You have produced an excellent ebook, a checklist, and a how-to PDF. You’ve gated the content behind various calls to action, including in a resources section of your website.
To access your gated content, a website visitor simply clicks a call-to-action banner and enters some basic information into a form.
Now, you can sit back and wait for the new leads to flow in. The sales team is counting on it to bring in new business.
But this part of your lead generation strategy is not working. No one is trading their information for your helpful content.
Why is this happening? Here are six reasons.
1. Your website doesn’t attract enough visitors
A classic marketing funnel places website visitor conversions at the top stage and new customers at the bottom.
To add more prospects to the top of the funnel, you need to drive more traffic to ungated content, which will attract more people to your gated content.
One way to attract more website visitors is by consistently publishing valuable blog content for your audience. Distributing your original content across multiple channels is also more critical than ever.
Consider optimizing your landing page for search so it directly attracts more organic search visitors.
2. You don’t have contextual calls to action
Ideally, your blog content should include calls to action related to the content the visitor just read.
For example, if someone just read a blog post that compares three leading ERP brands and the call to action is to download a CRM buyer’s checklist, the CTA is not contextual. A CTA for downloading an ERP buyer’s checklist would make much more sense.
3. Your forms require too much information
It’s not unusual to see a gated content form that looks something like this:
There’s an inverse correlation between the number of fields on a web form and the number of conversions you’ll get.
If you limit your forms to the bare minimum to qualify leads, your conversions will go up.
4. You didn’t create separate landing pages for your gated content
It’s essential to have landing pages in addition to inline and pop-up forms, as well as a resource page.
One reason to create landing pages is that you can include direct links to them from other parts of the web, such as social media posts.
You can also direct paid ads to your landing pages. In some cases, you may be able to attract visitors directly to a landing page through organic search.
5. People don’t see sufficient value in your offer
Visitors see your CTAs and click through to your pop-ups or landing pages, but the offer isn’t compelling enough to get them to submit a form.
Before form submission, it doesn’t matter how good or bad a gated content piece is. What matters is the value the person thinks they’ll get.
This is where compelling copy comes into play. The copy on your landing page is critical for conversions. Ensure you think through your landing page copy and hire a copywriter if necessary. Alternatively, use a copywriting AI to suggest landing page copy.
Gating content can still be effective, but marketers must ensure all the components are in place.
6. The buyer market has changed
According to Jon Miller, “Our buyers are staying unknown and anonymous for longer.” There is a general indifference to gated content.
However, if you create enough value and package it properly, you can still get gated content downloaders.
Even when gated content underperforms as a lead generator, the ungated content surrounding it still delivers value — there are significant non-quantifiable benefits of content marketing that build brand trust over time.
