Breaking Down the Gates: A CMO’s Journey to Content Freedom and Skyrocketing Demand

In a bold move, Chuck Moxley, CMO of Blue Triangle, has thrown open the gates to his company’s content library. The result? A staggering 265% increase in demo requests and a 242% boost in pipeline growth.

This is a story of addition by subtraction, specifically, removing every lead capture form from Blue Triangle’s digital assets.

“We took the Band-Aid-ripping step of ungating all of our content in Q2 2023,” Moxley revealed during a recent Demand Gen Jam Session. “It turned out to be one of the smartest marketing decisions we’ve made.”

This article delves into Chuck’s journey from gated content defender to ungated content champion, exploring the challenges, strategies, and surprising outcomes of their approach. 

As businesses grapple with changing buyer behaviors and the increasing ineffectiveness of traditional lead capture methods, Moxley’s experiment offers a compelling case study of the power of frictionless content access.

Listen to Chuck’s Story

Want to hear the whole story directly from Chuck? We recently hosted Chuck Moxley during one of our monthly Demand Gen Jam Sessions, where he shared his experience in detail. [Watch the full replay here] for insights into Blue Triangle’s journey to ungated content success.

The Traditional Gated Content Approach: A Closer Look

The B2B marketing playbook has been clear for years: create valuable content, put it behind a form, and generate leads. This strategy has defined countless marketing campaigns and filled countless CRMs. But as Chuck Moxley discovered, this approach may be doing more harm than good.

“We were spending $15,000 over five weeks on a campaign for a gated eBook,” Moxley reveals. “The result? Only 106 downloads. That’s a cost per lead of $143.”

This stark reality isn’t unique to Blue Triangle. Across the B2B landscape, marketers are finding diminishing returns on their gated content strategies. 

Gated and Ungated Content Serve Different Masters

Gated and ungated content differ distinctly in terms of their intended benefactors. The priority to generate leads above all else can leave buyers underserved. This can hurt your business.

• False Security of Metrics: “We were chasing vanity metrics,” Moxley admits. “Sure, we could show that we know how to generate leads, but how many of those were actually qualified prospects?”
• The Hidden Cost of Gating: Beyond the monetary investment, there’s a more serious cost. Of the 3,400 people who landed on Blue Triangle’s eBook page, only 3% filled out the form. “We were actively preventing 97% of our interested audience from engaging with our gated content,” Moxley notes.
• Impact on Buyer Behavior: Today’s B2B buyers are more self-directed than ever. 6Sense research shows that buyers spend only 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers when considering a purchase. “Gated content essentially removed us from 83% of the buyer’s journey,” Moxley explains.
• Data Quality Issues: Many of the leads that did come in were using disposable email addresses or providing false information. “We were polluting our CRM with low-quality data, creating more work for our sales team,” says Moxley.

The issues with most B2B content strategies today often stem from gated and ungated content. Realizing that their gated content marketing strategy was underperforming led Moxley and his team to a crossroads. “We had to ask ourselves: are we serving our potential customers, or are we just serving our need for leads?”

This question would spark a radical shift in Blue Triangle’s approach to content marketing, challenging everything they thought they knew about lead generation and demand creation in the B2B space.

The Brave Decision to Ungate: Blue Triangle’s Story

In the face of diminishing returns from their gated content marketing strategy, Chuck Moxley and the Blue Triangle team decided to take a leap of faith.  “It was nerve-wracking,” Moxley admits. “We were essentially throwing out our entire lead generation playbook. But we knew something had to change.”

The experiment began with a single eBook. Instead of hiding it behind a form, Blue Triangle made it freely available on a landing page. The results were immediate and striking.

During the first two and a half weeks, $2,000 was invested in promoting the ungated eBook. This resulted in 175 individuals engaging meaningfully with the ungated content, and the cost per engagement plummeted from $143 to just $11.44.

This dramatic shift in engagement and cost-efficiency convinced Moxley and his team to go all in. Within a month, every piece of Blue Triangle’s content was ungated. The decision to ungate all content proved transformative. “We saw a 265% year-over-year increase in demo requests,” Moxley reports. “Our pipeline grew by 242%, and our marketing-sourced revenue increased by an astounding 41 times.”

These results didn’t come overnight. But the payoff has been well worth the initial uncertainty for Moxley and his team.”By removing the gates, we’ve actually opened more doors,” Moxley reflects. “We’re reaching more of our target audience, educating them more effectively, and seeing that translate into real business results.”

Rethinking the Marketing Funnel

With the gates down and content freely accessible, Blue Triangle faced a new challenge: measuring success without traditional lead metrics. This led Moxley and his team to reimagine their marketing funnel completely.

“The traditional funnel just didn’t make sense anymore,” Moxley explains. “We needed a model that reflected the non-linear nature of B2B buying today.”

Treating the Buyers Journey Like a Football Field

Enter the “football field” analogy – a novel approach to visualizing the buyer’s journey that Blue Triangle developed.

“Think of the prospect as the ball,” Moxley illustrates. “Our goal is to move that ball down the field and across the goal line. But just like in a real game, progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes you gain yards, sometimes you lose them.”

