Hubspot has long been a favorite ‘pipeline’ platform for many agencies. However, many who start on the platform feel forced to ‘gate’ their content, often as part of the training that has to happen to understand how the program works. 

On this platform, marketers are taught to put everything behind an email form, enabling them to collect as many emails for the ‘pipeline’ as possible. This collection of information shows how many companies still measure marketing performance, with some tech vendors even pushing this somewhat outdated lead generation mentality. 

But what happens when you stop gating content? 

Stop Gating Content 

Gating content as the only way to get things done doesn’t work anymore. Many marketers feel that following the tried and true method is the only way to succeed, but there are other paths. Hiding content away behind an email form, essentially gating it from consumers, just isn’t the best approach. Teams can quickly determine what is going on with their buyers and their journeys using qualitative research such as customer calls, events, and email buyer surveys. Hiding content from the buyers only prevents those individuals from accessing relevant insights they need to navigate the buying process independently. 

And that no longer makes sense. Because the truth is that buyers no longer rely on Google searches to do their research. Most real discovery and evaluation takes place inside the individuals’ private networks, be it their community, on social media, through word-of-mouth, etc. 

Thus a change is needed.

What Comes Next?

So what exactly happens when marketers stop gating content? When they drop every form from their websites, stop every lead gen campaign, and remove every form from their social media pages? Well, that is when the magic happens. 

• Start Getting Better Leads – When teams stop prioritizing MQLs as the primary marketing metric, it creates a fundamental shift in evaluating and optimizing marketing. Rather than try to collect thousands of emails to spam, marketers can instead focus on helping buyers empower themselves and allow them to complete most of the sales process on their own rather than being walked along step-by-step. This resulted in an increase in high-intent, qualified accounts that were ready to buy and speak to the sales team.
• Create Better Content – When marketers can no longer hide solely behind the number of emails they have collected, they are often forced to produce content that will instead impact both the buyer and the pipeline. This switch drives revenue as they adapt and enhance the quality and frequency of their content to new levels. Essentially, you produce better content out of sheer necessity when you un-gate the content.
• Allow Better Distribution – When content is gated, every interaction is forced to funnel into one direction. This direction usually winds up being the landing page of a website. However, research shows that most buyers don’t want to go simply to a landing page, and they don’t want to give up their privacy to read whatever content is there. By un-gating content, marketers can distribute far beyond the website and instead move their content to where the buyers are or where they are looking to purchase from. Buyer surveys often reveal that they are actively in discussions on dark social platforms such as private communities or Slack and Whatsapp groups, so being able to shift where the content lies means catching more buyers with better content.

Are you ready to drop the gates, stop the email chasing, and focus on creating real demand with well-distributed insight? Let the MKC Agency help you unlock your true potential and show you how to remove the gates on your marketing today!