Section seven:
Slamming the gate on gating
Finally, a long-standing use for content is to accumulate contact information. This is either given to sales or used to place a lead into a longer-term nurture programme (along with the obligatory MQL score). This has become even more important as marketers are pressured to focus on shorter-term lead generation over longer-term demand generation and brand building.
In reality, getting this data often means gating content behind a form. In fact, in our research, we see around a quarter of marketers gating every type of content we listed.
But what do buyers do as a result?
Well, 30% will give their details if the content is valuable enough (so, good news there).
Thirty%
of buyers will give their details if the content is valuable enough
However, 23% will try to find the content elsewhere and only offer up their information if they can’t find it (or something just as good).
And just under half (47%) will either never give their details or will give false information. Ouch.
Today, marketers should think long and hard about whether the value of this contact information is worth the significant drop in performance that comes with gaining it. You may get the data you want, but you may lose some goodwill as a result.
You may also mistake someone for being closer to buying than they actually are (risking delivering poor-quality ‘leads’ to sales and souring your relationship with them).
Ultimately, it’s a judgement call. However, we’d argue it is better for more people to see more of your content than lose valuable reach through gating.
