Is Gated Content Really The Enemy?
We all know and hate the gated content playbook. You give your email to download an ebook, then get dropped into a bad nurture sequence or sales cadence. But is a gate with good intentions really that bad?
Mike, I was on Instagram threads today.
Remember that thing?
I don't know.
You still want it?
It's Instagram.
What threads?
Yeah, I know.
I know.
I haven't been on there since the.
I haven't been on there since the.
Elon, the longest.
Yeah, but so it's it's it's it's still a thing.
Yeah, it was.
It is.
I think.
But I was on there just scrolling forward.
I think I had some notification and I don't know why.
But I just have to get rid of my notifications when I went up.
It's really annoying.
And I saw that we were like semi semi called out as a company.
Now we weren't at mentioned.
It was actually kind of interesting.
Cause I was just like in my feed, like, and I saw my face, which was very
concerning.
I'm a little traumatizing.
But there's this person that basically was calling us out for basically.
I don't call them out.
I don't want to get why not.
I don't even remember their name, to be honest with you.
Oh, there's a male on the internet.
That's that's basically a man on the internet.
We get our.
That's how every bad story starts.
I know man on the internet with an anonymous man.
Florida, right.
But go ahead.
Go ahead.
OK, so we had just done a webinar a few weeks ago all around the value of using
the exclusive content as a function of driving your own audience, basically
converting your audience into a traffic effectively into known subscribers by
strategically leveraging exclusive content.
And we made it a point to call out that when we say exclusive content, we don't
mean necessarily gated content, or at least that there's a there's some
an evolution of the concept of throwing a form gate in front of a video unn
aturally.
And then another blog or another ebook or whatever where we're sort of
tricking our audience into filling out a form so that we can then dump them
into
a email, nurture cadence or whatever the case is with this idea of exclusive
content,
which is meant to be of high value.
And we've built a platform that ultimately is people subscribe once they get
access to everything much like you would with sub stack or patreon or any of
these
other tools in the consumer context.
And what this random internet person was calling us out for was that that very
webinar, we made exclusive to our to our audience, to our subscribers.
So you'd have to be a subscriber to read this piece of content.
Yeah.
And he sort of took issue with the fact that we were talking about why
exclusive
content isn't gated and we quote unquote gated it from from their perspective.
And so I wanted to open up this this conversation with you because
this is something that I think gating content is something that really gets
people riled up this conversation.
And so what's your perspective?
Let's start at the highest level here about should you gate content?
Should you not gate content?
I feel I feel kind of silly even bringing this one up, but.
Um, yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
So, um, I, I think like whether you should or shouldn't gate something.
Uh, I gotta take a step back.
We need ways to communicate with our potential buyers, right?
As marketers, like there's no getting away from that.
Like if someone's visiting your site and reading all your blogs and, you know,
consuming all of your content and they're, you know, on dark social, they're
seeing all your posts and all sort of stuff.
Like if they do not like request a demo or agree to take a meeting with you or
like fill out their email address to see the demo center or download a case
study
or like until they make themselves known to you, then you're like kind of in
the
dark, right?
And then modern marketers can't really like do our job.
Like we need to be able to forecast the pipeline and tell the CFO like how the
things that we're doing are working or not working.
And like, have we gotten into a mode where like we're, we're focused on making
the,
the cell on the spreadsheet that says MQL target green over focusing on like
driving the revenue up and delighting our customers and doing all the stuff
that marketers are supposed to do a hundred percent.
Like the whole thing has gotten totally like spun out and perverted from it's
like original thing, which was meant to be like a helpful leading indicator for
marketers to understand if they're engaging the right people.
Now it's like the MQL target is like tied to your comp.
And so you do all this on natural shit.
Do it.
Okay.
So just setting the stage there.
Yes.
I think whether or not you gate something is directly related to how good the
marketing
is, how valuable it is to the person who you're trying to reach.
And it could be, it could be so valuable that like maybe some paradigm that we
've
never even explored exists.
Like you make something that's like worth a thousand dollar one time purchase.
Like that people are probably listening to this and being like that's insane.
But like you can imagine.
Oh, it's attending.
Attending.
Yeah.
We should have more than that.
Yeah.
Like where something that good exists and like in that case, like you would
gate it because like people would buy it and they would tell you who they are.
