You Ask, I Answer: Gated Content Outdated Marketing Tactic? - Christopher S. Penn - Marketing Data Science Keynote Speaker

Sara asks, “Is gated content now an outdated tactic? What should we be thinking about for B2B marketing in 2023?”

Gated content is not an outdated tactic, it is however often misused and can be ineffective for a lot of marketers. The main reason for this is that a lot of content isn’t worth gating in the first place. To determine if your content is worth gating, ask yourself if you would be willing to pay money for it. If the answer is no, then it’s probably not worth gating.

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In today’s episode, Sarah asks, is gated content now an outdated content marketing tactic? What should we be thinking about for B2B marketing? And 2023? No, no, it’s not outdated.

But it is misused a lot.

It is ineffective for a lot of marketers.

And here’s the reason why gated content, which means content is behind some kind of registration wall where you have to fill out a form to get at it is it’s a sale, right? It’s another kind of sale, instead of asking someone for money, you’re asking them for data.

And with all all the changing coming privacy regulations, it might be argued that the commitment to giving someone your data could be in some cases higher than the commitment to actually buying something.

So it does a sale.

Which means that if the content isn’t worth the value of the person’s data, you’re not going to sell very much of it, right? What do you have that somebody wants so badly that they are willing to buy it with their personal data, right? Because when you go to a forum and you fill it out, you know what’s going to happen, you fill out that form, to get your download, and you know, in seconds is going to be an email from you, and 30 minutes or less a salesperson is probably going to call you and there’s going to be endless calls and emails.

And hey, just checking in, how about that piece of content, you download any questions about it? Are you the right person to be talking to about this thing? Right, you know, you know, the drill.

And that’s a hassle incident, a huge hassle, because of all of it, guys, it depends, like I’m antisocial.

So I just tell people on my voicemail message, I never answered the phone.

Send me a text, no one ever does.

But the point is that that’s a sale, you are selling something and asking someone for for their data.

As as the condition of sale, that is the currency being used their privacy is what you’re selling worth.

That is what you’re selling of equal or greater value.

And that is the determinant about whether or not you should gate content is a download worth the hassle.

Right? Now, if you are a company that doesn’t have a strong sales team, it might not even worth getting content, because you’re not going to have anybody to call these people back.

So there’s that consideration as well.

But generally speaking, the rule of thumb that I go by is if a piece of content, could you legitimately get someone to pay money for it? If the answer is yes, it’s probable that you can get somebody other than your mother to pay money for that content, then get it? Right, because you see economic value there.

If you didn’t work for your company, would you see enough value in that piece of content to buy it? And to get out your credit card and buy it? If the answer is yes, it can be gated, because you’re training value for value.

If you look at your last piece of content and go, I wouldn’t pay I don’t even pay like 1 for that.

The No, don’t get it because if you wouldn’t pay for it.

Why do you think anybody else would? And when we’re thinking about what we’re asking somebody to give their privacy to us? Is their privacy worth? Whatever piece of content you’re offering them? If the answer is no, don’t get it.

So it’s not a question of whether good content works or not.

It’s a question of value.

The reason why we’re asking is gated content and outdated tactic is because a lot of content isn’t worth it.

It’s not worth the sale, you wouldn’t pay money for it, right? If I see someone saying, Hey, I’ve got this new paper on 43 ways, you know, agencies can make more money using Tiktok.

I’m not going to buy that.

There are certainly people who would, and they would see value in that they would pay money for that for me know, if somebody said, here’s 43 ways to train your sales team better to win deals in complex sales.

Yeah, I might pay money for that.

And I pay1 or $5 or 999 for that, or more.

But that’s content that you could gate because I see the economic value and I see what’s in it for me as the customer I know what’s in it for me, I’m going to sell more stuff.

If the paper is any good.

I can give it to my sales team and I can sell them more stuff.

Right there’s a clear what’s in it for me.

My I used to work with a sales guy a long time ago who said the radio in people’s heads is permanently tuned to one station wi I fm what’s in it for me? And he was right.

He is right.

Look at your gated content? What’s in it for your audience? What’s in it for them? Are they going to learn something new is think about the YouTube Creator Framework that Google announced way back in 2014.

You know, Hero hub help hero content sort of a big picture? Why? Why are we even talking about this thing? Your hub content is what is this thing your help content is? How do you do this thing? Look at your gated content.

Does it answer one of those three questions? Why do I care about this thing? What is this thing? How does this thing work? And what’s in it for me? There are any number of, you know, recently, I’ve seen papers on you know, go to market strategy, people saying the go to market strategy is the new Account Based Marketing.

And I’m like, Yeah, but what’s in it for me? I know how to go to market and may or may not be great at it.

But I know how to go to market.

Are there new tips that will help me go to market better, charge more money, keep customers longer.

And from the papers I’ve downloaded so far, the content I’ve downloaded so far, that has been gated, I mean, like, this didn’t help me, there was no value in here.

There is nothing in it for me that I didn’t already know.

And that I wasn’t already doing.

It was fake thought leadership, trying to repackage cliches as some novel thought it was kind of absent any any new ideas.

And so there wasn’t value in it for me, which means that the next time I see that company offer content that’s gated, I’m probably going to give it a miss focusing.

Your last piece of content wasn’t great.

It there was nothing in it from you.

It’s just a sales pitch for your company services, and I don’t need that.

So gated content is not an outdated tactic.

Your content that you’re giving away in one form or another or asking people to buy with money or with privacy has got to be worth it has got to be worth paying for.

If your contents not worth it.

It’s not going to sell and then yes, it will seem like gating content as a tactic is not working.

It’s out of date, but it’s not.

Anyway, thanks for the question.

Talk to you soon.

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