You have produced an excellent ebook along with a checklist and a how-to PDF. You’ve gated the content behind various calls to action including on a resources section of your website.
All a website visitor has to do is click a call-to-action banner and then enter some basic information into a form to gain access to your gated content.
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 five reasons.
1. Your website doesn’t attract enough visitors
A classic marketing funnel has website visitor conversions within the top stage — and new customers at the bottom stage.
To add more prospects to the top of the funnel, you need to drive more traffic toward un-gated content to, in turn, drive more people toward your gated content.
One way to attract more website visitors is by consistently publishing valuable blog content for your audience. It’s also more important than ever to distribute your original content across multiple channels.
Consider optimizing your landing page for search so that the page directly attracts more organic search visitors.
2. You don’t have contextual calls to action
Ideally, your blog content should include calls to action that relate to the content that 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 from the visitor
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 can limit your forms to the bare minimum — name and email address — your conversions will likely 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 forms, pop-up forms, and a resource page.
One reason for creating landing pages is that you can include direct links to these pages from other parts of the web, such as social media posts and Medium articles.
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 aren’t seeing sufficient value in your offer
Visitors are seeing your CTAs and going to your pop-ups or landing pages, but the offer isn’t compelling enough to get people 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. Make sure you think through your landing page copy and hire a copywriter if necessary. Alternatively, try out a copywriting AI like Jasper that can suggest landing page copy for you.
Gating content can still be effective, but it’s more important than ever for marketers to get all the components right.
