Four Ways to Succeed Despite Using Ungated Content

Four Ways to Succeed Despite Using Ungated Content

As marketers, a habit we should be in is constantly putting ourselves into the shoes of the very people we are targeting. By doing so, we see that our historical behaviors and actions are very similar to our prospects’, and we can begin to see where, why and how certain marketing initiatives (even those that worked in the past) are falling short of the ideal outcome.

Take, for example, landing pages and forms. From a marketing perspective, on paper these two things seem like necessities for lead generation and digital presence. On the other hand, these very landing pages and forms are often what makes us shy away from a company or product in our lives as consumers. You probably remember the last time you were interested in reading something - until it prompted you to enter an email address or phone number. Your customers are feeling the same way, growing more and more privy to our ulterior motives and information farming. Suddenly, that whitepaper or e-book that your content creation team spent so much time putting together is getting ignored in favor of the thousands of articles on the same topic that a person can access without having to provide any personal information. Gated content, or content hidden behind the lock-and-key of an information capture form, is falling by the wayside, and marketers need to adapt to this fact. It’s why our own Resource Library is completely open and ready to be used by anyone and everyone – even if we cannot immediately send a salesperson out to hound someone who is reading more about website redesign or one of our solutions.

But what does this mean for generating high-quality leads? How can we know if our content marketing strategy is sound, and what results our efforts are yielding? For starters, someone interested in reading about content management system features or how to measure ROI is not necessarily doing so with buying intent, thus making them less qualified and even more less likely to further engage should you enter them into a marketing cadence triggered by a form submission. Second, this data is by no means the end-all be-all of content marketing. We’ve put together four ways to maintain steady conversions, so you can unlock the content gates and let your potential customers come to you on their own terms. Read on, and let us know in the comments if you’ve found success employing any of these tactics!

1. Create Quality Content

Content is still king – but we already know this! High-quality content, delivered on a regular basis and relevant to your target audience, will attract the prospects you want. Trust us when we say that the more genuine opportunities to engage with your brand you give, the more genuine the inquiries and leads generated will be. Your content should allow your brand to shine, and be a primary attraction for stirring up interest and feeding your sales funnels.

2. Give Now, Get Later

If your content is high-quality and targeted correctly, wouldn’t it make more sense for you to allow the person to digest the information and engage with it before taking your relationship to the “next level”? Think about it this way – a person who reads your content and is compelled to fill out a form once they do so is likely much more qualified than someone who was strong-armed into giving you their information. They’re also more likely to be willing to speak with a salesperson or receive more (relevant and personalized) information.

Yes, this may complicate data collection and lead to fewer overall leads (especially in the wake of the upcoming GDPR enforcement), but at least you know the quality will be there if someone takes the extra step of submitting their information after they “get what they want.”

3. Embrace Social and Learn to Listen

Let’s put ourselves into our prospects shoes once again. Do you remember the last time you really enjoyed something you read online? Chances are you shared that article, video, tweet, etc. with someone, whether it was via email, in a Facebook post, or with a simple retweet.

With the continued rise of mobile combined with the ongoing love affair society has with social media, marketers should be paying attention to any chatter around their content. Using social tools that provide insight into such conversations and engagement, you can monitor how well your content is doing, if it’s reaching the target audience you intended to reach and identify any gaps that you can fill with your next round of creation. No need to just blindly push out information and hope something sticks – instead use smart scheduling, regular interactions with followers and influencers, and insights about buzzworthy trends and topics to drive the traffic you want.

4. Identify Content Strategy Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

When you open the gates to your content, you are losing the ability to track its success using leads generated as a metric. Some questions to ask are:

• Is your blog’s content being shared? How often?
• Is your content getting likes, retweets, shares, etc. on social media? How often?
• What’s your blog’s bounce rate? Where (from what page specifically) do visitors bounce off?
• How much time is spent on each of your landing pages?

Free your content and use the tactics above to unlock qualified prospects with a genuine interest in your brand, products and services!