Let me start this article by explaining Inbound and Outbound marketing.
Inbound marketing is best described as a method of attracting prospects to your products or services through the creation of related content and incentives. The rich content is aimed at enticing people to share their personal information with you and/or make a purchase. Inbound marketing examples include: content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization
Outbound marketing, on the other hand, starts with some basic knowledge of your target audience and builds programs to educate those very specific prospects about your products and services in a meaningful way. Outbound marketing examples include: Tradeshows, TV commercials, radio commercials, print advertisements (newspaper ads, magazine ads, flyers, brochures, catalogs, etc.), cold calls, and email blasts.
What is Gated Content?
Gated content is any file, or online material, such as white paper, that is placed behind a prospect capture form. The form may just ask for the user’s name and email address or might demand more details, typically about their jobs and organizations. The form pages are sometimes referred to as information gates, or registration walls. In other words, a user must provide their information to access the content, typically an email address, phone number, or answer few questions.
For example, almost all B2B ebooks are gated. Just about every webinar is gated, you have to register to attend it. Even email newsletters are gated content unless their publishers offer an online archive of past newsletters, which most do not. Ungated content includes videos on YouTube and blog posts, and those are available without you having to share any personal information.
Gated content likely makes up most of the content marketing. The purpose of gated content is prospects generation – acquiring relevant information from potential prospects. Gated content falls under Inbound marketing category.
Why should someone use it?
Gated content is one of the best ways to capture valuable information about your prospects. Without gated content, visitors on your site may download your content in droves. That, however, may not help your marketing efforts as you will not be able to capture relevant information about your prospects.
Using Gated Content in Pardot
Gated content is something that helps you to hide white papers, case studies behind a form. It is a great way to convert anonymous visitors to prospect and reach out to them based Read the rest of this entry!