Right.
Right.
Um, I don't think that you should gate things that are not super valuable.
But I would also just back up and say like nobody cares if something's
gated or not gated.
I don't think that I don't think they do.
I also don't think people really care about what happens to them after.
Uh, like they're not just because you throw them into a nurture cadence.
Doesn't mean that people are allergic to nurture cadences.
It means your nurture cadence sucks.
If they don't like it, right?
Like, or the, or I don't like being called or forced into a sales cycle.
If I didn't opt into one, don't put people into a active sales cycle.
Yeah.
Because they downloaded the ebook, right?
Like, and this is where I think like the details really matter is if somebody
like downloads a piece of content that is, um, you know, related to some
business
problem and the follow up or the nurture cadence or whatever.
The thing that happens afterwards is like deeply related to the insights
from that particular thing related to their industry and their job is focused
on trying to help them or add value to their life.
Then I think it's like totally fine to do the entire like marketing industrial
complex the way that it exists.
You know, like imagine someone goes to your site and like download or subscribe
to like, let's say you're like a sock to compliance bender.
Okay.
Uh, a senior director of IT at a series B startup is on your site and they like
download the 10 steps to sock to compliance checklist or whatever.
We just did this this week, by the way.
So this is.
Yeah.
So.
The contention of the person who was commenting online was like people want
that
checklist.
They don't like what happens after.
Um, I don't, I think that there's a way to make what happens after that.
Really, really interesting.
Like, for example, you probably have a subject matter expert CIO on your team.
If you're the company who's providing sock to compliance stuff, like instead of
being like, do you want to spend 30 minutes of your time getting sold by a,
you know, mid market account executive that I can intro you to?
What if you were like, Hey, click here to book 10 minutes with our CIO with
this
background who can help advise on your next product strategy.
Yeah.
And like, that's just a completely different thing.
So I think it's like a value and offer alignment can make gating, like,
gating or not, gating is like a not the right question to ask.
It's like, are we adding a lot of value at every stage of this relationship
with
the customer that's worth them giving up their information or their dollars or
their time or whatever.
And if it's not like when something's not good, people don't like it.
When something is good, people are like, give me more of the thing.
So like, I just, I don't know this all.
I hate this conversation because it's like it's all to me, it always comes back
to
like, is your marketing good or is your marketing shitty?
And if it's shitty, like, guess what people aren't going to like, like to go
through a gated form or subscribe to a membership or be told by your team
automatically.
Like, of course.
Yeah, but if it's good, then they're going to be like, I want more of where
that came
from.
And so this all comes down to like, is your team delivering value for your
target audience?
Or are they not?
Because if they're, if they are, then I don't think this gating versus
ungating thing really matters that much personally.
And you know, again, a lot of our inspiration comes from looking at the
consumer world.
And I don't, you know, you look at the sub stacks and patreons and so many
other
examples and this conversation just doesn't happen.
Yeah.
Like, you don't hear this.
Like the only real value to your point is like the quality of the
and craftsmanship of what these creators are doing.
And if it's good, then not only are you happy to give them your email address
to
your point, you're willing to pay for it.
You want to pay for a newsletter that's insane or to subscribe to like whatever
you're subscribing to on Patreon.
You have the opportunity to consume something and it only costs you an email
address or whatever.
But that only works if the thing that you're consuming is good.
Yeah.
I mean, think about like the entire YouTube thing, right?
It's like a people know it's like like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like
so think about how that works.
You go the discovery engine puts you in front of a video.
The person does something in the beginning of the video because like hook
testing and all that stuff is really, really important.
They do something that's really valuable and entertaining and they get you
hooked
in and then they're like, hey, if you liked what you saw so far, like and
subscribe.
And now I'm making it much easier, the space between your access to my content
got way closer.
Yes.
But the first thing is deliver really, really good stuff that the person
decided they liked a lot.
So it's like once you go over that hurdle, it's like the mechanism is like who
cares?
So the important part is did you hook them in and did the person go, oh, I
want like there's a guy Kevin with Epic Gardening.
They're one of our customers and he's huge on YouTube.
Creates tons and tons of content about about gardening.
People love it.
And it's like, you know, he's adding tons and tons of value where people are
like, oh,
I'm going on a gardening journey.
