What Is Gated Content? 10 Pro Examples to Copy

Curious about what gated content is and want to see some examples of it in use?

Gated content is a hugely impactful part of the beginning stages of the customer journey on your website, no matter how big or small your business is.

So in this post, we’ll explain exactly what gated content is and plus show you some examples to help inspire you.

What Is Gated Content?

Effective (Pro) Gated Content Examples

Let’s take a look at the most popular WordPress gated content examples.

1. White Papers

Probably one of the more common types of gated content for B2B companies is white papers (ebooks, another one of the items on our list, are typically more B2C as you’ll see them on a lot of bloggers’ or individual publishers’ websites).

For example, this company helps businesses recruit new employees. So, they offer a white paper discussing tips for finding employees that stick around.

White papers are a great way to establish yourself or your small business as an authority in your space.

2. Webinars

Webinars are a great type of gated content, and they simply work for lead generation. You can use pre-recorded videos or webinar software to execute this type of content easily.

They’re great because you can answer questions to any objectives during the webinar, and give a strong call to action at the end about the next steps with your business (like spending money on your products or services).

And in this gated content example, you can see the webinar is listed as a ‘course’ but it’s actually a webinar (either live or pre-recorded).

They do a good job of explaining the benefits of their course on the webinar landing page, too.

3. ebooks

Guides or ebooks (also sometimes called workbooks, challenges, PDFs, etc) are a very popular way to use gated content.

The great thing about these is that you might be able to make one without writing a ton of new content.

You can take a look at your popular posts around the same topic and combine the information into an effective and digestible guide or ebook. Then, you can brand your gated content as an ‘ultimate beginner’s guide’.

You can even make it quite concise like in the example below that’s using a gated content guide that shows people ‘3 training mistakes’ with training their pets.

If you’re an expert in your field, then gated content using eBooks is one of the best ways to capture high-quality leads.

You can even use a content download form to unlock eBooks by requiring users to first provide their email address.

4. An Email Series

An email series is a set of emails you’ll space out and send to people over a set amount of time. This is a great way to use gated content.

Usually, you can do one per day after you get someone’s email address. You can use an email series as gated content and advertise it as a ‘5-day training’ (or however long your series lasts).

Have a big social media following? Make sure to put a link in your bio to send them directly to the form landing page where your email series offer is hosted. And make sure you’re following landing page form tips.

5. Product Demos

If you’re a SaaS company or have a product that people can try online, you should consider using a product demo as gated content.

This is a wonderful way to get your product in front of customers while also getting their email addresses. You’ll build your list as well as let people take your product for a test drive.

You can offer a full live demo, or even let people use a trial of your software for a set amount of time like Shopify does in this gated content example.

Notice that these examples follow landing page best practices extremely well, which ultimately helps maintain a high conversion rate.

6. Quiz Results

People love taking online quizzes and polls.

You may have taken one yourself and been asked to put your email address into a form before you can start the quiz or see your results. This is a brilliant use of gated content!

Not only do quizzes work as gated content, but you can also use the information you get about your leads to segment them. Then, put them into your marketing automation plan, and offer them different types of content in the future based on their needs.

The type of questions you should ask in your quiz depend on your particular service or product area. But in many cases, it’s a good idea to include some demographic questions in your gated content quiz or survey.

7. Courses

Online courses continue to grow in popularity. And you can use them very effectively as gated content (free or paid.)

If you’re interested in using courses as part of your gated content strategy, we encourage you to consider making a portion of your site a membership site.

There’s a lot of income potential with this strategy of digital information marketing.

By offering courses, you can position yourself as an expert within your industry and earn the trust of your customers. This is what makes courses one of the best gated content examples you can use.

8. Annual Reports

If you’re in a big industry, there are plenty of statistics out there that you could put together to create an annual report on. Then, you can use this report as gated content.

Many enterprise-level companies do this to collect lead information from their website.

In this example, you’ll notice a strong CTA with power words telling people they can ‘Get instant access’ to the report by filling out a form with their details.

The sales team will be thrilled to not only get a fresh lead but to also get a lead that they already know is interested in their industry since they were downloading a report about a relevant topic.

Gated content like this is a great way to feel like highly qualified leads are coming right to you.

9. Private Communities

A newer version of gated content is a community-based model. You can invite people to join an exclusive area that contains information only they can see once they’ve given you their details. Some people even charge for this.

You can find gated content examples of this kind commonly in gaming and sports spaces.

10. Templates

If you’re in the design business, it’s a great idea to offer some of your designs for free as gated content.

With this approach, the hope is that a lead will use your free templates. Then, realize how easy you’ve made things for them. After that, they’ll return out of appreciation or because they realized someone else can do the hard work for them.

So with that in mind, remember how important it is to create things of high value if you’re going to be using them for gated content. It’s not best practice to use one of you’re less desirable templates in this case. You really want to hook people up here!

Of course, you don’t have to be in the design business to offer templates.

For example, check out this coach offering templates of pricing packages and customer welcome packets to other people with service-based businesses.

So that’s what gated content is and some great examples of it. To recap, gated content is nearly anything that’s “behind” a contact form.

If lead generation is part of your content marketing strategy and sales funnel, gated content is a must.

So, How Do You Use WordPress Gated Content?

Want to start using gated content to grow your small business website and engagement with your brand?

A very popular way to use gated content is to create a lead magnet form. This is a simple form that asks for an email address in exchange for your digital product. This can work for nearly everything on the list of examples above.

You could also use gated content on a membership website. Or, you can give your newsletter subscribers a password and put content behind a password-protected WordPress page so only those who get your emails will be able to access that content.

Here are some other smart ways to use gated content:

• Place a form on a landing page.
• Deliver the content as a lead magnet after a form is filled out.
• Embed a form with relevant content inside a blog post of the same category.
• Create a user registration form that lets logged-in users view your content.

…and more.

Once your gated content form is set up and ready, the options for how you can use it are nearly endless.

And there you have it. Hopefully, this post and these examples gave you some great ideas about what kind of gated content you want to use on your website forms to skyrocket your email list and revenue.

Next, Explore Business Form Templates

Managing a business is never easy. But with the right tools, you can run your business more efficiently. This is why WPForms includes various business form templates to help you succeed.

And if you allow users to register on your site, you might also want to consider adding a proper password reset form. See our guide on customizing a WordPress password reset form for tips.

Create Your WordPress Form Now

Ready to build your form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes lots of free templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

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