We decided to remove (almost) all forms from our website and to ungate our content. This presentation provides insights into our lead generation process and why we decided to make a drastic change to it.

1. 1photo credit: Wayne Stadler Photography <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/38658617@N00/15531274085">Lonely Sounds</a> via <a
href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>
Content Ungating
Martin Karlowitsch
NETRONIC Software
December 2017

2. The Proven Way of Lead Generation
2
Website
& Blog
CTA
Landing
Page
Lead Gen
Form
Thank
You
PDF
Nurturing
(to MQL)
Sales
Funnel
€€€

3. Theoretical Question – #1
3
Website
& Blog
Landing
Page
Thank
You Nurturing
Sales
Funnel
100 100 5
100 visitors come to the website and click the CTA. They get to the landing
page and see the form. Only 5 folks fill out the form and read our content.
1
100 100
100 visitors come to the website and click the CTA. There is no landing page
and they get the content that they were interested in.
2
What is better? 5 people who read our content whom we know?
Or 100 people who read our content whom we do not know?

4. Theoretical Question – #2
4
Website
& Blog
Landing
Page
Thank
You Nurturing
Sales
Funnel
The assumption is, that lead nurturing helps people stay connected with us
and helps us further bring them into the “buying ready” zone.
What if people give a shit about our emails?
If our email engagement rates would be insanely low,
how would we answer the “100 vs 5” question?

5. Real-life Data (“all time”) – #1
5
Zeilenbeschriftungen Summe von
Views
Summe von
Clicks
Summe von
Submissions
Views --> Click Click -->
Submission
Angebot 15.885 436 92 2,7% 21,1%
Demo 46.855 789 49 1,7% 6,2%
Event 1.548 24 7 1,6% 29,2%
Kontakt 168.647 1.089 338 0,6% 31,0%
Mehr Info 200.264 2.280 24 1,1% 1,1%
Partner werden 50.825 316 81 0,6% 25,6%
PDF 97.437 1.260 636 1,3% 50,5%
Prototyp 25.300 617 65 2,4% 10,5%
Trial 363.696 6.698 1.775 1,8% 26,5%
Webinar 22.276 716 356 3,2% 49,7%
Gesamtergebnis 992.733 14.225 3.423 1,4% 24,1%
Our PDFs (ebook, whitepaper, checklist) have – by far! – the best click-to-
submission rate. 50% of all people clicking the CTA also fill out the form.
The proven way has been proven ;-)

6. 6
Hmmm …
Is this because we use the
“smallest” forms to gate these
documents and just ask for
name & email?
So: did the small hurdle to jump
encourage them to jump?

7. Real-life Data (“all time”) – #2
7
Puh.
This is damn good.
20% open rate and almost 4% click rate.
Seems that we are capable of providing content that matters.

8. 8
The 2 Sides of
Gated Content

9. Gated Content
9
• I am used to gating content.
• I gate content, because I feel that it
is valuable (to me and the user).
• Hence the user should give me
something in return (his email).
• Also, creating content is an
investments and I (Marketing)
need to prove the return (lead).
• Vendors feel that their content is
precious as they have so little
(the more rare something is, the
higher is the (perceived) value).
• As “quality” content is so rare, they
need to gate it to get value back.
• They are so happy, that their
content attracted me, that they
want to “lock” me in their CRM
system.
• Why do they think that they will
not attract me in the future again?
Vendor User

10. Gated Content
10
• Takes care for number of leads, not
if users enjoy the content.
• Makes big promise on landing
page. What, if user does not like
the content despite the promise?
Why would they want to hear
again?
• Risk of treating people as leads
instead of people.
Vendor

11. 11
Gated content
= hooks the prospect with
anticipation of value
Ungated content
= hooks the prospect with
delivered value

12. 12photo credit: Neil Tackaberry <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/23629083@N03/31886536264">magnetism</a> via <a
href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>
Where we are
1. We are able to create relevant content
2. We are able to do this regularly
Let’s turn content into a magnet,
and no longer have it as
“Marketing currency”!

13. What to Handle How
13
No Form Form Required
Blog Subscribe to blog
Ebook (**) Webinar registration
Whitepaper (**) Start / download trial
Checklist (**) Everything that requires human action
(1:1 demo, quote, support, call back)Demo guides (**)
Any kind of video
Webinar replay (**)
etc.
(**) = was gated before

14. Prerequisites
Content
1. Need to continue creating new content
2. Need to do this regularly
3. Need to make sure that content is high quality
(“storytelling”-type preferred)
14
Communication
1. Need to send out more (targeted) emails
2. Need to ask people to just leave us their email
addresses

15. 15
Free content
– from now
on!
Images with the exception of the title slide had been purchased via fotolia.