And this guy Kevin seems like someone I should learn from.
I'm going to like and subscribe to his stuff and now like I'm getting Kevin in
my
life all the time.
Yeah.
It's like the like and subscribe isn't the part that's like the worth innov
ating on
the content he's putting out, the hooks, the visualizations, the thumbnails,
all
the stuff that shows somebody, this is really, really, really valuable.
That's the stuff to iterate on.
Yeah.
Earns you more likes and subscribes.
And so I just think like people get the whole thing.
But no one's thinking about it that way, right?
Like that's the, that's this mission that we're on.
Yeah.
It is like you're using a YouTube analogy that has fundamentally been something
that
we as consumers have engaged with and we're on the other end of, but then like
the
historical context is you go to work and you come up with like whatever your
boss
tells you to create whatever ebook and you form gate it and then you sort of,
it
doesn't matter if your marketing is good or not.
You're, you're, you're, you're just enrolling people into some like,
predefined nurture sequence and your job's done.
Um, and so I think that's something that's really compelling.
What we've talked about to try to decode this for B2B companies with what
exactly
literally what you just said was give away 80% of your content and your job in
giving that away.
Sure.
There might be some like SEO components and all of this for, for a portion of
it.
But overall it's to demonstrate value and give away that value, whether it's
educational, entertaining, like an inspirational, whatever it is you're trying
to do so that when you're pulling back that 20% that's exclusive or gated or
however you want to phrase it, um, people already have sort of a cognitive
reference of the type of content that PostScript is creating or name your
company is creating.
Um, so I think it's, it's easy to pick on one gated asset in isolation, but I
think that, you know, our job is market, first of all, like just to sum up this
conversation with the things really good one is like, is to do good marketing,
be give enough away for free, see, test the cost action and points of
conversion there to actually get people topped in.
But I think that's predicated on D, which is create incredible gated content
or exclusive content or whatever you want to call it or events and experiences
or whatever it is that is of premium value or however you want to find
something
people will be willing to pay for and don't make them pay for it.
Just make them give you an email address in order to access it.
So, um, anyway, I'm with you.
I think anyway, yeah, it's like common sense, right?
Yeah.
It's like, a people on the internet love to troll, right?
Like they love to say, okay, a content is evil or whatever.
They never carried a bag.
You'd not only have they not carried a bag, but like again, that's like that
part of it doesn't matter.
It's so right.
It's like, you know, the.
If you're not, um, helping your ideal customers solve a really important
problem
or entertaining them or hopefully a really nice combo of both.
Yeah.
And then none of it matters because that means that you're not like breaking
through the noise and then that's where like the gating of a thing becomes a
hack,
you know, like, you know, and that's what people react to because you're trying
to like use, um, access level hacks to cover up the fact that your marketing
wasn't helpful or entertaining.
Right.
And feel like that's worth attacking, right?
Like that that's, that's not good.
But if you just focus on solving your customers problems and making it as
entertaining as possible, um, where they're going to want to see it and come
back.
Like, I don't know about you, but like I've probably downloaded a thousand e-
books
in my life and they go in my download folder.
I dragged them into like a miscellaneous folder on my desktop.
Never read them.
I never read one of them.
You're just made it out of downloads.
That's two steps back.
Sometimes I'll drag it out and I'll be like, Oh, I'm going to put that on my
desktop.
So one day I remember to potentially read it.
And then like three weeks later, I see it on there.
I just drag it into the most length, mid-slane and then it never sees the light
of day again.
Right.
So it's like what did I think it's right to understand that that's probably
what happens.
And if your whole marketing thing is like built to get a PDF to show up in
someone's download folder and then you're like, yes, got one.
Yeah.
You're off.
You're doing the wrong stuff.
Yeah.
But you should really be focused on is creating stuff that people are like, Oh,
I can't wait to like actually digest this, whether it's a video or a download
or
a webinar, whatever the whatever the heck it is.
If it's good enough, that won't happen.
It won't end up in a miscellaneous folder that ends up getting drug into
trash six months later and never sees light of day.
So like focus on making good stuff, not on trying to get people to like trick
them to give you their email, like create something.
That's worthy of it.
And then no one will care if there's a gate or there's not.
Love it.