8 There are many nuanced ways to look at gating and un-gating content. For example, perhaps you gate a piece of Conclusion – All exclusive research for two weeks in order about differentiation to build an audience for an upcoming webinar on the topic. And then, after the webinar, you un-gate everything,” he says. “Or perhaps you gate the targeted During our conversations with segmented results, but un-gate the our marketing experts, we overall executive summary. discussed a great deal of content types, strategies, and ideas. They ran the gamut, from those The real question isn’t categories examined above, to whether you should gate or those on the horizon of the not- un-gate your content, but so-distant future, including AI rather what is it we are and Web 3.0. trying to achieve – and how In the near-term for content marketing, we will we use the information see a rise in empathetic, human approaches we receive in return? to content, regardless of type. An emotional connection is the most effective way of creating both impactful first impressions and Robert Rose Chief Strategy Officer long-term customer relationships. Forbes, for The Content Advisory example, calls it “the super weapon of marketing and advertising,” with “campaigns with purely emotional content performing about twice as well as those with only And one of the best rules I’ve seen people rational content.” use to make that last decision is to ask ourselves if we would be willing to tell the It's also the best way for organizations to consumer what’s going to happen to their differentiate themselves – a statement with data after they sign up for this white which our experts nearly unanimously agree. paper or E-book. If we’d be embarrassed to tell them, then it’s probably a safe bet Trends are trends – and popularity, that we should rethink gating it.” popularity, our experts say. And there is Page 15 State of Content Creation 2022