This new model identified six key stages:

• First Engagement
• Repeat Engagements
• Active Assessment
• Demo Meeting
• Proof of Concept
• Closed Won

“We set goals for each stage,” Moxley says. “For example, we aimed to get 56% of our target accounts to the first engagement stage.”

The results? By September 2024, Blue Triangle had achieved 72% first engagement, far exceeding its initial goal.

Sales and marketing alignment, along with a collaborative effort from the entire team, is essential to driving progress. This includes sales, marketing, SDRs, and customer success, all working in unison to advance deals effectively. 

This shift in thinking led to some surprising insights

• The Power of Multiple Touchpoints: “Data from HockeyStack showed it takes an average of 54 touchpoints to get to an MQL,” Moxley reveals. “For us, that translates to an inbound demo request.”
• The Long Game: “We saw that it takes over 2,000 impressions on average to move a prospect through the entire process,” Moxley adds. “It drove home the importance of consistent, long-term engagement.”
• The Dark Funnel: “We had to account for all the research and engagement happening outside our view,” Moxley explains. “Our new model helped us better understand and influence that ‘dark funnel.'”

This new approach required a significant reset of internal expectations. “We stopped reporting on leads and MQLs entirely,” Moxley admits. “Instead, we focus on pipeline and revenue, metrics that matter much more to the CEO and the board.”

The shift wasn’t easy, but it paid off. “By the end of the year, our inbound pipeline had grown 9X compared to the prior year,” Moxley reports.

Implementing an Ungated Content Marketing Strategy

Transitioning to an ungated content marketing strategy isn’t as simple as removing forms from gated content landing pages. For Blue Triangle, it required a complete overhaul of its marketing operations and mindset.

Here’s how Blue Triangle navigated this radical shift:

• Resetting Internal Expectations – One of the biggest challenges was getting buy-in from the rest of the organization. “We had to educate everyone, from the CEO to the sales team, about why this change was necessary,” Moxley recalls.
• Developing New Reporting Metrics – With traditional lead generation metrics out the window, Blue Triangle had to find new ways to demonstrate marketing’s impact. “We implemented HockeyStack, which leverages 6sense data to identify the ICP companies visiting our site,” Moxley explains. “This allowed us to report on our progress toward the goals we established for each stage of our ‘football field.'” 
• Balancing Patience and Faith – Perhaps the most challenging aspect was waiting for results. “For those of us who ran highly successful lead generation playbooks for years, it’s a little scary to go all in on ungating,” Moxley admits. It took at least a quarter to see “proof of life,” as Moxley puts it. “We used our own platform to understand immediate improvements to customer journeys, which gave us early indicators the strategy was working.”

Surprising Benefits

As the strategy unfolded, Blue Triangle discovered some unexpected advantages:

• Ungated Content Improved Content Consumption: “When we looked at customer journeys after we made this change, the number of pages consumed went up by 5x,” Moxley reveals.
• Better Lead Generation & Quality: Ironically, by not forcing lead capture, the leads that did come in voluntarily were of much higher quality. “We added a form at the bottom of ungated pages for people to request an email copy. These leads had 100% accurate email addresses because they wanted to receive the content,” Moxley notes.
• Increased Site Engagement: “We saw a significant increase in the number of pages viewed per session,” Moxley says. “People were actually exploring our site and learning about our product instead of bouncing after hitting a form.”

The Lead Generation Results Speak for Themselves

These results validate Moxley and the Blue Triangle team’s bold decision to break down the content gates. By the end of the year, the results were clear:

• Demo requests increased by 265% year-over-year
• Pipeline grew by 242%
• Marketing-sourced revenue increased by 41 times

“In the first half of this year, we’ve already produced 81% of the entire pipeline we produced last year,” Moxley reports. “And 90% of that pipeline is from our ideal customer profile, up from 60% last year.”

Ungated Content Best Practices

Blue Triangle’s journey offers valuable lessons you can apply to your strategy if you’re grappling with the challenges of changing buyer behaviors and diminishing returns from traditional lead generation tactics. Here’s what you need to know:

• Quality Content is Your New Gatekeeper—When you remove the gates, your content must stand on its merit. Shift your focus from creating “exclusive” gated content to developing truly insightful materials that address your buyers’ real needs and pain points.  
• Redefine Your Success Metrics – It’s time to move beyond lead-centric metrics. You’ll need to educate your executive team on new KPIs that better reflect your impact on the business. Consider tracking:

• Number of target accounts engaged
• Depth of engagement (time spent, pages viewed)
• Pipeline influenced by marketing activities
• Revenue attributed to marketing efforts
• Break Down Silos Between Sales and Marketing – An ungated approach requires even closer alignment between your sales and marketing teams. Consider involving your SDRs in the marketing team throughout the buyer journey. This ensures a seamless experience for potential buyers as they move from content consumption to sales conversations.
• Play the Long Game – Your ungated strategy should focus on nurturing relationships over time. Be patient and commit to consistent, valuable engagement over an extended period. The payoff in terms of pipeline quality and revenue can be substantial.
• Invest in the Right Technology – Without form fills, you’ll need new tools to understand who’s engaging with your content. Invest in a technology stack that gives you these insights. Look into tools similar to what Blue Triangle used, like HockeyStack and 6sense, to better understand your audience and their behavior.
• Start Small and Iterate—You don’t need to ungate everything overnight. Start with a few pieces of content, measure the results, and scale from there. This approach allows you to test and refine your strategy with minimal risk.

