The Internet is a constant source of debate. Is the dress black and blue or white and gold? How do you pronounce GIF? Should your website have gated content? A new school of thought is emerging in the latter debate.
What is gated content?
Gating content requires users to provide information for access. Both B2C and B2B companies use the lead-generational tactic. For the last decade, websites have dangled exclusive case studies, ebooks, videos, and “complete guides” in front of users in exchange for the most valuable currency online—your email address (or sometimes your phone number—so they can send missives to your inbox or texts to your phone.
But, these days, just about everyone is savvy enough to know what will happen once we share that personal data, so many of us have started to “jump the gate.” Some of us bypass doing what digital marketers want by entering bogus contact information, seeing if we can find the same content elsewhere, or searching Google for “the asset’s title + pdf” to see if the search engine will serve up a direct link.
In response, digital marketers have been rethinking whether gating content remains worthwhile. Does it build customer trust and give the sales team quality leads, or does it just annoy users and drive them away? Conventional wisdom states that gated content still has a time and place. It remains a useful tool for gathering data critical for targeted email marketing—under certain conditions.
Our experience tells us the same thing, but we also see immense value in providing high-quality content for reasons other than lead generation. Read on for gated content examples that get results, plus learn about a middle-ground content marketing solution that we think settles the great gated content debate.
2025 gated content best practices
Why are we still bartering for email addresses using content marketing? It seems like we’ve been doing this for decades. In part, it’s because gathering email addresses to market to prospects’ inboxes remains a cost-effective strategy to help you reach your goals, even amid the constant evolution of social channels and advanced analytical tools.
Gated content: Statistics related to content offers’ effectiveness
The ROI for email marketing is $36 to $1, according to Hubspot’s 2024 State of the Marketing Report. One in three marketers reports using email, and 87% maintained or increased their investment in 2024. That’s significant. But, here’s where content marketing comes in: You can only use email as part of your strategy if you have good addresses for people in your target audience.
Hubspot also says that content strategy and production are the most challenging aspects of an SEO professional’s job. There’s never been more competition for audience attention. As email use continues to grow globally, collecting email addresses at every possible opportunity is tempting, and gated content remains one of the tried-and-true methods.
But fatigue is setting in, just as it is for tipping. USA Today reported that 63% of Americans notice more places asking for tips, and about half feel tipped out. While there are no similar statistics for providing an email address, the changing attitude among content strategists in favor of ungated content suggests they see similar writing on the wall. They are wary of becoming too greedy for email addresses, and they realize the allure of the quick score has overshadowed the most important goal: Content creation for SEO.
The new case against gating content
Dancing With the Stars charges $8 to $14 for cord-cutters to stream the hit show. It’s safe to say that the performance footage is a premium asset. And yet DWTS puts clips on social media for free, essentially ungating extremely high-value content. It just goes to show that gating isn’t sacred anymore. Content has a higher purpose than lead generation.
Before I address why attitudes have changed, let’s review the known advantages of gating content. Let’s say you coach entrepreneurs and spend a lot of money developing in-person seminars. You want to repurpose your intellectual property online to gain attention and build your brand, but giving it away feels silly when customers pay $10,000 to learn your strategies at the event. Enter the gated content.
Why content marketing campaigns don’t get the results they used to
You tease the videos. A landing page asks for an email address, name, location, and, if you’re B2B, the user’s company name, job title, industry, and staff size. Once the email is confirmed, you link to some of the video content. You’ve captured a potential sales lead and data for segmenting and will follow up later with emails. Or did you just run that person off forever? It depends on the goal of that content offer.
SEO and gating content
If you’re trying to increase traffic and visibility with your content, a gating form is now seen as friction. And if you aim to increase SEO and organic site traffic, gated content doesn’t help. Most search engines can’t crawl gated content to factor it into the SEO score.
Data collection from gated content
Also, it’s not worth capturing if you don’t have the technology or content strategy to make good use of the data you capture. You won’t know if your content is working. You’re putting up a barrier to your content for no reason.
Gated vs. ungated content
The prevailing wisdom among content strategists is that quality content should be ungated at the top of the sales funnel when building awareness and establishing trust with the customer. Ungated content will keep people engaged until they are ready to buy, at which point you can provide gated content farther down the pipeline.
Alternatives to gated content: Ideas for reaching today’s customers
And let’s say you don’t collect as many emails as you once did through gated content. That’s OK. There are other ways to target prospects at the account level with better tech and data-backed strategies, so sales don’t need that email as much anymore. Platforms like 6Sense and Bomba, for instance, provide intent data on your prospects, and account-based advertising helps you reach those potential customers with ads online.
