Tear Your Content Walls Down - Why Gated Content Might Not Make Sense

So much amazing information to share from the Branded Content Conference in Miami - but one key point I wanted to share now was from David Meerman Scott's presentation on World Wide Rave. 

David shared some key statistics on white papers. Almost all brands create and distribute white papers - those 8 to 20 page downloadable pdf's that are now staples in most marketing programs.

Many, dare I say, most brands (including my own company) "gate" their white papers.  To "gate" a white paper means you put an information requirement in front of the content in exchange for getting access to the white paper.  This could be as simple as an email address, or as complicated as purchasing information.

Here's the point David made.  According to his statistics, a white paper or eBook will be downloaded 20x and up to 50x more WITHOUT a gate in front of it.

Please go back and read the last sentence again.

What is your objective?

Most people gate their content for lead or customer management purposes.  This means they want the prospect's information in order to sell them something, or they want more information about the customer in order to sell to them more precisely. Makes sense, right?

This is a solid marketing objective, but is it the "best" objective, or even the "right" objective?

Shouldn't our goal with the creation of branded content be to spread our ideas? Doesn't it make more sense from a marketing perspective to have fifty people engage in our content instead of one?

And here is a key point that David made clear.  Who are the customers you have that will actively share your content? Bloggers. What customers do you have that usually DO NOT download gated content? Bloggers.

So, not only are we limiting the people that will get access to our content, we are cutting off those customers that will actively share it with their audiences.

The Possibilities

Let's say you received 1,000 leads via your white paper download.  From David's numbers, let's even take a more conservative 10x more downloads if we remove the gate.  This would give us 10,000 downloads with no lead data. Of all those people, let's say that 1% would share this/blog this with their audiences (with a VERY conservative audience of 100 people, although most blogs get much more).

With those numbers, the total possible content reach for gated content would be 2,000 people.  Non-gated content would be 20,000 people.

And take this note to heart - I haven't seen one piece of branded content "go viral" and massively spread that was gated.  If you have, please let me know.  What's more important to you?...lead information on the few, or the opportunity to spread your brand to decision-makers who you are not talking with right now.

There are times and places to get customer information. Is that time or place in front of the content you want shared actively?

I have a pretty good feeling that I'll be removing the "gates" to our content very soon.  How about you?

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Comments

[Emily Sheetz]

I love Scott's approach with this. He talked about it a lot on his blog. Just share share share. That is what I've been doing and I've found enormous success with it in a rather short time. People love doing business with people who know what they're talking about. What better way to spread your ideas and knowledge than to just give the heck away!

[Jeff Miller]

I actually disagree with this...a 10x to 20x multiple for "ungating" our white paper program I think is completely unattainable.

Full disclosure: we are in the global animal agribusiness and global pet food sectors and our professional communities are small compared to B2C and other B2B sectors such as electronics. I'll stick with gating the white papers on our portfolio and providing "leads" (of course, for a fee) to our sponsors until I get feedback that they are not getting enough for their investment. So far - so good.

[Joe Pulizzi]

Hi Jeff...I would agree that in your business (you need to collect information in order for your business model to work), you need to ask for upfront information.

Do you have information on the number of drop-offs you see on a white paper download page? What is your conversion percentage?

With David's point, he doubts if we would ever have had 300,000 downloads of his white paper/ebook if he made registration a requirement. I would agree with him...but my question is, how many would you lose and how many of those people would then not share the information you put together?

Let me know when you get a chance, and thanks.

[Patsi Krakoff aka The Blog Squad]

I've always gated my stuff in order to build up various lists of people segmented by interests. Once they're on a list as having downloaded a particular ebook, white paper, or audio file interview, they are drip-fed autoresponder messages to follow up and upsell them to other similar products or services.

But I don't kill them with frequent messages or incessant calls to buy. There are also messages that are purely educational to build trust and relationships.

I'm in the e-newsletter services, content services, and blog consulting business. Digital information is a major marketing tool for me, as well as a source of income since clients can buy information and content for their own use.

I respect David and you, Joe, and this is a 180 degree marketing turn for me to take. I will have to think it over and then experiment.

Right now I'm working on an ebook and my whole purpose is to build up a list of people who want more on this topic.

Part of me says, "I can't let it go out the door to anonymous people without being able to market to them afterwards!"

And the other half says,

"If I could get this into the hands of 10-50 times more people, surely some of them will end up coming back to me anyway."

