To Gate or Not to Gate Content? Making the Right Call in 2024

By Sam Holmes, Head of Marketing

I don’t gate content—it’s just not my stile…

Apologies, I couldn’t help myself. But that’s not entirely true. In fact, I’m one of the few who still believe in the value of gated content, in a world where many marketers have moved on. Like most things in life, it’s all about finding the right time and place.

Gating content has been a hot topic in content marketing for as long as I can remember, and I’ve spent more time debating it than I care to admit. Should you focus on generating leads or building brand awareness? Do you put a form in front of your content or leave it open for all to access? It’s not always a clear-cut decision. And with the rise of demand generation playbooks pushing long-term gains over short-term wins, the dilemma has only grown trickier. It’s the old ‘bird in the hand versus two in the bush’ scenario.

Why is gated still a thing in 2024?

I was surprised to learn that 80% of B2B content is still gated (thanks to Scoop for that stat). It’s clear that lead generation remains the top priority for most marketers. Following this logic, it suggests that 80% of us would rather have one identifiable lead in hand than two anonymous prospects lingering out of reach. In this post, I’ll share my perspective—both as a marketer and as someone who consumes a lot of content myself—to help you decide next time you’re faced with this choice. You might stick with your usual approach, but I hope I can either a) give you more confidence in your decision, or b) help you justify it to your sales team.

So, what’s an email address from your ideal customer worth? In B2B, the answer is likely quite a lot. Done right, email marketing can deliver a 15-20x ROI, which is a massive boost for your customer acquisition cost (CAC) over time. That makes your email database pretty valuable. Gated content might seem outdated, or even a bit timid, but I’d argue it reflects more modern thinking. As marketers and sales leaders, we all dream of an inbound strategy that works. Building a solid, evolving database of potential buyers who’ve shown interest is the first step towards achieving that.

The 4 Levels of Gating: From Fort Knox to a Welcome Mat

Not all content is created equal, and neither are the gates we put in front of it. Some are locked tighter than a vault, while others practically roll out the red carpet. Here are the four stages of gating, from full-on fortress to a friendly “come on in!” Keep reading to find out where your content should land!

1. High-Commitment Access. Users must fill out a form to access sensitive commercial information like pricing, reports, or brochures. This direct exchange is ideal for serious prospects who recognise the need for protection. While it may deter some, those who proceed are highly interested, and the value of the data justifies the request. The benefits typically outweigh the risks, especially for sensitive content like pricing.

2. Conditional Access: Users provide details to access free samples, event registrations, or webinars. This exchange benefits both parties, as the user receives what they need while the marketer gains valuable leads. With strong nurturing, these top-of-funnel leads can be developed over time into potential buyers.

3. Value-Driven Exchange: In exchange for user data, you offer valuable, unique insights that help solve problems or improve performance. When the content is genuinely useful, users are more willing to share their details, making it a fair trade.

4. Open Access: Freely available content, like blog posts or videos, with no restrictions or data capture. This is designed to reach the widest audience without requiring any commitment from users.

Why go with gated?

Other than the obvious benefit of generating more known ‘leads’ for your sales team…

Learn more about your customers. By capturing information about your customer, you can enrich your database with valuable insights, such as job titles, what technologies they use, location and so on, as well as fields super relevant to your business that can fuel future campaigns.

Apply some pressure. Gating your content gives your team accountability, ensuring the content you produce hits the mark. Knowing it will be on the other end of a form-fill means gives you a greater obligation to deliver excellence.

Qualify leads. If a user is willing to submit their personal information to access content, this might indicate a higher level of interest in your brand, product or service.

Why go for ungated?

Increase website traffic. But ensure you know what to do with it. If you have a remarketing strategy in place for URL visits, or an automation strategy that tracks behaviour, there isn’t always a need to get the data – especially if you’re happy with your existing database size. Each web visit is a step towards a value exchange. See every decision to not gate as a trust-building exercise, with an ultimate goal of getting their details to convert – whether that’s a sale, booking, consultation or any other desired action.

The SEO factor. Ungated content is much easier for Google and other search engines to crawl and index. So if your high-value content answers questions the internet is looking for, then hiding it in a PDF might be selling yourself short. If your content ranks, you will likely attract more visitors – especially if it’s an evergreen piece.

Keeping up with the market. Audiences are spoiled by instant access to information at their fingertips, with a constant stream of content across channels. This makes them hesitant to exchange personal details unless the content is truly in demand. To stay competitive, it’s becom a case of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.

Increase social followings and reach. More shareable content means more posts! You can share gated content but there’s less chance of your audience consuming it and deciding your page is worth a follow.

Striking a balance

We are (too) often reminded that content is king. It’s considered royalty, helping teams to acquire high-quality leads, educate potential buyers, nurture audiences and strengthen customer relationships. But it can’t be all of these things at once.

From our own experience, we know that about 50-60% of our combined team time each month goes into planning, creating, and distributing content. So, it seems like a missed opportunity to keep those insights locked away behind a gate, available to only a fraction of your audience. That’s why we made the decision to un-gate all of our content around a year ago, and we haven’t looked back. We took down the walls and opened up years of downloadable white papers filled with our best tips and tricks.

Of course, in B2B, data is as good as gold—it’s the fuel for future campaigns. But for us, we realised that gating content isn’t the only way to build an engaged audience or understand their behaviour. Our top-of-funnel event strategy, where we meet thousands of potential buyers each year, combined with data platforms like Cognism and ZoomInfo, and our own marketing automation tracking (shout out to Force24), gives us plenty of insight into what makes our audience tick.

In B2B, data may be currency, but nurturing your leads is more about quality than quantity. For us, ungating content has been the right balance. It’s all about knowing how to make the most of that increased traffic—remarket to it, nurture it. Think of each decision to ungate as a trust-building exercise, another step toward that moment of value exchange—whether that’s a sale, a booking, or a consultation.

Making the right call

If ever in doubt, a good question to ask yourself is: would I give my own details away for this? You will be more biased to the content than your own audience. So if your answer is a no, then you shouldn’t be gating it. If your answer is yes, then I would recommend the following 5 steps to increase your chances of data capture:

1. Keep your forms simple: only ask for the essential information.

2. Where possible, prepopulate them: Many marketing automation tools on the market (like Force24) now enable you to pre-populate forms for known visitors. This removes the need for unnecessary data re-entry and improves the overall user experience.

3. Tease out your content in other ways: offer a taste of what you have to say in the form of shorter blogs and video teasers. This is resourceful and will leave readers wanting more.

4. Sell the value: ensure you lay out what your audience stands to gain to manage expectations.

5. Personalise the experience: if you’ve gathered insights through your data capture, use that information to offer a tailored experience that justifies why your audience shared their details with you in the first place.

Get in touch

Give us a shout.

Ready to take your marketing up a gear? Give us a call or drop us an email – our UK-based team is on hand to help.

Talk to us
Sarah Customer Success