly it is.Have a think about these:
If you’re confident that you already have a large audience – why would you need to run a campaign with gated content? You can just reach out and share what you have. Why would you ‘hide’ content behind web forms knowing, yes knowing, that each stage of a registration or sign up process, creates an ever-increasing amount of abandonment?Does it make sense to ‘qualify out’ everyone that doesn’t want to give you their details? Let’s look at this another way and imagine you have a shop on a busy high street.
Would you only allow people to enter your store if they gave you their name, email address and contact telephone number? Would you hide everything in your window display behind a screen and put a sign-up telling people you have some fantastic goods in the window – but to view them, they have to fill out a form with their name, age, inside leg measurement, mother’s maiden name, teacher’s name in first grade, etc?In both instances, the law of averages say that someone will give you their details. But who wants to be ‘average’? I certainly don’t.Related:
The 4 Pillars for Digital Transformation SuccessRelated:
10 Things That Sales People Tell Us About Social SellingThe contents of the shrouded window display are like the online whitepaper – once you ‘hide’ something the value decreases. People will tell you it increases – they will be the ones that want to take your money to run a content-based campaign. Or you are paying them to hide content behind the dreaded virtual gate system. Remember – it’s a piece of content created to generate new revenue – it’s not a gem or original painting with a rarity that will drive up its value.Of course, some will be intrigued by what could be hidden but the majority of us will carry on our journey to the other shops. But oh, how you will laud your success – out of 100 people passing your shop, you sent away everyone didn’t want to give you their details. You can high five with your management team as you celebrate the one, mediocre, tepid lead you got as a result of ‘gated content’.Or, you could listen to me and the team at Digital Leadership Associates about how social selling could bring you 20-30% of new revenue. Now, doesn’t that sound more interesting than hiding your content?
