Free Slideshare for B2B Marketers: 5 Reasons to Gate Lead Nurturing Content It’s a common belief amongst B2B marketers that content offers in a lead nurturing campaign, as different from a lead generation program, don’t require forcing the respondent to complete a registration form. The theory, often expressed, is that “we already know who these people are.” However, in practice, gating lead nurturing content makes sense more times than not. It’s not essential that all lead nurturing content be gated, or even that all lead nurturing emails have an offer in the first place, but it is a good idea to host most nurturing offer content behind a landing page and registration form. In this brief, engaging slideshare presentation from the lead nurturing experts at Spear Marketing Group, discover the top 5 arguments for gating offer content when appropriate. To receive monthly tips, strategies and information on upcoming events about demand generation, event marketing, and more, be sure to subscribe to The Point.

2. It’s not essential that all lead nurturing content be gated, or
even that all lead nurturing emails have an offer in the first
place, but it is a good idea to host most offer content behind
a landing page and registration form, even in the context of
lead nurturing.
Here’s why:

3. A click is not a response.

4. If you send the prospect directly to the content (say, a white
paper) upon him or her clicking in the email, how confident can
you be that the individual is expressing an active interest in your
topic? People click on a whim, out of idle curiosity, even by
accident. It’s why click-to-lead conversion rates are never 100%,
no matter how good your landing page.
If you score clicks as “responses,” you risk over-inflating the value
of leads who may only have passing interest in your content. Put
another way, it’s OK if you “lose” some people in the process,
because those who choose not to complete the registration form
(see #2, below) probably weren’t too interested in the first place.
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5. You’re not really asking for much.

6. If you utilize a marketing automation platform, the registration
form on your landing page will be pre-populated with the
prospect’s contact information, so conceivably all he/she has to do
is click on the “submit” button. Sure, strictly speaking, it’s one
more step, but it’s not much of a barrier.
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7. Landing pages help drive further engagement.

8. If you choose not to employ landing pages in your nurturing
campaign, you’ll miss the opportunity to employ “progressive
profiling,” a feature common to most marketing automation
systems by which you can serve up additional questions
incrementally to a prospect as he/she engages with your
campaign. Progressive profiling is an ideal method for capturing
both additional demographic data (company size, industry) to
drive campaign segmentation, and behavioral data that can
help identify hot leads.
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9. Promote social media connections.

10. When someone completes a registration form, you can serve up a
confirmation page that thanks the individual for his/her interest,
and provide links to additional resources, social sharing links, or
secondary, “next step” offers – a Webinar, a demo, a free trial – to
move the prospect further down the sales cycle.
In addition, if you fulfill the content via email (as we’d
recommend), you can deliver the same links in that email, plus
you’ll have the benefit of knowing when or if the individual
actually accessed the content, at which point you could choose to
trigger sales follow-up (or, in the absence of any action, send an
email to the prospect reminding him/her to read the content.)
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11. You’ll never know if your content was read by someone else.

12. If your nurturing email is forwarded to a friend or colleague, and
that colleague accesses your (ungated) content, you won’t know
the difference. Maybe that second person is the real decision-
maker or a key influencer. With a landing page, you’ll at least have
the opportunity to capture his or her contact information.
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13. Spear Marketing Group is a full-service demand generation agency
that helps B2B technology companies generate, nurture, and
convert leads to revenue. Our services include email marketing,
search engine marketing (SEM), content syndication, lead
nurturing, digital advertising, social media, and content
development. For more information, visit us on the Web at
www.spearmarketing.com
Additional resources:
White Paper: Top 10 B2B Email Marketing Mistakes
White Paper: Effective Lead Generation Offers for High-Technology Companies
Blog: The Point – Best Practices & Principles in B2B Demand Generation