004. Gated vs Ungated Content

Well, hello everyone. As always, my name is Emilio Garcia from Boundify. I'm here today with Leonardo, my business partner. And obviously those of you that are joining live today, welcome, Donald, welcome. And everybody else that watched this video later, I hope you enjoy it. Today we have a couple of very quick topics. We will dive a little bit on the marketing strategy and gated versus ungated content dilemma if you gate or not your content. And obviously I will explore what I mean by that. And in the more tactical portion of it, we will discuss what makes a good text ad on Google search. What are the characteristics of a good Google search? So without further ado, let us start right away. So when we say gated content, these discussions has been going on for a while, for actually some years already. It started pretty simple back in the day. And as always, for those of you that are going to watch this later, I usually start with sharing my screen. So I'll do a little bit of sharing here. Let me go for it. Let me stop this and switch to HubSpot and I will use HubSpot as a reference. What I mean by getting content is something like this. You have something of value. Usually when you are on top of the funnel, it might be a document like an ebook that explains something difficult to your prospective buyers and you want them to have access to that information. And usually you have an offer through an ebook. And back in the day when this was quite not common, it used to be the case that you will put this information behind a form, you will ask some information about that person, usually the name, the email address, and if the information is of more value, then you will ask for more information and then you will deliver the information right, either on the same page, on a thank you page or thereafter through email. So this is gating content. And you can do it obviously with ebooks, with white papers, you can even do it with case studies or some information more in the bottom of the funnel. And has been done for years now. It's a very common practice. But nowadays the ties have been changing and some people argue, especially in the B2B realm, that getting content doesn't make sense anymore. And one of the reasons is that nowadays because content is available in many, many forms and also because people have become more aware of the fact that usually when you download one of these pieces you're gonna get some automation emails, you asking for something extra so less people feel them or if they do, they might use false email or an email that is just for downloading this kind of offers. But they run Regularly check. So they will miss the whole marketing automation thing. So there is this argument that you should ungate it. And obviously there are pros and cons. Obviously the pros on this, on gating content are that when you do, you have something that can start a lead generation program, right? If you have content that is valuable and you organize it on your website as a library and you give access to people based on sharing some information, you can start then a conversation through email with them, either through marketing automation or just simple emails where you ask something like, was this information of value? Were you looking for something that I can help you with? However, if you gave the content, one of the biggest cons of that is that you lose the opportunity for search engines to maybe index it, right? And the reason is because if something like, you know, 10 pages of good content, maybe that can be offered on the website freely and Google and other search engines will be able to crawl it and you will get that extra traffic. So in one area, when you gate content, you are giving some opportunities to lead generation programs. And in the other side, when you are on gate in it, you are giving the search engines the opportunity to search and therefore you get that extra traffic, you get that brand awareness, you get that authority that you might miss that because you have all the valuable content behind a form. So these are the two sizes. And before sharing with you, my take on it, I don't know. Leo, if you have any point of view of yourself, what do you think about those two strategies?

Well, I think the both strategies are good. I think about 80% of the content out there is gated. That means that you are asking for some information before you provide your information. Right? Both are valid, I think, but I think at the bottom line it aims to different purpose. On one hand, the gated content is more aimed to get leads, to get leads and ultimately to get sales. The ungated is just to provide some information in order to put your brand out there and your potential customers start to recognize your brand more often. I think that's the difference between the two of them. Both of them, as you mentioned, have different strategies and I think you are going to go deep in those. For example, and the gated strategy you can go deep and provide or follow the best practice of the gated content. There are six steps that I'm gonna mention before you finish.

Yeah, I agree with you that it really depends on where your strategy is going for, right? If you are into lead generation, you really need those extra leads. And ranking that content on Google is not that important right away, then probably you need to focus on getting content and if not, you do the other way around. One way that I have found that is a good mix of the two is to find ways to share that content and at the same time maybe gauge the most valuable portion of it or gate it for a little while. So some ideas here. For example, imagine that you have come up with a great piece of content that you can transform into an ebook that maybe you want to share. And it's going to be a long project, it's going to take you a few months. So you can start by writing some block pieces that are going to become, in a sense pieces of the whole ebook, like the chapters. So you can start sharing those, they're gonna free. You can create maybe some infographic or some medium, you know, images around that idea. You maybe might record some videos and all of those will be distributed free. And you finally have the ebook and you just offering something like actually hops that talks about a lot of that. It's called a pillar page. And so you are pretty much offering the ebook in a way that people can read directly on the website. But honestly, and sometimes that's my case even when I have the website to read, I don't like reading web pages. So sometimes I say, you know, I really like this information, I would like to have it in a PDF format. Then I can download the ebook too if it's offered there and I read it later instead of staying or bookmarking the page. Another thing that I have seen is you might have these long term content and then you offer something else as the gated content. It can be a template or another document that is related to it that is of value. So that way you give something of value that can be crawled, but at the same time you have something that might generate leads for those that are really interested on what you're offering. And usually also the other thing that it does improve the quality of the leads that you're getting. So those ideas there.

