The offers on your website are of considerable
importance from the viewpoint of lead generation and nurturing. These offers may include
eBooks, videos, presentations, webinars, demos, and free/trial products or services. Offers
may be openly accessible, or they may be gated.
A gated offer is one that
requires the user to fill out information in a form. Its purpose is to generate
leads. As such, the offer should serve as a conversation starter that could
lead to a sale. It should favourably influence your prospects so that they are
primed to accept your products and services.
Gating comes with pros and cons. One of the downsides is that gated content
is estimated to be 20 to 50 times less likely to be downloaded than openly accessible
content. Moreover, since gating blocks out search engines, the SEO value of the gated content
is lost, making it harder to earn links.
The key to getting better results with gated content is to minimize the form
size by reducing the number of fields. This can increase the chances of prospects completing
the form and downloading the content.
On the upside, gating yields useful information that provides some
context to the leads. And though it sieves out the many who are not prepared to fill out
forms and share their details, the leads secured via gating are usually those who more
committed and tend to have a stronger interest in your product offering.
