Multi-channel Education Marketing Strategy & Demand Generation
By Emily Garner Sumner
“Should we gate this?” is one of the most frequent questions we hear from clients. And it’s no wonder why! It’s a surprisingly nuanced decision. The truth is, there isn’t a cut-and-dry answer for what to do. Like marketing itself, it’s part science, part art mixed with a dash of instinct. On top of that, you must know the K–12 market well enough to gauge if your offering stands apart from other “free” resources to warrant the barrier to entry.
Gating content has pros and cons, making the decision challenging. That said, we often walk clients through a series of considerations to help make the question easier to answer.
Before we look at those decision-making criteria, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what we mean by “gate”.
At Spyre, we use the term to indicate that educators will need to fill out a form in order to download or access the content. Typically, all promotions are directed to a landing page that contains a brief description of the content offering and a form to download it.
Once the form is completed, educators are redirected to a second landing page where the asset is available to download. You may also choose to send educators an email with a link to the content as soon as they fill out the form. That email might also include additional relevant resources or product information.
There are pros and cons to gating content, which is what makes the decision about whether to gate or not a challenging one sometimes.
The Big Pro: You capture educators’ contact information so that you can follow up with them using lead nurturing tactics. Additionally, filling out a form shows a deeper level of interest than simply clicking and downloading. If you have a lead scoring process in place, more points are generally awarded to form submissions than just clicking to download with no information required.
The Big Con: You’re making it harder for educators to access and interact with your content, which could decrease the number of educators exposed both to the content and to your brand. This could also stymie educators’ research and exploration for the products and solutions you have to offer.
Because gating content has advantages and risks, we ask clients these four questions when faced with the decision.
Educators’ contact information is currency. It’s what you’re asking them to pay for “free” content. So you need to consider whether your offer is worth their payment. If it’s not, you risk a negative interaction with a prospective lead that could damage your brand. Is the content:
If the answer is “yes” to any of the above questions, then you should NOT gate the content. All four of those content types are designed to support educators in the research phase of the buyer’s journey. They’re searching for solutions and getting to know not just your company but likely several others as well. Because of this, you don’t want to put up barriers to their exploration.
But, as with most things in life, there are exceptions. These exceptions are based on where educators are in the buyer’s journey. The research phase is very different from the consideration phase. While you might not gate a short product overview video that introduces educators to your solution, you may want to gate a recorded demo or a recorded Q&A with your product team. Here’s an example from our friends at ParentPowered. They provide ungated access to a 2-minute product overview video but have gated a 12-part, self-guided tour of their family engagement program.
There is also a hierarchy of value based on the format of the content you’re sharing. Is the content brief or “meaty”? Content like eBooks, playbooks, toolkits, and full-length webinars should absolutely be gated (unless they are purely about your product and then you may want to reconsider). We typically do not gate short infographics or short videos (like an excerpt from a webinar).
A gray area is short-form content like worksheets and checklists. Depending on the nature of the information shared, these items may or may not be gated. Like infographics, these shorter-form content pieces can be nice freebies to support educators’ research and “getting to know” you. But if they contain really high-value information, such as product features or pricing information, you may want to gate them. Again, having in-depth knowledge of the particulars of the K–12 market helps discern the gray areas.
Blogs/articles should not be gated. Blogs are often optimized for search engines so keeping them top level in your site’s organizational infrastructure is important. Blogs are also great thought leadership content that can be used to build trust and relationships with educators. While we don’t recommend gating blogs, we do recommend including a CTA within each of the articles that invite educators to sign up to receive notifications of new blogs and other valuable content from your organization. You may also consider in-line “ads” for blogs if you have corresponding long-form gated content, such as an in-depth eBook on the topic.
I’ve made a few comments already about how the phase of the buyer’s journey you’re targeting impacts the decision of whether to gate a piece of content. As a general rule, high-level product information, product use cases, and customer stories should be easy to access in the early stages of the buyer’s journey. As educators move into the consideration and decision-making phases of the journey, gating in-depth product information can be a good indicator of the seriousness of an educator’s interest in your solution.
In addition to considering the phase of the buyer’s journey the content supports, also think about what you’re hoping to achieve with the content. Are you sharing it specifically for lead generation purposes or to establish thought leadership and your brand? If getting your content into as many hands as possible is your goal then don’t gate. If you’re looking for leads, gate.
Where educators encounter your content can also influence whether to gate it or not.
Educators come to your website through organic search email, social media, and education publications like SmartBrief, Education Week, and Chalkbeat, so it’s best to have a mix of gated and ungated content on your website. Ungated content helps keep educators on your site longer and explore more. Ungated product content can answer questions for educators as they research solutions, and ungated thought leadership content helps build your company’s expertise and develop trust with educators.
If educators have registered for a webinar and you’re sharing additional content, there is an expectation that the content will not be gated. You’ve already captured educators’ contact information when they registered so there is no need to gate the webinar takeaways.
We also recommend leaving content shared through the lead nurture email series ungated. However, depending on your marketing management platform and lead scoring system, you may need to create simple gates on content shared with existing leads to calculate points based on engagement. In this case, ask educators to enter only their email addresses to access the content.
If you’re sharing content through paid advertising channels, you absolutely should gate the content so that you can attribute leads to that channel and calculate the ROI of each publication. Similarly, gating content shared through paid social or Google ads will help determine ROI and inform future budgeting decisions. This recommendation assumes that the content you’re advertising also meets some of the other criteria outlined above (e.g. is long-form and value-rich and not a product-heavy piece).
While I hope what I’ve outlined provides helpful guidance when you’re next faced with the decision of whether to gate a piece of content, there is no one right or wrong answer to the question. It comes down to your sales and marketing goals and how each piece of content can help achieve those goals. It also requires having an experienced eye. We love discussing the gate/no gate dilemma, so reach out if you’d like us to weigh in on your next piece of content!
About EmilyEmily loves to work with education businesses to help them connect with educators through targeted, content-driven marketing campaigns. Lucky for her, she gets to do that every day as CEO of Spyre Marketing. Emily holds a Masters of Library and Information Science and in her free time loves to knit, eat doughnuts, and ride her bike up big mountains. Though rarely all at the same time.