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna mention there are some best practices that you can find in the blog in HubSpot. There's a lot of information there that you can find, but there's some best practices you can use for gated content. Last time Emilio talked about the buyer's journey in if you weren't here, you can see the video later. But buyer journey Emil mentioned last time that has three stages. I added another two, but basically three stages that it's awareness, consideration and decision. In the best practice gated content that would be the first step would be to create some content for each state in this buyer's journey to promote to see in every step what can value you added to the customer. Your stage is very important for your audience to have a contact. That means that it's meant to help them along the way. That's very important for them to really conduct them in the right way. The second one in the best practice is to complete a competitive analysis. Once you have brainstormed some of the content ideas for each stage of the buyer's journey. Now you have to conduct a competitive analysis. It's a competitive analysis. You research what your competitors are doing. This means looking for what type of content you offer, they are creating. Look at the content investigated versus ungated. Then you will see what's better for your customer, what's better for your audience. Right. The third step would be to provide an incentive. As an inbound marketer, you have to know that providing value is the most important thing is one of the most important things. Your contact offers shouldn't just be just a blog, shouldn't be just a comment. Instead your get content should provide actionable, valuable content. It's very important that the first step would be to build a very strong landing page. Usually when a user clicks the content offer, they'll be led to a landing page. And this landing page has to really amaze the customer to really have them what they are looking for. Because they already provide you with information, you have to return the value to them. So then you have all this information for your customers. You have emails, you have some information for customers. Then the five step, the fifth step, you have to segment your audience. This will help you to develop email marketing campaigns that are targeted and are very effective. Very targeted and very effective. Last but not least is to measure the analytics. As the last video we mentioned, analytics is key to really understand what you are doing and to understand if what you are doing is really causing the effect you want, is really helping your customers and they are really feeling that you are adding value to them. So that would be some of the steps you need to take in order to have a very best practice for the gated content.

