One of the most common questions I encounter when guiding our clients on their demand gen and account based marketing (ABM) program strategies is: How do I perform lead data collection without gated content?
This question has become even more urgent in today’s digital landscape, where AI summaries top the search results page and B2B buyers are increasingly leveraging tools like ChatGPT and AI agents to find the information they need.
These shifts in content delivery and consumption pose new challenges for marketers:
- AI-readable content gets prioritized. Whether buyers are getting information from an agent or an AI-powered search engine, the answers they receive will be drawn from content that has been scanned by AI, and this typically doesn’t (and shouldn’t) include gated assets. This means buyers may make crucial decisions without even seeing your content. Worse yet, they might rely on your competitors’ information simply because those sources were readily accessible to the AI—potentially leading to missed opportunities and a disadvantage in the competitive landscape.
- Old methods of lead tracking and attribution can’t tell the full story. AI-generated answers reduce the need for users to click through to traditional web pages. Why should B2B buyers submit their information to download a piece of gated content, enduring the friction of form completion and potential sales follow-up, when ChatGPT can get them the same information faster and without any such exchange?
With AI in the mix, it’s even more important to get rid of gates.
In my experience, the benefits of a frictionless content experience almost always outweigh the benefits of gating. The rise of AI puts companies that continue to gate the majority of their content at an even bigger disadvantage compared to their competitors who embrace ungated strategies.
AI also brings new opportunities to provide better, more streamlined experiences for B2B buyers while still being able to influence and properly attribute their activity through more sophisticated and indirect methods. I talk more about those below.
But first, here are the top four reasons I share with my clients for removing gates.
1. Reduce friction in the buyer’s journey.
Today’s B2B buyers expect self-service access to research and content. According to 6Sense, in over 80% of purchases, buying teams have already settled on their purchase requirements and a preferred vendor before ever speaking to sellers. Requiring forms or login gates can discourage potential buyers, especially those in the early stages of research from learning more about your solution and brand.
2. Facilitate content sharing.
With an average of 13 people now influencing B2B purchase decisions, the cumulative number of interactions before a buying group is ready for sales engagement can be substantial. In fact, 6sense’s “The Science of B2B” study found that each buying group participates in over 800 interactions with vendors throughout their journey.
While adding every buying group member to your database is ideal, consider this: Isn’t it more impactful to have three buying group members freely reading your ebook and building internal consensus, even if only one formally converts, than to gate it and potentially only capture a single lead while the others remain uninformed? Reaching and influencing more of the buying group, even without direct database entry for each, ultimately holds greater strategic value.
3. Build trust before asking for contact information.
Prospects without much prior experience with your company don’t have a good reason to give up their contact information. According to Salesforce, 64% of customers believe companies are reckless with customer data. If they do give you their information and the gated content—or subsequent offers—don’t provide value, they won’t likely want to engage further with your company. You’ll have a lead, but it won’t be a good one.
On the other hand, providing freely accessible content that is valuable to prospects is a great way to build trust for your brand. While this may reduce the volume of directly attributed leads, it can enhance brand perception and nurture relationships in a more organic way—leading to higher engagement and conversion rates over time.
And, once they’ve consumed a few assets and feel like your approach resonates, they’ll be more likely to give up that information to get something more.
How to capture lead data without gating.
Shifting away from form fills may feel like a leap of faith, but it doesn’t have to be. The modern marketing stack offers many more sophisticated and invisible ways to capture lead data while also providing a better buyer experience.
Here’s what I help our clients do instead.
1. Leverage data from your ABM platform to understand who is visiting your site.
ABM platforms often use reverse IP lookup and cookie tracking to associate website activity with known companies in your target account list. But your ABM platform doesn’t just track which target accounts are visiting your website; they often can tell you where those visits originate geographically. This location data, even at a broader city or regional level, can be invaluable in refining your understanding of your ICP contacts. For example, if you notice a surge in website engagement from target accounts located in a specific industry hub or a region known for early adoption of certain technologies, this location intelligence can strengthen your hypothesis about key characteristics of your ICP.
While you might not get the individual’s precise address without a form fill, the aggregate location data at the account level can provide crucial firmographic insights, helping you understand if your ideal customers tend to cluster in specific geographic areas, which can inform your broader marketing and sales strategies, including targeted advertising and event participation.
2. Take advantage of AI-powered lead scoring.
By leveraging AI-powered lead scoring, you can move beyond blanket content gating and optimize your lead generation efforts. AI algorithms analyze user behavior, demographic, and firmographic data to identify high-intent visitors. This enables you to selectively gate valuable content, offering frictionless access to promising prospects while gathering more information from less engaged individuals. For example, instead of requiring every visitor to complete a form for an ebook, you can set up a personalization that bypasses your form for those who are already in your database or are showing strong interest signals—like visiting multiple product pages or watching demos—dramatically improving their experience.
