Introduction
With the sheer volume of content available online today, marketers face a critical question: which materials should be gated behind a form, and which should be freely accessible? The answer isn’t a simple yes-or-no—it depends on the stage of the customer journey and the goals of your marketing strategy. By understanding when, why, and how to gate content, you can generate leads, nurture prospects, and build brand awareness without turning potential customers away. This guide explores practical strategies for leveraging gated content effectively along the buyer’s journey.
What is Gated Content?
Gated content refers to online materials—like eBooks, whitepapers, webinars, or reports—that are hidden behind a “gate,” usually a form requiring the user to provide information such as their name, email, or company details before accessing it. Marketers use gated content to generate leads, gather contact information, and qualify prospects, while offering valuable resources in return. It’s a common strategy in B2B marketing to nurture potential customers and track engagement.
Gated vs Ungated Content
In contrast, ungated content is freely available to anyone without requiring personal information. This type of content—such as blog posts, guides, or videos—is designed to attract a wider audience, boost brand visibility, and improve search engine rankings, making it a powerful tool for awareness and top-of-funnel marketing.
Pros & Cons of Gating Content
According to Starfleet Media’s B2B Content Marketing and Lead Generation report, respondents estimate they keep 80% of their major content marketing assets gated.
If everyone is doing it, what’s the big deal, right?
Advocates for gating content believe it will:
- Generate sales leads
- Reflect the value of the content
- Filter out those who are just browsing
Those who want to “tear down this wall” by offering ungated content believe the benefits include:
- Building trust with prospects and viewers
- Removing road blocks for consumers
- Improving SEO (and theoretically, you’ll get more traffic and inbound links)
The gating content question typically evokes any number of metaphors.
Some Fun Examples of Gated Content
SiriusDecisions, which has developed a framework for deciding when to gate, describes gating like charging a cover fee at a nightclub. They contend you want to charge the cover fee for a really great band and not charge a cover for your uncle Bruce’s drum circle set (unless your uncle is Bruce Springsteen).
To continue this bar metaphor, David Meerman Scott, a marketing strategist and best-selling author has been a long-time advocate for removing barriers to access for your customers and prospective customers. He’s compared the gating experience to a singles bar where some guy comes up to you and says, ‘What’s your phone number?’ without even introducing himself.
I can see where Mr. Scott is headed with his analogy, but to bring back our cover fee, and to make this more confusing, I think his example is a bit like charging a cover fee to hear my mom sing karaoke. This ill-timed solicitation at a singles bar is more about bad timing and bad decision making than it was about asking the question.
And if the content is clearly valuable – say Brad Pitt-esque – do you need to spend the time introducing yourself? (OK, I’ll quit now before I am all alone and closing down this bar metaphor at the end of the night.)
Whether or not to gate could be answered by asking a couple of questions. Do you need to increase your leads? Then you should gate. Do you need to build brand awareness? Then the content should be ungated and free.
The reality for most organizations is that the true answer is going to be a bit of both. You want to generate leads and build awareness. So the question is not if we should gate, but what we should gate and when we should gate it.
How to Create Gated Content
1. “Begin with the end in mind”
One of the seven habits of highly successful people, according to author Stephen Covey, is to “begin with the end in mind.”
Often, I think, we’re so busy executing the various tactics of our sales and marketing campaigns that we lose sight of the big picture. Also, we’re too focused on what we want from the prospect (e.g., Merriman’s version of a singles bar pickup line) and not considering the buyer’s needs. So we end up gating the wrong piece of content, or gating at the wrong time in the process.
Instead, we should invest the time to review (or create) our content marketing strategy and then map out a plan for gating some of that content. To do that, we need to begin with identifying or updating our target customer personas and our desired business objective(s).
2. Create a Buying Journey Map
Once we are reminded who is our target buyer, we need to next map out their buying journey. This can be done from actual data points we may have from their engagement history. From interviews and focus group studies, and from listening to what folks are saying on social networks and so forth.
3. Match Content to Different Journey Stages
Once we have a good grasp of our ideal customer persona and their buying journey, we should match the content we have to each stage of that journey. It’s important to remember that our buyer’s journey doesn’t necessarily match up with our sales funnel.
“The customer journey is not linear anymore. It’s not awareness, all the way through to the sale and then support,” said Kristy Bolsinger, senior manager of customer experience and optimization at F5 Networks, during a presentation on the customer experience at Portland’s SearchFest conference. “People are bouncing around all over the place. They are watching a YouTube video and maybe clicking a link from there. They are doing a tutorial on your website and maybe downloading a white paper. Maybe they are listening to somebody rant about you, hopefully positively, on Twitter. Their experience is multifaceted.”
The point is that different prospects will engage with some pieces of your content at different stages. For example, they may watch the same demo video at the top of the funnel, at the middle of the funnel, or at the bottom of the funnel. So creating a rule that you’re only going to gate MOFU or BOFU content may not work. That said, it’s better to gate content toward the bottom of the buyer’s journey. There the prospect is engaged, showing interest and intent in doing business with you.
This content lifecycle, used with permission from DigitalMarketer, illustrates how gate-worthy content can be used at every stage.
4. Identify Content Gaps & Opportunities
Once we have mapped the content to our ideal customer’s journey with us, we should be able to see where there may be content gaps. And we can also identify where there are opportunities to offer premium content that can include gated content. This could include developing an ROI calculator or assessment tool and requiring a gated form to see the results.
As Bolsinger points out, “There is an overlap of what you want to accomplish and what your customer wants to accomplish. You really need to focus your energy on that middle part. That is where the magic happens, where your common wishes, hopes and dreams come together.”
When done well, gating information can benefit both the prospect customer and the business. The key for successful gated content? Understand customers’ intent and to have ready high quality content for which your ideal customer is willing to trade their personal information.
At the end of the day, people don’t have a problem exchanging their email address. But only IF they feel like they’re going to get something they find valuable in return.
Summary
Gating content isn’t about limiting access—it’s about providing the right content to the right audience at the right time. By mapping content to the customer journey, identifying gaps, and aligning materials with buyer intent, organizations can balance lead generation with brand awareness. High-quality, strategically gated content can attract engaged prospects, improve conversion rates, and strengthen relationships, all while offering genuine value in exchange for user information.
See how marketing automation can help you strategically gate content and nurture leads throughout the customer journey. Check out Act-On’s solutions for demand generation.