The Future of Your B2B Marketing

As you experiment with ungated content marketing strategies, you’re part of a fundamental shift in B2B marketing. Your role is evolving from a lead capturer to a value creator, from a gatekeeper of information to a trusted resource throughout the buying journey.

This approach isn’t easy. It requires a commitment to consistently producing high-quality, relevant content. But as B2B buyers demand more control over their purchasing journeys, adapting to this new reality could put you ahead of the competition.

Remember, Blue Triangle saw compelling results. While your results may vary, their experience suggests that breaking down the gates could open up new opportunities for your marketing efforts.

If you’re ready to rethink your content marketing strategy and embrace the ungated future of B2B marketing, here are some common questions you and your team might have.

Frequently Asked Questions About Ungated Content Strategies

• Won’t our lead generation suffer if we ungate our content? While you may see a decrease in form fills, you’re likely to see an increase in overall engagement. Blue Triangle experienced a 265% increase in demo requests after ungating its content. Remember, quality often trumps quantity when it comes to lead generation.
• How do we track who’s consuming our content without forms? Modern tools like HockeyStack, 6sense, or HubSpot can provide insights into who’s engaging with your content, even without form fills. These tools can track company-level engagement and help you identify potential buyers based on their behavior.
• What types of content should we ungate first? Start with top-of-funnel content like blog posts, infographics, and short videos. As you become more comfortable with the strategy, consider ungating whitepapers, eBooks, and webinars. Keep in mind that high-value, original research might still warrant gating.
• How do we measure the success of ungated content? Focus on metrics like engagement rate, time spent on a page, number of pages viewed per session, and ultimately, impact on pipeline and revenue. Also, track the number of target accounts engaging with your content.
• Will ungating content hurt our SEO efforts? On the contrary, ungated content can actually boost your SEO. More freely accessible content means more opportunities for backlinks, social shares, and increased time on site – all factors that can positively influence your search rankings.
• How do we justify the cost of creating high-quality content without immediate lead capture? While the upfront ROI might need clarification, ungated content can lead to higher quality leads and larger deal sizes in the long run. Focus on metrics that tie content engagement to pipeline and revenue to demonstrate value to stakeholders.
• How long does it take to see results from an ungated content strategy? Results can vary, but Blue Triangle started seeing significant improvements within a quarter. However, it’s important to view this as a long-term strategy. The full benefits may take 6-12 months to materialize as you build trust and engagement with your audience.
• How do we get the sales team’s buy-in for this approach? Educate your sales team on the benefits of ungated content, such as more informed prospects and higher-quality conversations. Involve them in the content creation process and ensure they have visibility into content engagement metrics for their target accounts.
• What if our competitors are still gating their content? This could be your opportunity to differentiate. By providing free, valuable content, you position your company as a trusted resource in your industry. This can give you a competitive edge in the long run.

Remember, transitioning to an ungated content strategy is a significant shift that requires careful planning and execution. If you have more questions or need guidance, please contact us at Vende Digital for personalized advice.

How Can Vende Digital Help You Break Down the Gates?

Transitioning from a gated to an ungated content strategy is a significant undertaking. At Vende Digital, we specialize in helping B2B companies like yours navigate this shift successfully. Here’s how we can support your journey:

• Content Strategy Overhaul – We’ll work with you to audit your existing content and develop a roadmap for creating high-value, ungated content that resonates with your target audience. Our team of experienced B2B content strategists will help you identify key topics, formats, and distribution channels to maximize engagement.
• Metrics Redefinition – Our data analysts will help you establish new KPIs that align with your ungated strategy. We’ll set up dashboards and reporting systems that demonstrate the impact of your marketing efforts on pipeline and revenue, giving you the insights you need to prove ROI to your executive team.
• Sales and Marketing Alignment – We’ll facilitate workshops and develop processes to ensure seamless collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. Our experts will help you create a unified approach to nurturing prospects throughout the buyer’s journey.
• Technology Stack Optimization – Our martech specialists will assess your current tools and recommend the right mix of technologies to support your ungated strategy. We’ll help you implement and integrate solutions for tracking engagement, identifying potential buyers, and personalizing content experiences.
• Pilot Program Design and Execution—We’ll help you design and implement a pilot program to test your ungated strategy. This includes selecting the right content pieces to ungated, setting up tracking mechanisms, and analyzing results to inform your broader rollout.
• Ongoing Optimization – As your partner, we’ll continuously monitor the performance of your ungated strategy, making data-driven recommendations for improvement. Our agile approach ensures your strategy evolves with changing market conditions and buyer behaviors.

At Vende Digital, we understand that every B2B company’s journey to ungated content is unique. We offer customized solutions tailored to your needs, goals, and challenges. Contact us today for a free consultation on how we can help you transition to a more effective, buyer-centric content strategy.