Cogmis, a B2B lead-gen company, has moved away from gated content and settled on an 80/20 split—80 percent ungated, 20 percent gated. This formula has led to record-breaking revenue months. Compare that to the benchmark 10 years ago, when 80% of B2B content was gated.
Is gated content the only way to track content marketing performance?
No, that’s a myth. KPIs—measuring and analyzing data from organic search traffic, time on page, and keyword rankings—can be just as valuable. That said, if you are thinking about gating content, you might want to know what works and what doesn’t for lead generation. Here are some of the gated content types that we’ve recently seen continue to perform well for our clients:
- Buying guides
- Ebooks
- RFP template
- ROI calculator
- Definitive guides
- Analyst reports
- Software downloads
- Free consultations
- Product demos
- Enticing free trials
Content gating case studies
At TBH Creative, we’re still seeing valuable gated content get results for our partners, and here is a closer look at how we’ve used this tactic to help one of our healthcare clients.
Example: Packing checklist for labor & delivery
Our content marketing team created a packing list for expecting mothers to support a campaign promoting the hospital’s prenatal and obstetrics services. The content offer features a clean, printable, design, and the information is relevant and presented in an easy to scan format.
We put the asset behind a gate and it’s generated a slew of emails and geographic data, allowing us to nurture via email by sharing relevant additional resources (for brand building) and promote the client’s related service offerings.
Example: Is breastfeeding right for you?
Guides have also been a hit. We created a gated baby-feeding resource for the same client because, surprisingly, the Internet isn’t flooded with them. The hospital promotes it on Facebook and it continues to generate interest—and emails.
Pro-tip: Remember, if you’re going to gate, the content has to deliver on its promise. Disappointing users who provide data is a sure way to lose their trust.
Want more? Here is another pair of specific content gating examples that work well. Both are successful offerings because they provide content that’s hard to find elsewhere for free, immediately useful, offer original insights, and solve pain points:
When is content gating a good idea?
Everyone still gates some content, but today’s marketers are a lot choosier about when they do.
When researching this topic, I was curious about how many people still print out website content. The only clear data was from a 2016 study. Another search result suggested that Statista might have newer numbers, but—surprise, surprise—those findings were behind a gate:
I quickly put in an email address and answered half a dozen questions to gain access to the data. Why? Because apparently, it was my last hope for an answer. When gated content is high-value, people won’t hesitate to trade routine information to access it.
The takeaway: For users to find gated content worth trading an email for, it must meet most of these criteria. If you’re thinking about creating a piece of gating content to support a campaign, do this first before you spend time and money on its development.
Ask yourself if it will offer something that is:
- Hard to find elsewhere for free?
- Immediately useful?
- Offering original or first-party research, insights, or thought leadership?
- Solving a pain point?
Ideas for how to gate content in 2025
Today, users expect and want information to be free, but most are okay with paying a small price for convenience. So, what does that mean in practice? At TBH Creative, this tactic means creating and offering high-value content and sharing it on a webpage, but gating an option to download and save a printable pdf of the information.
This way, the user can experience the high-value content, and our client can realize its full benefit. If the content is good enough, readers will want to save it, so the client winds up with a qualified, real email anyway—from a user who has demonstrated strong interest in the brand.
Pro-tip: You can’t go wrong if you keep your users (and accessibility) in mind when making decisions about gating content. Most of the time, users prefer it if you put content on a web page instead of within a PDF. It’s easier to access, read, print, and optimize for mobile use.
A similar option is to offer related gated content as a dismissable option on your valuable ungated content offering. At that point, the user has found the information that they came for, and if you’ve presented something (as you should) that they found helpful, they’ll be more likely to want more. And if they pass on your offer, there’s a good chance that they aren’t ready for additional nurturing right now or (potentially) even a good fit for potential conversion down the road.
Is it time to update how you do content marketing?
Start by changing your focus. The key is to only invest in developing valuable resources that nurture existing customers (and foster greater brand loyalty) and attracts prospects (and helps build relationships). Additionally, they use analytics to track the performance of their content and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Successfully integrated gated content into your strategy in 2025 requires a thoughtful balance of exclusivity and accessibility—with a plan to use analytics to track performance and make adjustments as needed.
Go further with TBH Creative as your partner
If you’re struggling to get results or need help developing the right kind of high-value content, we can help. TBH Creative has been helping partners across industries grow conversions with a stronger understanding their audiences’ needs and the development of strategic marketing campaigns that reach buyers where they are. Let’s talk.
By the way, the dress was blue and black, and it’s a hard G in “gif.”
