Technical B2B companies can use gated content to capture leads on their websites. Whether it’s a white paper, survey report or another technical document, follow our three tips below to ensure that you’re consistently adding fuel to your sales engine:
- Select the right topic
Choosing the write information to share is the most important step in the gated content process. Take time to catalog the questions that clients repeatedly ask you, or listen to your sales team about what concerns they hear most from customers. Do keyword research with Google Search or SEMrush to determine what kind of answers people are seeking. You can also review your website with Google Analytics to see which pages are most popular. Once you’ve decided on a topic, think about what related details you want to share. A good way to do this is by running through a customer use case and creating a list of questions that customers might ask.
For example, let’s say your traffic engineering firm is consistently asked what should be considered when designing a new master planned community development. You could compile all of the most popular questions and create a white paper using these FAQs. Some of the questions might include:
- How much traffic will my development generate?
- When do I need to add a second lane?
- When is a roundabout a good idea?
- How much parking will I need?
- Make it truly useful
To capture the attention of B2B leaders, you’ll need to produce some high-quality content. These folks are busy with tons of material to read already. What will inspire them to offer their contact information to read your content? It has to be useful and provide some sort of meaningful value. Think about providing more than just surface level information and dig deep to share some nuggets of information that will save them time or solve a persistent headache at their company. You might do this by sharing results from a survey you conducted or by including facts from a research paper.
In our example above, the traffic engineering company could share actual statistics that will help the developer in planning.
- How much traffic will my development generate?
- Single Family Houses (per unit): 10 trips per day, 1 per peak hour
- Apartments/Condos/Townhouses (per unit): 7 trips per day, 0.7 per peak hour
- Office (per 1000 sq ft): 10 trips per day, 1.5 per peak hour
- Retail (per 1000 sq ft): 38 trips per day, 4.2 per peak hour
- Industrial (per 1000 sq ft): 5 trips per day, 0.9 per peak hour
- When do I need to add a second lane?
- When you have 300 left turning vehicles from that leg of the intersection in the peak hour
As you can see, these are stats that would be helpful for the developers to know when planning their development. They’re also not facts that are commonplace or would be easily found with a Google search.
- Avoid pitching your product or service, especially as a one-size-fits-all solution
There’s no better way to lose a B2B reader’s interest than by filling a document with promo pitches. Remember, your gated content is supposed to be useful for the reader and help them solve a problem. They’re reading to find answers, not another way to spend their money. A good way to avoid doing this is by sharing unbiased data and by readily admitting that your product, or service, is not the right fit for everyone.
Our example traffic engineering company might include the following question and answer:
Do I need to do a traffic study for my development?
The answer depends! If your development is stirring up conflict with the surrounding neighborhood, a traffic study could be helpful in soothing their concerns for increased congestion. A traffic study will most likely be required when the development goes through an environmental review process. However, if your development is under a certain threshold for traffic (depends on the city), then you might not need a traffic study. If you decide to do a traffic study, we recommend you work with a traffic engineer who is familiar with the Institute of Transportation Engineering’s Transportation Impact Analyses for Site Development.
The above answer adds credibility to the white paper because it doesn’t promote the firm as the sole – or best – provider of traffic studies. It provides information to help the reader decide and then a tip to ensure that they hire the right people.
Good Gated Content Isn’t Easy
In a time when a Google search will yield tons of results, making your content stand out requires a process to ensure that people will read it. Start by carefully choosing a topic, then filling your document with information that is really useful, and then make your document credible by avoiding a salesy tone. Cutting through the noise to reach B2B leaders isn’t impossible, it just requires effort.
Ready to take your business to the next level? Contact us. We’re here to help.