There's only one way to find out: try it. I'll get back to you on this...

[Joe Pulizzi]

Patsi (and Jeff) - I'm with both of you actually. I've always felt that there are times to gate content, and times not to gate it.

We get most of our sign ups to the Junta42 site through the white papers and ebooks, so (like you Patsi) we can market to them later and build a relationship with them.

So, what I guess I'm searching for (like you) is a when to gate, and when not to gate, your content. Let's see if I can get some more experts to comment on this issue.

[Jeff Miller]

"Do you have information on the number of drop-offs you see on a white paper download page? What is your conversion percentage?"

Great question. Candid answer: not at this time.

That said, we are on target to release our next generation of web sites by June 1. One of the many upgrades on these sites will be the ability to track "conversions" much better.

I'd also like to show the professionals on your blog the 2 latest additions to our portfolio...robust social networking sites built on the *free* Ning platform:

http://www.animalagnet.com/
for the global animal agribusiness community

http://www.sawdustsoup.com/
for the N. American professional woodworking community

We will release our pet food industry social networking site in the next month.

I want to thank you, Joe, and the others on this blog for the great feedback on all things "social networking" and custom publishing. We are now selling custom content programs and linking them to our social networking sites as part of their programs. Working very well so far.

[Joe Pulizzi]

Great sites Jeff! I like the basic customization...has a nice feel to them.

Keep me updated on the custom sales...sounds like things are taking off!

[David Meerman Scott]

Hi Joe, It was great to finally meet you this week at the conference.

I would really love it if you could give us statistics about your number of downloads before and after if you do end up ungating your stuff.

I think the issue here is goals. If your goal is simply to build a list, than a gate is fine. If your goal is to expose people to your ideas, a gate is a bad idea.

It is worth considering that a gate is actually a holdover from the direct mail business when the only way to deliver a white paper request in hard copy was via a Business Reply Card. Marketers just used the same things online.

My ideas are always that online is different.

One other point. Many companies have terrific success with a secondary offer in the white paper or ebook. In other words, the initial content is free with no gate. Then at the end there is an offer for those who are interested. That second offer captures people who are REALLY interested.

David

[Michael A. Stelzner]

Hey Joe (and David);

Here's my thought on this...

IT DEPENDS.

Yes, that's right. It depends why you created the content in the first place.

If you sell expensive or complex products and need to feed leads to your sales organization, then following a "smart" gated process would be wise.

However, if your product is an idea or concept (like a book) and your goal is exposure, then it makes total sense to ungate your content.

Only GOOD content is shared. If your content sucks, go ahead and gate it.

Two examples, yesterday I released some GOOD content and more than 10,000 people downloaded it in one day. My objective here is exposure, not leads. See http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/

Example 2: I have a paper called "How to write a white paper" that has been "registered for" by more than 70,000 people. I use their contact data to grow my very large list and sell them my products. It has been very successful (just Google white paper and you'll see it there #2).

So, both work and depend on your goals and objectives.

How's that for an answer??

[Joe Pulizzi]

@ David/Mike

Great analysis on both parts. As always, it comes back to the objective.

Of course David...the next white paper we launch will go ungated, so it will be interesting to see how it performs against the other ones.

Mike...great report!

[Jean Fleming]

Great article and informative comments. I would add that as an agency, we are beholden to the goals of our clients, which are usually short term lead-gen rather than idea sharing. We are working on ways to passively profile users so that we gather the same info slowly, without the portcullis-like form up front.

[Brian Clark]

David hits it on the head with his point about providing content first and then using a call to action to collect information after, rather than before.

New studies show that reciprocity is stronger than reward in the context of opt-in information.

The whole idea of promising content in exchange for an email address or RSS reader addition is based on reward – essentially I’ll give you this stuff if you do what I want.

Reciprocity is a much stronger psychological motivator. If you deliver great content and then ask for the subscription, the research shows that twice as many people will go ahead and subscribe at that point.

As Mike says, that means the content can't suck. I think this is a big reason why gated is still preferred.

I explained yesterday that this was part of the reason I "ungated" my Authority Rules report. You can check that out here: http://www.copyblogger.com/authority-rules-report/ (there is also a link to the research I refer to).

[Joe Pulizzi]

Excellent points Brian. As you know, love your Authority Rules concept and your take on whey gated content is still preferred.

Do you have any metrics that you'd be willing to share on the results of Authority Rules to date?