AI lead scoring provides invaluable insights into the likelihood of conversion, allowing for efficient prioritization of sales efforts. Leads are ranked based on their engagement and fit, enabling sales teams to focus on the most promising opportunities. This optimized resource allocation, coupled with the rich understanding of lead quality provided by the AI, fosters better alignment between sales and marketing teams. Ultimately, taking advantage of AI-powered lead scoring leads to higher conversion rates, improved sales efficiency, and a more targeted and effective demand gen strategy.
3. Engage leads with AI chatbots.
Imagine welcoming website visitors with an intelligent, AI-powered chatbot that initiates a real-time conversation, answering key questions and guiding users through your content. As users interact, the chatbot seamlessly gathers valuable lead information—such as their interests, pain points, and contact details—in a natural and engaging way.
This conversational approach enhances the user experience by providing instant value and delivers richer, more qualified leads. By collecting information as a byproduct of a helpful interaction, you build rapport and gain deeper insights into your audience’s needs, paving the way for more personalized and effective follow-up.
4. Unmask hidden intent by converting anonymous engagement into leads.
Tools like Revsure.ai and Warmly.ai offer a revolutionary approach to lead generation by employing sophisticated AI to deanonymize website visitors, identifying individuals and accounts even before they fill out a form. This goes beyond simple IP address tracking, leveraging various data points while adhering to privacy regulations.
Imagine a scenario where a prospect from a key target company repeatedly visits your pricing page and downloads an ungated case study. Traditionally, this valuable engagement would remain invisible until the visitor actively identifies themselves. However, with these AI-powered tools, your sales team receives an alert identifying the specific individual (where possible and compliant) and their company, along with details of their website activity.
This provides a crucial head start, enabling proactive and personalized outreach based on demonstrated interest, effectively turning previously hidden engagements into high-priority sales opportunities without the friction of mandatory forms.
What if I still want to gate my content?
There are definitely still situations where gating makes sense. Here’s what I tell clients to do to optimize their gated assets for conversion.
Use a hybrid content gating approach.
A hybrid content strategy strategically balances open access with targeted lead capture, much like a publisher with freely browsable sections alongside exclusive resources requiring a membership. Top-of-funnel content, such as blog posts and infographics, serve as open shelves, attracting a broad audience and showcasing expertise. Simultaneously, high-value assets like webinars and whitepapers form the exclusive collection, gated behind lead capture forms because their significant value justifies the information exchange for genuinely interested prospects.
Content syndication can be used to further amplify this strategy by placing gated content before targeted audiences on external platforms. Time-gating adds another dimension, creating urgency for valuable content like limited-time webinar replays, or exclusive early access to beta programs, encouraging prompt action and enhancing the overall effectiveness of this hybrid approach.
Be smart about your form fields.
When it comes to form fields, smart form design prioritizes a smooth user experience while capturing necessary lead information. For initial interactions, keep forms concise—I recommend only asking for the user’s name and email address. This may sound scary, but there are many enrichment platforms that integrate with CRM and MA platforms that can enrich contact information just based on first name and email!
As users engage with higher-value content, you can strategically introduce additional, relevant fields. This kind of progressive profiling allows you to enrich lead data without overwhelming users upfront.
Make your landing pages AI (and human!) friendly.
The best way to encourage buyers to exchange their info for your content is to show them what’s in it for them. Fortunately, making your landing page compelling for humans will also increase the chances of AI surfacing your landing page in search results. A few ways you can achieve this:
- Clearly explain the value proposition
- Use structured formatting, like clear headings and bulleted lists, to enable readers (and AI) to quickly understand what to expect from the content
- Tease key takeaways without giving away the entire value of gated asset
- Use industry-specific keywords naturally in your summary to increase the chances of your page showing up in organic and AI search
- Add a call-to-action that AI recognizes. Instead of generic terms, like “Submit” or “Download Now,” employ specific verbs and nouns that highlight the value proposition such as; “Unlock Your Personalized Marketing Guide” or “Watch the Exclusive Demo: See AI in Action.”
Evaluate the gate.
To effectively evaluate your content gate, monitor key metrics that reveal user behavior and conversion patterns. A high click-through rate on your ad but a low form completion rate suggests a disconnect between the ad’s promise and the perceived value of the gated content or the friction of the form itself.
Tools like Microsoft Clarity can provide invaluable visual insights, allowing you to see if users are hesitating or abandoning the page near the gate, indicating potential usability issues or a lack of compelling information. Analyzing the drop-off rate at the form stage, the quality of leads generated (e.g., conversion rates further down the funnel, engagement with subsequent content), and the overall volume of leads against your traffic will help determine if the gate is effectively capturing qualified prospects without hindering access for genuinely interested individuals.
Regularly reviewing these metrics and employing user behavior analytics will enable you to optimize your gating strategy for maximum effectiveness.
The Iron Horse insight.
Ungating your content is just one part of creating better buyer experiences. If you eliminate gates and you’re still not seeing the engagement you expect, it may be time to evaluate your overall GTM strategy, or see if your target audience understanding, paid media mix, or content are to blame.
