1. • ‘DOWNLOAD MY GUIDE’ is clear and not gimmicky, especially compared to ‘GET THE BEST GUIDE EVER!!!!’How do you enhance your customers’ user experience with your content to ensure this is helping, not hindering, your chances of nurturing those new leads into excited new customers?Here are some tips for landing pages, the ever-important thank you and when you should use gated vs. non-gated content.
     

     Landing pages

     1. Creating landing pages that are both useful and valuable to your potential customers/clients is key for any type of gated content.
     • The page must be genuine so visitors want to give you their personal information for the content behind the gate
     • Show that you’re an expert in the subject area so potential customers trust you are providing them with educational information
     • Display a level of professionalism to assure everyone reading your page that you will be developing a relationship with them built around a mutual best interest
     2. Your landing page should set clear expectations for the reader. Be sure to give them exactly what they are looking for once they have supplied the personal information you have requested.
     • Don’t tease with a workbook that will help them through the process of creating their own customized product, and then deliver only minimal information coupled with the need to call your sales team. (People are doing more and more research on their own before talking to a live person…be a useful resource during that process so they come back to you when it’s time for a purchase.)
     3. Make sure your lead capture form is clear and concise. It should only ask for the most innocuous of information – name, email, company and title. Make the call to action (CTA) readily apparent.

   Thank you…

   Once your visitors have filled out the form for the gated content, you should send or supply not only the promised content, but also provide a common courtesy of a “thank you”. This can be a page that thanks them for downloading the content or confirms that an email will be sent to them with the content that they requested.

   This small extra step conveys your gratitude for their visit and interest as well as confirms their action went through properly and they should expect to see the promised content momentarily. It should also, once again, set proper expectations.  Providing a positive user experience continues to build rapport and avoids disappointment on their part. Provide the visitor with what the next steps may be, on your part and theirs.

   Implementing gated content

   By using the hub and spoke model we discussed previously, you’ll understand when to implement your gated material.

   As a refresher, the hub and spoke model is when you research, produce and publish a main piece of content (the hub), then you create smaller pieces of content (the spokes) that relate back to the main piece of content.

   The hub and spoke model ensures that you are creating different content for various phases of the customer journey. Over time, you will become a trusted source because you will have delivered high-quality, engaging content that talks specifically to different features and benefits of your product/service for your customers. People want to be educated, not sold to, so be sure to provide useful information for all aspects of the sales cycle.

   Keep things in perspective

   Throughout this whole development process, it’s important to remember when to NOT gate your content as well. Gating content that isn’t “worth the price” will make people hesitant to register for other pieces, which might actually be more useful. Or, worse still, they might think you don’t have the expertise you claim to have if the content isn’t as valuable as expected. So refer to this handy flow chart as you begin creating content, but also keep in mind the user experience tips for when you develop the process.

   We were there. We were making our presence known in that space at that time.

2. Timing.

   Not time of day, which obviously it does help that it was during normal business hours, but it was timed to an event that was a major player in the industry happenings at the time. People who couldn’t attend the conference or were in another session (3 sessions were running simultaneously) could review the major themes, stats and quotes from the day quickly to stay informed.

3. Hashtags!

   Relevant hashtags, including and most especially the conference’s specific hashtag, were on every post. People searching for information about the event saw everything we posted. Trending hashtags get more views… that’s pretty much why they’re trending!

4. Tagging speakers.

   The people and companies presenting at these sessions are the industry leaders. If your company isn’t well-known enough to be one of these presenters, then associating yourself with the leaders is the next best thing. Connect yourself digitally with those companies.

Our reach increased on Facebook by over 30,000% for the week (118,000% was for one day), our post engagement increased by 380% and followers increased by 12%. Our tweet impressions increased by over 1300%, followers increased by 10% and we had more retweets in 2 days than we have had the last 2 months.

For us, these social media posts were about branding and putting our company out there as a marketing industry expert. Our goal wasn’t website traffic or new client inquiries immediately following the event. However, the next event we attend, we could strategize a little differently beforehand to make those our goals. Our posts might look a little different then, but live tweeting and posts on Facebook during industry events will definitely stay in the mix for the foreseeable future.