At the heart of almost every B2B lead generation campaign sits gated long-form content. From white papers to reports, E-books to expert guides, marketers drive leads into the sales pipeline by gating the assets they’ve worked hard to create. And they’re not alone: Content gating has long been the way to convince prospects to part with their contact details, creating an opportunity for them to be nurtured further down the funnel towards a sale.
However, all of us have experienced the frustration of receiving repeated invitations for meetings, calls and “free trials” after downloading a single document as part of a wider information search. The concept of providing value-added content for free and replacing content gates with intent tracking technologies is appealing, but is it practical? Given the budget challenges marketers currently face and the pressure to demonstrate ROI, what gating approach is the right one?
To Gate Or Not To Gate? That Is The Question
In recent years, B2B tech brands have started to embrace the idea of deeper, more thoughtful storytelling, acting like media companies and creating long-form assets that aren’t gated.
It’s a different school of thought. When marketing qualified leads are the only KPI for campaign success, long-form content is a “lead generation” asset — but removing the gate places it under demand generation. This isn’t just a semantic change, as it has far-reaching implications in terms of marketing strategy. This approach believes that delivering freely available content that’s educational and value-led is the fastest and most effective route to expanding your audience, building interest in your brand and driving leads.
But that doesn’t mean we need to un-gate everything right away. Until investment has been made in lead attribution and intent capture platforms, there still is a place for more traditional lead generation content placed behind a form.
However, there is an opportunity for tech B2B brands to experiment with high-quality un-gated content at the top of the funnel. This needs to be paired with tactics that deepen engagement from the get-go, such as:
Engaging Your Audience With Interactivity
When content isn’t gated, it doesn’t have to exist as a static PDF. This creates an opportunity to reinvent how you present information to your audience and experiment with different formats.
Interactive elements like quizzes, polls, solution assessments and ROI calculators can each be embedded into a long-scroll page, turning the user experience from a passive scroller to an active recipient. When designed and integrated well, this can significantly increase dwell time on your long-form content.
These elements have an inherent lead-driving benefit, too. For example, ROI calculators can help prospects assess the impact of adopting a solution, guiding them toward more informed decisions and acting as another key nurture step on the road to a sale.
Designing For Attention
Interactivity alone isn’t enough: There’s simply too much competition for relevant, high-quality written content to get the attention it deserves unless it’s visually appealing.
It’s important to remember that content isn’t just copy; it’s also design. Focusing on ungated content puts greater emphasis on the importance of design to hold prospects’ attention, keep them on the page and encourage them to share what you’ve created.
Several digital platforms exist that can support this goal. Tools like Shorthand and Genially can help present long-form written copy in an engaging, journalistic style, enhancing the overall experience. From there, consider injecting visual elements like animation, graphs and other ways to bring key parts of your story to life, making it easier for audiences to understand what you are looking to convey and to remember the information being presented.
Investing In Content Success
Much like the other short-term marketing tactics that have died out, gating too will not persist as a tactic in the long term. Ultimately, the decision of when to “jump the gate” will come down to each brand’s marketing strategy, budget and approach to measuring ROI. But as B2B marketers across all industries experiment with un-gated long-form content, this is the time to think about opportunities for growing engagement and reach with un-gated content at the top of the funnel.
Using interactivity and thoughtful design, you can transform traditionally static long-form assets into more dynamic, engaging experiences that not only capture attention but help nurture leads towards deal stage. And that’s a powerful way to make your investment in content work harder.
Anu Ramani is the founder and Managing Director of Isoline Communications, a tech B2B content marketing agency. Her career spans Asia, the Americas and EMEA, covering advertising, web design and public relations apart from content marketing. Ramani has a degree in computer science and an MBA with a specialism in marketing.