Gated vs Ungated Content: What We Would Do

If you've searched this up on Google, a glance at any search engine results page for this topic will reveal just how controversial it is.

Traditionally, inbound marketing relied on authoritative gated content to generate leads, keeping deep, informative resources behind a form. However, people are becoming increasingly sceptical about sharing their details on vendor websites.

Why?

Because they don’t want to be bombarded with sales calls or emails, especially if they’re not ready to make a purchase. Many buyers feel fatigued by repetitive tactics that seem to focus more on lead collection than on delivering real value.

This creates a dilemma for marketers: to gate or not to gate?

In this article, we will discuss:

• What gated and ungated content is.
• The ongoing debate about gating content.
• The pros and cons of each approach.
• What we would do

What is Gated and Ungated Content?

Gated Content

Gated content is material that users can only access after completing a form.

Typically hosted on a landing page, this content is usually sent via email for users to consume at their convenience. The intention behind gated content is to create a two-way exchange: valuable content for user details.

Common examples of gated content include:

• eBooks
• Guides
• Reports
• Whitepapers
• Pricing Guides

By gating these resources, businesses tend to segment their audiences and tailor automated marketing efforts to nurture prospects through the marketing funnel.

Ungated Content

Ungated content is the opposite of gated content, meaning it is freely available to anyone without requiring a form to be filled out.

This type of content is designed for broad consumption and often serves as a first touchpoint for potential customers

Common examples of ungated content include:

• Blogs and articles
• Social media posts
• Website content, such as service and sector pages

Ungated content provides a low-barrier entry point for prospects, offering valuable information that builds trust and authority over time. It has become progressively more essential due to the modern buyer’s preference for autonomy in their research process.

To Gate or Not to Gate: That is the question.

Here’s where it gets spicy.

The concept of gated content became popular in 2005 when HubSpot championed it as a way for marketers to track leads directly attributable to content and marketing efforts, rather than relying solely on sales or referrals.

Back then, people were eager to avoid traditional interruptive marketing tactics such as cold calls or TV ads. By providing helpful information for users to consume on their own terms, companies positioned themselves as industry leaders and allowed buyers to buy in a non-interruptive way.

This ‘value exchange’ helped build positive relationships and nurture potential customers through the funnel.

At the time, buyers were happy to exchange their email addresses for deeper, more valuable content. Moreover, content marketing was still in its infancy, meaning users had fewer resources to choose from. The exclusivity of gated resources made them highly desirable, and businesses could easily track conversions and attribute revenue to specific campaigns.

Fast forward to today, and the scenario is vastly different.

With the rise of content marketing, there’s been a flood of gated resources, often leading to oversaturation. Users now find themselves overwhelmed by similar content and automated email nurture sequences, which has led to greater scepticism toward vendor-driven materials.

Many buyers now view gated content as a hurdle rather than a value-add, especially when other sources offer similar information for free.

The Rise of Ungated Content

Traditionally, ungated content was seen as a way to drive traffic to websites, often acting as a gateway to more detailed gated resources. However, ungated content’s success was typically measured by traffic and keyword rankings rather than direct conversion rates.

So, why would you consider updating if it’s harder to track and doesn’t provide immediate access to user information?

It comes back to buyer scepticism.

Inbound marketing, which once tailored content to prospects, has become so widespread that buyers now face information overload. They no longer feel the same urgency to exchange their details for gated content, knowing they can find similar insights elsewhere - perfectly available without a form.

For an example of this oversaturation:

• 96% of advertising professionals use personalisation in their strategies.
• 90% of marketers include content marketing in their plans.

And, most importantly, when thinking about  how often your prospects need to see content from your business to make a sale:

• Hockeystack reports that it takes over 220 touchpoints to close a B2B deal - from first impression to closed won.

This overwhelming amount of information can lead to buyer paralysis. In fact, another Hockeystack report found that buyers consume an average of 15 blogs before making a B2B purchase. This suggests that freely available content helps build trust and engagement without adding friction.

We've seen this firsthand as we created an ungated pillar page for our client Huthwaite on SPIN Selling. Despite being entirely free, this page:

• Attributed over £350,000 in revenue (as the first touchpoint).
• Resulted in 36 individual deals.
• Garnered over 41,000 page views.

This shows that ungated content can drive significant results, offering visibility and SEO benefits that gated content often lacks.

Benefits and Challenges of Gated Content

Benefits

• Lead Generation: Forms make it easier to capture leads who are interested in your content. This clearly indicates that your content is piquing the interest of your audience.
• Contact Details for Nurturing: With access to personal information, you can create personalised nurture sequences and track user behaviour. This data can be invaluable for segmentation and targeted communications.
• Perceived Value: Gated content often carries an air of exclusivity, which can make it appear more valuable to users.

Drawbacks

• Increased Friction: Requiring forms adds steps to the buyer’s journey, which can deter users. Many potential leads abandon the process entirely when faced with additional barriers.
• Limited SEO Visibility: Content hidden behind forms won’t rank as well in search engines compared to freely accessible resources. This can limit organic traffic and visibility.
• User Fatigue: Over time, users may grow tired of filling out forms for content that doesn’t meet their expectations, leading to diminished trust in your brand.

Benefits and Challenges of Ungated Content

Benefits

• Higher Quality Leads: Users who fill out a form on other pages are likely to have higher intent, as they aren’t required to do so for every piece of content. This reduces noise in your database and reduces the amount of time sales teams waste on chasing uninterested leads.
• Enhanced SEO Visibility: Ungated content is more accessible to search engines, helping improve rankings and visibility. This makes it a powerful tool for driving organic traffic and establishing authority.
• Trust Building: Freely available content demonstrates transparency and generosity, fostering trust and goodwill among your audience.

Drawbacks

• Fewer Leads: Without forms, there are fewer opportunities to capture prospect details. This can make it harder to build a robust database quickly.
• Attribution Challenges: Without a marketing tool, tracking the source of leads can be harder. However, adding a ‘How did you hear about us?’ field on forms can help with self-reported attribution. Alternatively, businesses can leverage analytics tools to track user journeys more effectively.

What Would We Do?

Deciding whether to gate or ungate comes down to two key factors:

1. How Authoritative is Your Content?

Ask yourself:

• Is anyone else saying what you’re saying?
• Would people still find value in this content if it were freely available?
• Would users reference this content as a key resource in their buying journey to your sales?

If you're unsure about this, we always recommend initially ungating the content.

If users frequently cite it as influential during the sales process, consider gating it later. This phased approach allows you to test the content’s impact before committing to a strategy.

2. How Commercial is the Intent of the Content?

Consider how crucial the content is to the buyer’s journey.

For instance, our pricing guide is considered high-intent content. While some companies anonymise pricing or make it fully visible, we’ve chosen to gate ours. This approach has significantly improved our contact-to-customer conversion rates.

However, our eBook content isn't necessarily commercially focused, instead focusing on sharing information. Therefore, we decided to partially ungate our guides, enabling people to access them online readily, when they need them.

This is a hybrid approach to gating content.

For example, you could make content freely available but offer a downloadable version via a pop-up form. This allows users to choose whether to engage further by sharing their details.

By measuring the authority and intent of your content, you can make informed decisions about whether to gate or ungate—striking the right balance between accessibility and lead generation.

Making the Right Move with Axon Garside

If you're looking to implement a content strategy that balances lead generation with accessibility, we can help.

Our expertise in inbound marketing ensures that your content aligns with the modern buyer's journey—delivering valuable insights without unnecessary friction. Don't just take our word for it; explore our marketing case studies here to see how we've helped businesses optimise their content approach for measurable success.