Love it. Love it. Leo. Thank you. So that's what I have there and obviously I would love if later. Well, this video is uploaded on YouTube. If you have any comments, just post them there and subscribe for more information. The other topic that I want to talk about today is about what makes a great Google search ad, copy or text ad. So in the same way that I do. Sometimes I will share my screen with some reference point. In this case, I usually use our campaign that I have more for demonstration purposes. So let me share the screen again here to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. So on search you have obviously the opportunity to create ads or text base and there are some simple rules that are important to follow to create successful advertising on search. One key recommendation, of course is that if you can, you create ad groups are tied to specific phrases. Instead of having a lot of keywords in just one ad group, which is usually something that happens that can people prevent you from creating copy that really talks to what the person is searching. So for example, here, just for demonstration purposes, I'm putting here one keyword that is relevant to us. The B2B Demand Generation Agency. Someone looking for a B2B Demand Generation Agency. The components of the ad in general are you have a URL that will be your website or your landing page, if you have one. Sometimes customers say, well, should I start every single campaign with a dedicated landing page? If you can, yes. But if you can just start with the website, start measuring and then you focus on the pages or the keywords that are really driving engagement and you optimize those with landing pages. So don't prevent, you don't having a landing page from starting. So you'll have a URL. If it's not a landing page, it will be the your website. And nowadays on Google Ads you usually have the option to have one, two or three headlines. The only one that is in theory required is the first one. But I usually recommend that you, if you can, if you have something different to say, you use them both or the three of them. Honestly, the biggest one or the most important one is the first one. That's the one that most people pay attention to. In my particular case, I'm using the same keyword because at least for me, that's kind of like relevant. But some people can start here with questions or they usually start with value propositions, things that make them different. Like this one here. Right. I can start with get more and better leads now or I can start with something like a pain point for the lead, like are you frustrated by profitable digital marketing efforts? Are you not getting enough leads? Or is your marketing not driving demand, for example? So I can shift it into the pain points too and obviously the things that you want to accomplish. Because for example, here I'm giving a hint into the the fact that to generate demand you start with campaigns, but I'm making Some focus on results driven right, and getting more and better leads. I can also drive with just getting more and better opportunities for example. That will be another way to present it because usually our prospects will be interest on the outcomes, not necessarily on the process itself, even when they want to know about it. But in general you have three headlines and if you can use them all, that will be the first great recommendation. Try to use them all. Try to use tile case which is this. If you see here the punctuation I'm using capital letters on most of the words. Some prepositions you skip but try to make those headlines pop up right even when it's just text. That's the part will be more important. Another quick tip will be that by default Google will use your domain URL to use something called display path. They will not try to display the whole long URL that you might have, they will just put the domain but they will give you some space to put no more than 15 characters on these two sections. So take advantage of those. I usually recommend using the same keyword for the ad group that you have or something that is closer to that. Like for example here is B2B demand generation even when the URL doesn't have that word because in the display path it's going to show up here and again it will connect with the searcher on oh yes, this is B2B demand generation is related to that. And finally the last portion of the ads that you have access to is the description here again in the past you only had one description. Nowadays this what Google Ads called expanded ads have actually the option to show too. Sometimes they will show or not depending on where you're watching on desktop or mobile or. But it's important that you put them both. Obviously the same recommendation. The most important one will be the first one and the second one will be less important because people might not pay attention to the whole text. So you can see for example here I'm using because here I have 90 characters I can expand a little bit about what we do, right? Instead of just having this strong headlines on get more and better leads or just grow better with us or result during campaigns. Here I explain a little bit about I'm touching pain points or in this case I'm explaining what we do, right? We offer services that provide measurable and tangible results, right? One key recommendation too, if you can do it, if you have a space to is to end with a call to action, right? If what you are offering is or what you want is a call or if you want to have a consultation or get a quote, then usually it's relevant to. For example, here I can end with get a quote now, right? I don't have enough space, but maybe I can end here like get a quote, right? And so having those call to actions at the end are important in text because usually you don't have like a dedicated button or something that you can click on. So you, you want to present an option there. If you see, I'm not that worried about my call to action here on the description because I'm using extensions for the, for the ad and you can see how those extensions show up in the app. For example, I will have one extension will say let's talk, which is actually the action that I want the prospects or the leads to accomplish. And I'm also offering access to other parts of the website, like, well, you want to know more about our clients because maybe you want to see the portfolio, maybe you want to see some case studies, you want access to some resources to learn. So I'm using those extensions to get a glimpse of the rest of the website to our users. You can do the same if you have a section for products or for solutions or some learning resources, then you can add those as extensions and they will show up as part of the app. Obviously, if you have a phone number and you are taking care of it, answering phones, or you have a voicemail, then add your phone as a call extension and, and it will show up in the ads too. Like you can see the number here. And one particular good thing about that is that in mobile actually if you click on the number, it will immediately start a call, right? So that way you can offer another way for a customer, a potential client, to reach you out instead of sending them to the website and fill in a form, right? If you feel comfortable with that and, and you know you have someone behind the phone answering right away. So that would be a good recommendation. Those are in general the good practices, right? Have obviously the best that you can. A web page is preferably a landing page or something that behaves like a landing page. Pay extra attention to your headline, specifically the first one, but don't forget about the other two. Use the space that you have available to have more richer result. Use the display pad if you can, with the keywords that you are trying to target and take advantage of the two descriptions. Talk about your pain points and especially have a call to action at the end of them. Take advantage of the extensions in general. Call extensions, sidelink extensions, like the ones that we have here. If you have offers or pricing, then you can take advantage of those two location. That's another great extension to take advantage to. If you have a physical location and people actually can visit. Nowadays it's a little bit harder because of COVID but if everything goes back to normal, you want to have those locations available as well. Now the flip side of this is this order is not new, but is at least newer than the usual responsive ad. Sorry, this is the responsive ad and is this new format that search is making available to advertisers that is more based on artificial intelligence? Or consider like automated A B testing. So you have three headlines and you have them in a specific order and you have two descriptions and you have them in a specific order. But you might ask, are those the best headlines that I can have or are the descriptions the best description that I can have for making sure that someone actually clicks on the ad and go and visit my website and see my offer. So if you have ever wondered that, usually what you do is that you create multiple variations of the ad. You create two or three of them and you change the headlines and you change the descriptions. However, now Google offers a format where actually all that testing can happen. You just provide, I call it, you provide the assets, right? So for example, you can see here I have way more headlines. Probably I have like, I don't know, more than 10, right? And I have, you know, I have different variations on the idea like certified agency, agency for growth or something like that. And I have here not just two but four descriptions. So I have more real estate. It's not that the ad is going to show all these headlines at the same time. It's more that it will mix and match headlines and descriptions and it will start showing those ads to people and start figuring out which combination works the best, right? So you let the machine here test ideas and eventually we'll find the best combination and you will get better results in terms of click and engagement. So obviously here you need a larger set, especially of headlines because to be honest, that's what most people actually read. Obviously you have some descriptions. Some guidance here is you don't have to actually go for the whole circle, but as long as you don't have a good amount of headlines, try to add as many as you can. Try to add as many and unique descriptions as you can. Don't make them repetitive. Try to find different ideas. Like for example, here I don't talk about the product, I just talked about growing in general. Here I dive a little Bit more into more specific things like PPC and things like that. So test different ideas and over time let me see if this ad is actually showing something of that. And over time you will be able to let me use a larger time frame impressions, right. That some headlines will be, will be shown more than others. Right. I have very little information in this one because our budget is quite small here. But you will start seeing over time what combinations are getting the most impressions and those will be more successful. And the other great thing about this for me is that it prevents something that is very common on the advertising industry which is ad fatigue. Right. For search it's harder because rarely a person search twice very often. Right. But this apply also on social and when you have a lot of combinations, then if an ad is being shown many, many times, then people will start clicking less or paying less attention because they have seen it many, many times already. And an order ad will start getting advantage because it will be fresher for that person or for that group of population. So you have this up and down in terms of which ad is more relevant. And as long as the asset reflects your brand and reflects what you intend to offer to the marketplace, then you will have a healthy variation of ads that will prevent ad fatigue. So take advantage of those two ideas. Very, very tactical here, but hopefully it's helpful. Take advantage of the regular expand ads, especially those extra headlines, those extra descriptions and test the responsive search ad. Right. Put some assets there, let it compete and let's see who ranks the best. So Leo, I don't know if you have any comments on that one really.

