To Gate or Not to Gate: One Rule for Deciding

Five years ago, inbound marketing was all about gated content. Gated meaning that you placed a valuable offer for download behind a form, requiring a work email address. Recently, the necessity of gating your most valuable content has come into question.

As pillar pages have gained traction as a powerful SEO tool, ungated content is on the rise. By having your most valuable content freely available for readers, you’re able to build trust up-front. Further, leads who chose to share contact information in exchange for a download demonstrates a higher level of interest than when readers chose to download gated content.

With differing opinions on each side of the debate, how can you decide whether or not to gate your next campaign?

Are you interested in generating page views or qualified leads?

While seemingly a nuanced debate, choosing to gate your content can be boiled down to a few questions.

Are you interested in generating page views or qualified leads?

If you care about page views, ungated is the way to go. If you want to qualify leads for sales, you’ll want a gated form to gather contact information.