There’s an unwritten rule in B2B marketing circles: if content exists, it must be gated. After all, how else will you secure those precious email addresses? Yet, nobody asked for another blog post about gating versus ungating, but here we are, because as B2B PR people, we genuinely care (no, really) about making sure good content actually gets seen. Call it professional pride.
In short, gated content means locking your best ideas – whether that’s a thought-provoking whitepaper or a pre-recorded industry webinar – behind a form, while ungated content is open for all to see. At PR Agency One, we often question the sanity of hiding a great piece of content behind a form just to harvest email addresses. While marketing teams love forms, from a PR perspective, gating good content often makes as much sense as throwing a brilliant advert on TV but forgetting to switch the television on.
We love lead gen and driving enquiries like the best of them – but not at the expense of great PR outcomes.
Why ungating your content will unleash the full power of PR
Here’s why we’re quietly passionate about keeping great content barrier-free:
Firstly, gated content restricts your reach dramatically. Search engines can’t index it properly, journalists often won’t link to it, and potential readers can abandon forms faster than politicians abandon manifesto promises. Marketing expert Mark Schaefer summarised it neatly: gating “places a stop sign in front of your content flow.” It’s not exactly subtle.
More alarmingly, over 90% of readers reportedly quit forms mid-process – often worried they’ll end up spammed into oblivion, especially in GDPR-aware markets like the UK and EU. So yes, gating content can yield a handful of emails, but at what cost? Losing thousands of potential eyeballs, numerous backlinks, and genuine visibility – all of which help to build brands.
Examples of ungated content driving PR outcomes
Consider the British Retail Consortium’s crime survey, which is ungated and freely accessible. The result? A staggering 2,000 pieces of media coverage. Imagine if journalists faced a signup form; they’d likely move onto something more convenient, like literally anything else. Redgate, a tech brand, similarly earned coverage from 40 authoritative sites by ungating their influencer index. Would those 40 sites have linked to a form? Unlikely.
SEO loves ungated content too because it’s easy to index, cite, and share. It’s no coincidence that ungated content often ranks higher and attracts backlinks organically. And let’s face it, journalists and influencers (the people who actually amplify your content) avoid gated resources. No reporter ever said: “My readers will love filling out this form before reading my latest piece!”
Even marketing folks who’ve long relied on forms have begun to notice. One notable example is Cognism, a B2B tech firm that switched to an “80% ungated, 20% gated” strategy, immediately achieving record-breaking revenue months. This balance ensures maximum visibility and exposure while still allowing for strategic, high-intent lead generation.
Gated content can be useful sometimes
That said, we aren’t content purists. There’s a time and place for gated assets – specifically, when the audience already trusts your brand and wants deeper insights (think product demos, advanced calculators, or highly specific case studies).
At PR Agency One, our Creative Effectiveness proposition is all about strategically blending creativity and visibility to achieve genuine business outcomes. Rather than chasing low-quality email captures, we prefer content strategies that build lasting visibility, brand trust, and audience engagement.
A hybrid approach is not just sensible; it’s smart PR. Early-stage, thought-leadership content should always be ungated, earning backlinks, shares, and widespread exposure.
Once your audience is hooked and trusts your expertise, strategic gating makes sense. It’s about putting customer experience first: show value upfront, then offer additional insights behind a form for genuinely interested prospects.
This customer-centric mindset resonates strongly in the PR world. It’s precisely why brands like FEIN UK used ungated insights to drive extensive media coverage in the built environment sector, significantly raising brand awareness while generating quality leads naturally.
How to measure the success of ungated content
Measuring the success of ungated content also requires shifting your perspective. Rather than counting raw form-fills, look at how your content performs across broader metrics, media mentions, backlinks, branded and non-branded organic traffic, engagement, and, most importantly, brand trust and authority. These are the measures that demonstrate true Creative Effectiveness.
Ultimately, the real measure of content effectiveness isn’t how many emails you capture; it’s how widely your message resonates, the quality of backlinks and social shares you generate, and the overall PR impact. In other words, the stuff marketers aren’t always explicitly asking for but secretly want: true brand visibility, recognition, and influence.
So next time you’re tempted to slap a form on that great piece of research, pause and think: am I unintentionally putting up a “stop sign”? Perhaps give PR a go and open the gate. Your customers (and the journalists desperately looking for quality sources without having to surrender their email) will thank you.