It was very, very complete what you were presenting here. Congratulations. I would wrap up or try to make a summary of how to grab the best practice to really write the best Google Ads would be like. I would summarize it in probably seven or eight steps that you mentioned already. First, leverage the keywords where possible. That's very important. Second, be very specific as a usual as the user's query. Third, you mentioned, you have mentioned all of this. Always include a call to action. You have to promote and always include that call to action. The port probably test a psychological approach to find the right fit to your customer. To really find a fit and make these tests that you mentioned and really prove your ideas is very helpful. Five, don't sell false bill of goods. That's real important. I really like a lot do not sell false bill of goods. You mentioned as well, number six, use ad extensions like crazy. You have to use a lot to really try to put the main idea. And then put the extension that you showed a little while ago, probably seven leverage dynamic ad features. That's also very good.

Yes, I didn't mention those, but they're important.

I think you didn't mention that one. And the number one rule, it's very important. You always have to think that you're always talking to people. You are not talking to a machine, you are talking to people. That's the number one rule that you have to have in mind when you are designing these ads. That's a pro. A summary that you have mentioned. I probably add one or two, but it's basically the same that you did a great job trying to put it on screen.

I love that one. It's true. You always have to remember that at the end of the day you are talking to people. That's really important for one key aspect is that yes, it's important to match the keyword to the title and to the landing page. Right. It has to fall if you're offering black dressing shoes. Right. You wanna, you wanna talk about that on the ad and you wanna send a person to that. But, but don't fall on the trap of thinking that is. That's the only way you can. You can have, you know, toad provoking ad copy that just makes people scratch their head and it's not related to the, to the keyword. And it will still, you know, it will still work and if it does, then machines will catch up and they will. That will reward you for that. So always think first for humans and second for machines. I love that, Leo. So that's theme for today. I really enjoyed this episode and I look forward to seeing you all on the next one. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. I cannot believe it. We are here on the fourth episode. So we are building a little library there and we'll have it on the website too. And I look forward seeing you next week.