What should you give away for free, and what should you reserve for paying customers?
Balancing free user growth and monetization is difficult, especially when deciding which features to give away or keep for paying customers.
In this article, we’ll break down the difference between gated and ungated content and answer important questions, like “When should you ungate content (or not)?”
Gated vs Ungated SaaS Content
A company moving towards a product-led growth (PLG) model launches free and entry-level offerings. You needed to be strategic about what to give away and what valuable information to gate.
The graphic below outlines the differences between gated versus ungated content.
A company may ask prospects for their email addresses before they can download a free ebook. This scenario is an example of gating content.
Gated content for inbound marketing is free for users. However, prospects trade access to the content offered by the company in exchange for action or personal information.
Gating content is a lead generation strategy. A business gains a valuable lead when a prospect values the gated content enough to provide their name, job title, email, or other contact information.
Examples of gated content include:
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Product demos
- Training
- Webinars
- Newsletters
- Annual reports
- Case studies
- White papers
- Quiz results
- Templates
Ungated content is free and available to every user. Common non-gated types of content include blogs, infographics, social media posts, podcasts, and YouTube channels.
The goal of ungated content isn’t to grow your email list and reach new leads. Instead, ungating content increases brand awareness and improves search engine optimization (SEO).
When to Ungate SaaS Content and Features
PLG is about getting users to try and fall in love with your product. An ungated product experience let’s users engage with your product more quickly with no upfront commitment.
Ungate content for your SaaS company when:
1. You want more people to see the value of your product for free.
When a sales-led organization considers PLG, a common fear is that paying customers will switch to the free offering and lose part of its paying user base.
When Vidyard transitioned to a PLG model, our company already had a feature-rich enterprise solution. The critical element was deciding whether to limit usage or features. After much research, we offered unlimited videos with a streamlined set of features.
Vidyard ungated this type of video content for two main reasons:
1. Users must see the product’s value as soon as possible. Providing users a streamlined first experience with limited distractions and no barriers means they reach the “Aha!” moment faster.
2. Your free product must have sustained value so that users keep using the product. If the majority or a significant portion of users drop off, that’s a massive sign that the original free product wasn’t good enough.
Why You Should Measure Value
How do you confirm that your product, packaging, and messaging are aligned? How do you know when you need to adjust or experiment?
Most businesses measure activation and retention rates. However, it’s harder to measure value, and for Vidyard, we wanted to make sure that users received value from using our product.
The primary value of our free option is getting a video (or a message) out as fast as possible. We measured the time it takes for that to happen. Measuring value enabled us to see that the features we included in our free and paid offers delivered what we promised.
Figure out the value of your free and paid offerings, and use that knowledge when making your packaging decisions.
2. Your gated offers aren’t performing well.
Try ungating landing pages when conversion rates are less than 3% to see if the increase in traffic outweighs the number of leads you were gating. When Drift ungated their content, they saw a 15% increase in net new leads and a faster sales cycle.
Gated offers that aren’t generating leads are a likely sign the content needs to be ungated. Perhaps prospects don’t yet see the total value of your product and aren’t ready to commit to unlocking the gated content with their email addresses. Another reason might be they can find the same information for free from another online source – the Internet is packed with ungated how-tos and blogs.
3. You want to build product awareness.
New prospects are researching remedies for their problem. As a SaaS company, the focus of a SaaS company is to spark interest and encourage people to learn about how your product solves their pain. Ungated content such as blog posts, infographics, and videos are generally better for ROI at this stage. Gated content involves a call to action (CTA), and prospects are more likely to be turned away.
When to Gate SaaS Content and Features
When done correctly, lead generation can effectively generate leads for your SaaS company. Gated pieces of content need to provide prospects with the actual value they can’t find anywhere else and tailor to the specific interests, goals, and needs of the right segment of your prospects.
Gate content for your SaaS company when:
1. You have enough quality ungated content and a good landing page.
Landing pages convert 2% of visitors on average, while a highly valued gated offer can see 11%. But gated content doesn’t achieve standalone success - it needs the support of quality ungated content and a good landing page.
Ungated content is the appetizer before gated content, setting expectations for value and meaningfulness. Quality ungated content at the top of your funnel needs to address prospects’ pain points, bait them to want to learn more, and elevate your company above the competition.
In addition, gated offers need world-class landing pages that capture the prospects’ undivided attention.
2. You have mapped out your user’s journey.
Gated content placed in front of the wrong target audience will never generate quality leads no matter how much time, effort, and research your SaaS company commits. Mapping out your user’s journey gives you an idea of where users are coming from and what types of content serve prospects at different segments.
Gating vs Ungating SaaS Features Flowchart
We’ve created a flowchart to help your SaaS company determine whether content should be gated or ungated.
Start by asking yourself “Is the content valuable?”
How to Know What SaaS Feature to Gate or Ungate
What problem is a user trying to solve when they use your product for the first time?
Answering this question helps you decide which features to include for free and ones that should come with a price tag. Consider your product’s pricing page when deciding on the packaging. Usually, you’ll have at least three different levels, each with a descriptive summary.
The first tier is usually free, and a next-level is a higher-priced option. Think about the descriptions for each tier and be strategic with the words. Can you come up with a sentence that describes how the product tier solves the user’s problem? Or do the descriptions leave them guessing?
Your product descriptions should:
- Be brief but informative
- Highlight who each tier is meant for
- Describe how each tier differs from the other
Apply these tips when determining your packaging, and people will sign-up for the tier that helps solve their problem.
When considering which features to include in which tier, remember that the features should decrease the amount of friction a user experiences when engaging with your product. For Vidyard, users join to create, upload, and share videos.
Vidyard wants to ensure our target audience can share a video as fast as possible when they sign up. We knew the trimming feature had to be part of the free product. Users needed to trim their videos to remove mistakes or unwanted clips, removing the need to record a second video. Trim decreased the time it took to share an idea for free.
However, we also had to consider which features to include in our Pro product. Why should people upgrade to the paid version when the free version is already pretty great? We set out to talk to our customers. We wanted to see what value they were willing to pay for, and we found that many of the people we spoke to would pay for the Pro product if it helped them drive a business goal. We decided to reserve features such as customization of logos, branding, and call-to-action applications.
FAQs About Gated and Ungated SaaS Content and Features
Does gated content rank for SEO?
No, gated content doesn’t rank for SEO. Googlebots cannot view Information that’s “locked” behind a webpage login or contact form, so the web crawler software used by Google isn’t able to index the content for page ranking.
Does gated content still work?
Yes, gated pieces of content work when used at the right stage of the lead generation funnel. You’ve nurtured trust by the middle of the funnel, and prospects know how your product solves their problem. Interested prospects are willing to provide you with personal information to access a gated survey, training, or trial discount, generating new leads.
Does Google crawl gated content?
No, Google cannot crawl or index gated content. Googlebots don’t fill out a contact form or answer a survey question, so they cannot unlock and crawl any type of gated content. Gated ebooks, videos, case studies, webinars, annual reports, etc., are not analyzed or stored in the Google index.
What Are the Components of Your Content Marketing Strategy?
Lead generation is a top objective for marketers, and more than 80% of B2B content marketing assets are gated. However, this doesn’t mean that gated content is always the best approach. Whether your objective is lead generation or product awareness, and where prospects are in the sales funnel are variables to consider when choosing gated vs. ungated content for your inbound marketing strategy. Continue growing SaaS business with even more product-led growth strategies.
