Gated Content vs. Ungated Content: Their Roles in Content Marketing

Raise your hand if you’ve ever put fake contact information in a form because you wanted to access a piece of content — but avoid the sales emails. As a content marketing agency, we probably shouldn’t admit this, but so have we.

At Ten Speed, we treat our clients’ customers how we want to be treated. We’d rather use gated content in the exact right place in the marketing funnel — so that a customer only becomes a lead when they are interested enough to read a brand’s follow-up emails.

But how do you know which content you should gate and which you should let customers read freely?

Gated content vs. ungated content: What’s the difference?

Ungated content is content that anyone can access without restriction. In other words, they can read it right there on your website — without filling out a form or giving you their contact info. 

Gated content, sometimes called paywalled content if it requires a paid subscription, refers to online content that has a barrier to access. In the B2B world, brands often offer gated content for free in exchange for the reader’s contact information.

There’s no hard and fast rule about what type of content should be gated or ungated. But generally, content that’s more expensive or time-consuming to produce, such as a research report, is often gated. Blog posts and other, more simplistic content, on the other hand, are usually ungated. 

But both types of content have an important role to play in an overall content marketing strategy.

Ungated content is usually top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content created to build awareness, address pain points, reach ICPs (ideal customer profiles), and build trust. Gated content usually targets middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) prospects who are already interested in the product but still weighing their options. 

Because the customer offered their contact information in order to access the content, the brand can now treat the customer as a lead and reach out directly. MOFU customers are more likely to actually want a follow-up from your brand in order to make a more informed purchasing decision.

Ideally, ungated content will lead your target audience down the funnel to the gated content, transforming them from potential customers who were unaware of your product into leads who are ready to buy.

Ungated content is the foundation of your content marketing strategy

Ungated content is the content on your digital channels that anyone can access, and it has the biggest impact on building brand awareness and customer trust. Usually, it’s shorter content that answers simple questions and shows who the brand is, like social media posts, SEO-driven content, case studies, and short-form video.

Most brands focus their content marketing efforts on ungated content. It’s the first touchpoint for your audience and should make up the bulk of your strategy. After all, if potential customers can’t freely access your content to learn more about you and what you offer, they’ll quickly move on to a competitor.

3 ways ungated content benefits your marketing strategy

We’ve all seen ungated content that contained a lot of fluff and lacked a strong perspective. Frankly, that kind of content doesn’t do much. But good, strategic ungated content can build strong relationships with ICPs from the ground up.

1. Boost brand awareness with strong SEO

There are billions upon billions of web pages on the Internet—and 96.55% of them get zero traffic. That’s why one of the most common forms of ungated content is SEO (search engine optimized) content. 

This content drives awareness of your brand by strategically answering online search engine queries relevant to your offerings. It reaches out to potential customers all across the web and drives them to your website, where you can (hopefully) convert them into actual customers.

2. Build trust with meaningful insights

Accessing ungated content is usually a potential customer’s first interaction with a brand. So it’s that brand’s opportunity to show who they are and build trust — a key factor for 83% of customers. 

Providing helpful and insightful information will build your brand’s reputation with that customer, even if they are years away from making a purchase decision.

Ungated content should meet ICPs where they are and provide what they need at that moment. Whether it’s a useful tip they can implement in their next project or a fresh perspective on an industry trend, ungated content should be like a good colleague — helpful, but not pushy.

3. Drive demand with engaging storytelling

Hiding the brand story behind gated content is a mistake. Ungated content is the only TOFU opportunity a brand has to tell their story. This content — ranging from LinkedIn carousels to SEO blog posts — is a brand’s moment to get their unique perspective in front of new eyes.

A lot of B2B marketing content looks and feels the same. To set your content apart, make sure everything you create comes from your brand’s point of view.

Ask yourself:

• How does my company do things differently?
• What’s our honest, unique take that goes against the grain?
• What are our brand values?

The answers to these questions should be present in every piece of content your company creates. 

Ungated content introduces your audience to more valuable pieces of gated content

Ungated content should support gated content further down the sales funnel. It should help you capture the attention of your ICPs across the web, ease them into the customer journey, and eventually, lead them to high-value gated content.

