The Invisible Gate

Should you gate your content and assets?

Many marketers say that gating is bad.

Some marketers say that gating is good.

I've got a better answer that works like magic.

And I call it the "Invisible Gate".

P.S. If you're looking, here are a few things to help you:

- Hang out with 20 marketing directors for 2 days in Orlando, FL at the Momentum conference. You'll walk away with a simple strategy that works, the skills, plan, and confidence to make it happen. ​Click here for details.​

- Download the Marketing Director Roadmap to get the one-page blueprint to succeeding as a marketing director.

Transcript

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This is the Marketing Director Daily, and I'm Tim Parkin. I want to talk to you about the classic debate in marketing about whether or not you should gate your assets. You've probably heard of this debate, this question in marketing, if you've been around for any length of time. Should you put your stuff behind a form or not? Should you gate your assets? Some people say yes, gating is the way to go. If you gate your stuff, if you capture leads from forms, then you have people's information. You can qualify people, you can score people, you can follow up with people. Gating can work. That's what they say. Other people say gating doesn't work. That if you gate your stuff, fewer people will fill out the form and they won't even benefit from getting your assets, getting your content, because they didn't want to fill out the form. They were afraid that if they filled out the form, you would harass them. You would advertise to them. And so do you gate your stuff and deal with lower conversion rates and people maybe not raising their hand? But of the people who do, you have their information and you can follow up with them? Or do you hope for the best and not gate your stuff? You don't have the visibility to know who's consuming it, and you can't follow up with them, but maybe you're creating goodwill that way. I'm curious which side of the fence you're on. Do you gate stuff or do you not gate stuff? What do you do right now in your business? And what do you think you should do? Should you gate everything? Should you gate nothing? Or is there something in between? I want to share with you a new approach, a new strategy that I've created that I've been teaching in my coaching group that's working really well. And this is called the invisible gate. I think you should gate your stuff and not gate your stuff together at the same time. And I call this the invisible gate. I'm going to share with you now so you can see why it's so effective, and so you can copy it and steal it and use it to capture even more leads. The problem with capturing leads is that you have a thing that you offer people right now, a cookie, hopefully, a free small thing that people are consuming. That may be content on your website, your blogs, it might be videos that you have, maybe it's a simple download that you have. You have something, hopefully, that people are consuming, that they're showing up and saying, I want this, give it to me. And it's something small, but you have a bunch of people doing that. It could even be as simple as on social media, you have a bunch of people who comment or who like your posts. Or maybe it's an email, and in your email, you have people replying or clicking your emails. That could be the trigger. But you have people doing something, taking some small action that shows intent, that shows interest, it shows engagement. And this is step one. This is called the trigger. We want to find out what is the trigger that we can build upon, because we need to get your prospects to have some momentum, to have some inertia, so we can build up and propel them towards the thing you really want them to do, which for most of you is a call or a demo. And if it's not, then think of what's the ultimate end action you want people to do. It's probably something like a call or a demo or a conversation of some sort. So we have the trigger, which is the small initial action that people are taking, and we want to get them somehow over to the real result that you want, which is the get on the phone with us. So, how do we take the trigger and get people into the call with you? And we do it with two mechanisms. The first is the upgrade. So you have the trigger, and we want to offer people an upgrade. Because if you offer people an upgrade, it's really hard to say no, because most people would love an upgrade. If you've ever flown before and you've been on the plane, if you're flying coach, you see the upgrade list. Maybe you've put your name on that list for the chance to be able to upgrade your seat to business class or first class. It's coveted spots. Everyone wants an upgrade. And if you were at the airport and you're boarding the plane and they say we have a free upgrade to a first class seat, would you like it? What would you say? I don't know anybody who would say no. And that's what we want to offer your prospects. When they're showing us by doing the trigger that they have some interest, some intent, some motivation, we want to offer them an upgrade, a path towards an even better experience, towards an exclusive experience, an experience that will help them and make them have even more joy. That's the upgrade. So, as an example, my trigger, my cookie, the small action people take is I have a roadmap. It's a really valuable one-page document