Gating your content means that for someone to receive your content, they have to give you their email address and other particulars to obtain the content.
But, is over-gating your content a good tactic?
If you gate everything and someone registers, do you immediately conclude that individual is a hot lead? Perhaps they are. Perhaps they aren’t. Maybe they want to view your content first to determine whether you are a thought leader and someone they should trust. Maybe they are just looking. Remember, people still “window shop”. They could also be consuming content.
Whatever the reason a visitor has for arriving at your site, be in experience-mode and enhance the experience for visitors. We are all in the experience game, we want our visitors to have an enjoyable experience when they visit our website.
When people come to your website, what message do you send when you are over-gating your content? Do you want to help or do you want to sell? How do you want to be perceived?
Consider coming up with a sound content gating strategy. Do you have a blog? Do you have white papers? Offer articles and a few white papers free before you start gating content. Pick and choose the right content requiring registration. It is very important to value nurturing a lead over generating a lead because even if you get an email address, it doesn’t mean you have generated a lead.
Once you have “earned” their personal details, then continue to provide them with value-added content through blog or newsletter subscriptions, subscriber-only content and other subscriber-only nuggets. Once they have trusted you, view your content as valuable, they still may not be considered a lead. Continue to nurture them with value-added content. If they keep coming back for more, up your game and continue to nurture, but don’t push. If this potential lead converts, great. If they don’t, they may just remember how you helped them and become someone who can help drive business to you.
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