You've spent weeks (or maybe even months) agonizing ove✱r a piece of premium content – an ebook, an industry research report, a guidebook — and you're finally ready to publish.

168极速赛车官网:Now what?

Conventional inbound marketing wisdom says you should build a landing page and keep that bad boy behind a form, teasing its value so that visitorജs convert t𝄹o download it. 

Then, you sit back, kick you🀅r feet up, and wait for those qualified leads to start converting on yoꦐur new content offer. 

At least, that's how 168极速赛车官网:inbound marketing is supposed to work, right? 

To gate or not to gate

Conventionally in inbound, the depth of🎃 the expertise you share in blog articles, podcasts, videos, and content in general is what brings in the traffic. Then, a relevant call-to-action (CTA) drives that traffic toward a landing page and premium content offer where it converts and becomes a lead for sales to work. 

For any of us who've tried this, we know it works — Some of the time.

Unfortunatel♊y, leads don't always convert and even if they do, chances are a whole bunch of theꦆm are junk:

blah@blah.com

kjslkdjflkdsjf@lklkdjflkdsfdsf.com

micky@mouse.com

nicetry@notgonnahappen.com

So much for kicking your feet up. 

The reality is that the internet is flooded with ebooks, “ult🐲imate guides to,” checklists,🐷 and other content being tucked away behind form fills.

Buyers have grown tired of shelling out their private information for content  that may or may not really answer their questions or solve their problems. They're wary of🐷 getting bombarded wi✱th sales calls and spammy email pitches once they do so. 

In short, they're are wise to it. 

Forms haဣve become a “necessary evil” in the eyes of bu🍎yers and they’ve responded by providing fake email addresses — or simply going elsewhere. 

There are even tools out there designed to give you a temporary email a൲ddress to use just to fill out forms then disappear, and who can blame them?

According to Semrush, ,🌟 which means we're well past the point of content saꦛturation. Even Gary Vaynerchuk echoes this, saying, “Producing c𝓰ontent is now the baseline for all brands and companies.”

With so many companies creating content, and many of them doing so without much attention to detail or quality, buyers have taken note an𝔍d they approach conversion forms with an increasing level of sꦓkepticism. 

In an environment where buyers are suffering from form fatigue and conversion rates are dropping, it b꧋egs the question, should you still be gating your content?

As with many things, the a🍬nsജwer to this question is, “it depends.”

3 cases when you should gate content

Despite the fact that conversion forms often get a bad rap in the eyes of buyers, there are still plenty of cases when it not only makes sense to gate your content, but your buye💙rs will also be happy to fill out a form (with their ✃real email address!).

Here's when that makes sense:

1. When your content is extremely high value 

There are definitely cases where buyers are more than willing to fill out a form to get content. Often, this happens when the content they are trying to get is extremely in-depth or contains unique or original information or data that they can’t get aꦰnywherꦑe else.

If you are producing original research or white papers with 🦩insights or thought leadership from sought-after aut🔯hors, odds are that your website visitors will willingly fill out a form to get it. 

For examp꧙le, every year, I look 🦄forward to HubSpot's that's chock full of primo research and insights. 

Granted, they already have my email address, but even if they didn't, I'd be happy to share it in exꦚchange for the original takeaways. 

2. When gated content is already performing well

If faced with the choice of what to do with existing content, let✅ your conversion rate𒊎s be your guide.

According to WordStream, ♎. The top 25% of sites convert at 5.31% and above, while the top 10% are looking at 11.45% and above.

So, start by ꦍdoing an audit of your content offers. Where your lan🔥ding page conversion rates are less than 3%, try ungating them to see if the increase in traffic outweighs the number of leads you were getting. 

By contrast, for those offers where your conversion rates are strong and there is 🐭a sufficiently high volume of traffic coming to the landing page, it probably makes sense to continue to keep it gated.

After all, if it ain't broke...

3. When you want to repurpose already ungated content

If you’re doing content marketing consistently, you’ve probably covered certain topics from several angles. This is especially true if you’re following Marcus Sheridan’s methodology and t🦄o guide your editorial strategy.

🔴Where that is the case, you have an opportunity to make your content work even harder for you by compiling it together into 𒅌a longer guide or ebook. 

It's like essentially🌞 building a "greatest hits" album of all your content on a particular topic. 

You've added valu൩e by gathering and organizing the content on behalf of the user so they can get everything they need in one place and know how to approach it. 

(This is the exac🧔t reason why greatest hits albums always do well.)

This way, the individual pieces of content can still perform wꦑell in search — while the compilations areಞ driving conversions at the same time. 

A total win-win.

2 cases when you should not gate your content

While I stand by the examples above, there are also very compelling reasons not to gate it in certain circumstances. 

1. When you need to generate more traffic

When content is gated, it is ,🐻 which means it does nothing to help your website rank organically and generate more t♈raffic.

In this case, I would rather ungate that awesome ebook and put the content right on a website page so that Google❀ and other seaඣrch engines can crawl it. 

Th🌱is approach helps improve search engi🎉ne rankings and increases the likelihood that more people will actually see your content — which in turn puts you in a better position to generate leads.

After all, the interne꧅t is all about free access to information. So share your co🦩ntent with the world. 

2. When your gated offers aren’t performing well

It can be incredibly frustrating to create a great piece of content and t﷽hen sit and watch as nobody converts or ever sees it. 

Many marketers have experienced this. While the culprit could be bad landing page copy, poorly placed CTAs, or 168极速赛车官网:even a lack of trust, it might also be that you s꧋imply haven’t proven to your visitors that it will be worth their wh𒅌ile to part with their contact information. 

When this happens, you not only lose a lead,🌊 but the visitor leaves never getting to see the value you had to o𝓰ffer behind the form and winning them over as a possible customer. 

The best way to avoid this fate is to simply give away the content. Show your visitors your expertise with🐓out requiring anything of them. This is the difference between a helpful advisor and a ruthless marketer. 

Here’s a pro tip, though.

Even if you ungate your content, you can still offer visitors the opportunity to download a PDF version by fillin💧g out a form.

Some people like to read their content offline or guess what? If your content is really good, they’ll want to have a copy saved.♋ 

I know, because this is exactly what we’ve done here at IMPACT. We’ve written a considerable number of new, in-depth guides🔯 that live ungated on our website. Visitors can read the guides online, 🐠or they can download the PDF version, which requires an email address. 

Remember, ungated content can still generate🅺 leads

Som𒀰e of our highest-converting content has never lived behind a ga🐭te.

Look at this stat line from our "168极速赛车官网:What is Content Marketing?" pillar page, for example:

Despite ꦺno requirement to do so, t🐠ons of visitors have filled out the form to download the PDF of the guide. So, in the end, not only did it generate traffic but leads as well.

You can have your cake and eat it too when you ungate your content in 2024

Back in 2022, we at IMPACT started taking a hard look at our marketing numbers, specifically the 🎐contacts we'd been gett𒈔ing through our gated content offers.

These were 🧸things like guides to social media marketing, digital sales, and inbound strategy. 

While these brought in thousands of contacts, the♛y were mostly people looking for reference materials — not qualified leads who were looking to buy our marketing and sales training. 

So, we began to ungate them. 

Since doing so, we have see💮n our volume of leads stay🦹 steady, while the quality of the leads who enter our sales process has gotten way better. We're talking t꧒o more people who are good-fit prospects than e💮ver before.

The decision to gate or ungate your content will depend on your needs — but you should never live in fear thinking𒁏 that gating content is the only way to attract potential customers. 

You might find that ungating your content kiꦡlls two birds with one stone: more traffic and better quality l🌜eads in one fell swoop.