that shows you step by step everything a marketing director needs to do in what order to crush their goals and have success and level up in their role. That's my trigger. People go and they get the roadmap. And the roadmap is ungated. You can just go and download it. And that's important because the trigger creates lots of action. And so it is not gated, it's designed to create lots of action. So the trigger is whatever people are doing, that you have a lot of them doing it. That's your trigger. For me, it's the roadmap. When you go to download the roadmap, the upgrade that I've designed is a roadmap review call. And this is a 15-minute free coaching call where I literally help people on the call. We pull up the roadmap, we talk about their situation, and we figure out on the roadmap what have they done already and what things should they focus on right now. So we diagnose their situation, we help them get some aha moments, some insights, and then we build a plan for them using the roadmap. It's a super valuable thing, free coaching call, and it's a help call, not a sales call. And so we literally help people for free. We're just giving value. It's an amazing thing to offer people. And when I offer this to people, it's very hard to say no to free coaching and help to get clarity on your situation and to have a plan built for you. Pretty cool. So the trigger, lots of people are down in the roadmap. The upgrade, let's give you a free call, 15 minutes, free coaching, and help you use the thing you've already shown interest to to help you build a plan and figure out the next steps. That's the upgrade. So for you, what is your trigger and what is your upgrade? What's the thing you can upgrade people that will give them a better experience, a more exclusive experience that will actually help them? That's key. And then we need the third and final piece, which is the bridge. How do you get people who are doing the trigger to see and want and take the upgrade? The bridge bridges the trigger and the upgrade, and it will connect to the thing you really want them to do, which in most cases is get on a phone with you. So for me, the roadmap is my trigger. Lots of people are doing that, taking action, getting this free thing that has no gate to it. And I offer them the upgrade of a roadmap review. Would you like to review the roadmap together and get some help to figure out where you're at and where you should go next? And to do that, we use the bridge, which now bridges you to a call. If you want to do that, come and book a call and let's do the review on the call. So you have the trigger, what's the small initial action that lots of people are taking? The upgrade, how do you offer them a more exclusive, better experience that will actually help them and take them to the next level for free? You can gate that because it's the bridge to your thing that you want to gate people. And in many cases, that's the call. So, as an example, if you want to see an example and if you want the roadmap, go to the website for this podcast, marketingdirectordaily.com, and there's a button for the marketing director roadmap. Click that button and you will see my landing page, which will give you for free, ungated, the marketing director roadmap. Download it, it's super useful. There's also a video on that page you can watch that explains how the roadmap is set up. Again, super useful. No gating at all. But when you go to download that, you'll notice on the page there's a form on the right-hand side to book a call. And that's the upgrade is that for free, I'll help you and give you free coaching for 15 minutes to look at the roadmap, talk about your situation, and build a plan for you. And people love this, people do this. And at the end of all of these roadmap review calls, people tell me how valuable and useful and insightful it was to have someone to help talk this through with and have a plan for them. But that's my upgrade, and you can see the bridge there of how I take the free thing I'm giving you that's ungated and connect you to the gated thing that will give you even more value, even more help, and a better experience. So let's bring this back to you. What is your trigger? What's the small free action that a lot of people are taking with you? And if you don't have one, you need to build one. You need a cookie, like we talked about before in another episode. And if you're not sure what yours is, reach out to me. I'd love to help you figure out what it is. But you need a trigger. Then you need to design an upgrade that builds upon that trigger, that gives people a better experience, more value, more help, an exclusive experience to make it even better. And then you need to offer them the upgrade when they get the trigger. The trigger triggers the upgrade, and use the bridge to get them to the thing you ultimately want, whether that's a call or a purchase or whatever it is. Trigger to the upgrade, connect it with the bridge. That's the process. This is the invisible gate. This is the new way to capture leads, the most effective way to capture leads. This is the combination of both gating your assets and not gating them, giving people value and giving them a path to get even more value. This is single handedly the most effective way I've ever found to capture leads. It's good for you and it's good for your prospect. And most importantly, it's good for your targets when it comes to capturing as many leads as possible.