Why you shouldn’t gate your most valuable content.

I recently suggested it was time to kill the B2B case study as we know it because the way marketers have been writing them is ineffective and wasteful of a good opportunity. Apparently a bunch of people agreed, commenting that they also believe that customer storytelling is a more effective and impactful way of cutting through some of the "look at me" noise in the content game to reach prospective customers and partners.

Turns out that there's another problem with B2B case studies beyond just what we call them or how we write them. There's also an issue with how we promote them.

In the past several months, I've encountered a number of companies that inexplicably insist on putting their customer stories behind a content gate. Sure, I understand that collecting prospect data—especially their contact information—is crucial to marketing teams' core responsibilities of generating leads and the like.

But think for a minute if that type of content in that scenario is really the best time to ask a prospect to hand over their information in exchange for some information. (Hint: it's not).

A premium price for standard content

At some point in the relatively recent past, content gating—putting an asset behind a download form—was a novel idea. As marketing automation technologies matured and became indispensable pieces of the marketing function, content gating exploded in popularity.

But like many popular things in the world, the use of content gates got out of hand. Quickly. Everyone started gating everything, chasing leads in hopes of meeting and beating their quarterly or annual goals. And while gating is now a widely accepted best marketing practices, many seem to have forgotten that not all marketing content carries the same weight or value, either from the business's perspective or the prospect's.

Assets like eBooks, white papers, and industry reports are what many consider "premium" or "thought leadership" content. They require more time and effort to build and focus on educating audiences about a particular subject or industry challenge that either everyone is currently facing or will be in the future (when they discover it the hard way).

This kind of collateral deserves to be gated—it's resource intensive, higher value intellectual property with unique insights or solutions. It's the kind of information prospective buyers want to get their hands on and will happily fork over their contact information in exchange for it.

Blogs, articles, and infographics sit at the other end of the content value spectrum. They may offer a helpful tip or two, but generally they're superficial visits to a subject and aimed largely at announcing the world "hey, we exist and have some opinions! Come read our stuff!" Aside from the few odd people who just get a kick out of watching their inboxes fill up with irrelevant messages, not many people would be willing to sacrifice such valuable inbox real estate for such a low-value bit of copy.

Stuck in the middle with you

This brings us to customer success stories. On the one hand, a well-written customer story (or nicely produced video) takes a fair amount of time, specialized skill, and effort to produce. For many marketers, that level of commitment means they're more like white papers and ebooks than they are like blogs or social media posts.

But on the other hand, the entire point of a customer success story is to provide a third-party perspective on the value of your company's products or services. Whereas thought leadership and low-value marketing content like blogs are both intended to let the world know that you exist, your success stories are there to show the world why you exist. They should speak to a prospect's business pain points, their curiosity about the customer experience, and, of course, what kinds of business outcomes they can expect by choosing your company over a competitor.

It's exactly the kind of information and insight you want in the hands of your prospects as early, as often, and as easily as possible.

When you think of customer success stories in the proper context—that they're more sales support materials than lead generation pieces—it becomes increasingly clear that hiding them behind a content gate and making them more difficult to access undercuts their value. So please, marketers, stop gating your customer stories. Your prospects and your sales teams will thank you.