Not all visitors to your site are there to absorb free information like blog posts or videos. You can send traffic to your site by using password-protected blog posts where you host a challenge or product for buyers. This is known as gated content.
You can also do this for subscribers at no cost if you wish, it's another way to gain subscribers. What happens is, that regular visitors will land on your website hoping to access the content, and they’ll need to sign up or purchase it to get the information they want.
To use gated content best, you mustn’t block every bit of your content to the public. If you do, you’re also blocking search engines, and you’re not giving your audience enough chance to get to know you so that they can make their purchase. It’s a good idea to give some measure of usable, relevant and interesting content before adding your gate.
Make Gated Content Special
Content such as white papers, webinars, eBooks, reports, and even professional-level questions and answers are perfect to use for gated content, if you don't use a challenge or paid product. Some business owners successfully gate forums and private Facebook Groups in order to collect leads. If those who sign up feel special, they’ll happily give over their information.
Gated Content Should Provide Value
If your content is too general in nature, it should not be gated. The gated content should be valuable enough and specialized enough that someone would be willing to pay money for it. If it’s just more keyword-rich content full of general information it should not be behind a gate; it should be attracting search engine traffic. When creating gated content, ask yourself if you’d pay for this information before putting it behind a gate.
Create a Community
A very valuable way to create gated content that people will be happy to sign up for is to create a community around the information. You might include a forum, free webinars, and information that is so exclusive and special that the community will happily pay for it, but they currently receive the information because they are part of your unique community.
Subscription-Worthy Information
It depends on your niche, but some highly successful and informative online magazines and newspapers not only require a sign up to view the information – they also require payment. They get paid when the person signs up; they also collect the name to use as a lead for many different uses and marketing. If your information is worth a small payment, people will be more than willing to sign up if given a taste first. If you decide to market this information with partners as mainstream media organisations do, ensure you are GDPR compliant.
Pros & Cons of Gated Content
Pros:
- Increases loyalty
- Increases time on site
- Can be an additional revenue stream
- Can help position you as an expert in your niche
Cons:
- Can be technical to set up
- Can be hard to determine what's pillar content and what's gated content
- Can upset some members of your community
Conclusion:
Even though you have gated the content, to create even more leads, put share buttons on the content. When the lead’s friends see the share, they’ll click through and be given a teaser, then be prompted to sign up to read the rest or receive the information. Because a friend shared it, they’re more likely to want to view the gated content.
Additional Resources:
- Thrive Leads is perfect for creating your email gate
- Convertbox also works well for this