A common mistake in content marketing is creating content based on trending topics, rather than narrowing in on your industry or niche. If a piece of content goes viral, but it’s largely irrelevant to your brand’s ICP, millions of likes and shares could result in few leads or sales. 

For a content funnel to succeed, ungated content should align with the ICP and also connect logically to content further down the funnel. 

Ungated content plays this support role best when it’s distributed far and wide on a variety of channels. So it’s important to make sure your strategy addresses content distribution as well as content creation.

Gated content is the key to successful audience segmentation

Brands offer gated content in exchange for potential customers’ contact information. If you’ve ever given a retailer your email in exchange for a discount code, it’s a similar idea. 

But with data privacy concerns at an all-time high, your content needs to be unique and high-value to convince someone to hand over their information to access it. For example, brands often gate in-depth research reports and white papers, long-form video courses and webinars, and actionable tools.

3 ways gated content benefits your marketing strategy

Despite claims online that “gated content is dead,” it’s still a key part of content marketing — brands have just gotten much more strategic about what content they gate.

1. Share valuable resources at the right stage of the customer journey

High-quality gated content builds the relationship with the customer by providing valuable, trustworthy information at the right moment. 

Gated content is best targeted at ICPs who are MOFU and considering making a buying decision. The point of gated content is to capture leads so that the sales team can nurture a relationship directly, so it makes the most sense to capture ICPs who are getting ready to buy. 

The best-case scenario is that a piece of gated content is so useful that the customer actively wants to get follow-up emails from you to continue to learn more.

2. Drive lead generation with better lead qualification

A positive side effect of strategic gated content is better lead generation. If a brand chooses to only gate content that targets customers who are likely to be considering a purchase, then the leads created by that content will be better qualified.

Many sales teams are familiar with the struggle of too many leads without enough context. Fewer leads who are more likely to be legitimate potential buyers results in less confusion and wasted time for sales teams.

3. Uncover insights that improve audience segmentation

Choosing gated content topics strategically can help reveal more information about each potential customer. For example, a customer interacting with content about revenue generation should be approached differently than a customer interacting with content about productivity.

What content a customer interacts with gives clues into their decision-making power, their pain points, and which product solutions may be most compelling. The sales team can use this information to personalize their approach so the customer feels seen and understood, as opposed to reaching out with irrelevant material.

When and why it’s a good idea to gate your content

The choice on whether or not to gate content ultimately comes down to this question: Does the content genuinely deliver value that potential customers can’t get anywhere else?

According to a study by Informa Tech, 71% of respondents said they are “often or sometimes” disappointed in the value of gated B2B content. If a customer gives away their personal information and gets nothing of value in return, you’ll lose their trust. So it’s best to err on the side of not gating content if you’re uncertain.

If you’re considering gating content, ask yourself these questions:

• Would someone pay money for this?
• Is this information that no one else has?
• Would this content have an immediate and direct impact on the customer?

Brands should only gate the most valuable insights and information, such as:

• Original industry research
• Substantial and unique insights that go far beyond what the SERP offers
• Actionable and useful tools and templates

Imagine a company creates an AI assistant for contact center agents. If they conduct in-depth research on how AI impacts productivity and success rates for agents, every customer service manager interested in purchasing AI software would want to read that report. 

Since the report is uniquely valuable content to that company’s ICP, this is a situation where it’s smart to gate it. The AI company could gate the content and conduct a six-month campaign across a variety of channels leading customers down the funnel to that content — creating hundreds of qualified leads in the process. 

The key to successful content marketing is a strong strategy

If you’re wondering whether you should gate your content, you should be asking yourself a bigger question: What’s my strategy? 

A strong content strategy will help you decide which content to gate by connecting individual pieces of content into a larger content funnel that aligns with your ICP.

If all this sounds overwhelming, Ten Speed can help you identify what content is relevant to your ICP and uncover opportunities to create valuable pieces of both gated and ungated content. 

We’ve developed comprehensive, purpose-built strategies for countless B2B SaaS brands just like yours, and we’re ready to build the ideal strategy for your ideal customer.

Ready for a more strategic approach to content marketing? Let’s talk about how we can help!