Does it make sense to gate Use Cases, Case Studies and Data Sheets for lead gen?

[Anonymous]

Does it make sense to gate Use Cases, Case Studies and Data Sheets for lead gen? Right now it is near impossible to get new content approved and I am trying to use existing content to be able to start lead generation activities in my company. Please advise.

[Josh_Hill13]

Yes, many firms do this.

I prefer to NOT gate data sheets and make those web pages instead. My personal preference is that much of this content is open and available as a web page, video, etc and not as a pdf. That's how I like to evaluate vendors instead of having them force me to contact them before I'm ready. Of course, since I'm trying to get people to give me their info, I have to gate some of the content. Try to find truly valuable items and gate those; or cut up documents and post those for free, but make people register for the full edition.

There is an ongoing debate about this. If you want things to go viral, keep it open! See webinknow.com for some other thoughts on how this works.

[Anonymous]

We take a slightly different approach and we gate content with expiration. So when a new piece is released, depending on it's type it's put behind a form for 3, 6 or 9 months. Then after the expiration date, it is made publically available. This keeps an exclusivity at first as we allow our customers to access this content without using a form, but allows after a certain time for the assets to be fully crawlable by Search engines.