Action-gating is a popular and effective technique used in social media marketing.
Action-gating is the process of asking a follower to complete an action in order to get something. Usually, the action requested is to provide a piece of information, such as an email address or user demographics, or share an opinion or idea.
In return, the business offers something of value, such as a prize, a coupon, or a piece of content.
Action-gating can be a highly effective way to improve your social media efforts. While action-gating is the most popular on Facebook, you can use it on any social media platform or your own website.
Build Your Email List
Building up an email list is probably the most popular purpose of action-gating. You simply need to ask social media users to provide their email address in exchange for a discount, product, or participation in a contest.
You can also ask them directly to subscribe to emails if you plan to regularly send out information, discounts, or a newsletter. If you offer a strong incentive, you can very quickly gather a good number of email addresses.
When used effectively, an email list can help you to successfully market new products, deals, and discounts, bringing in new customers and more sales.
You can post an action-gated post to gather email addresses on your Facebook page, your blog, your website, or almost anywhere else.
Brookstone uses action-gating on their homepage to gain email subscribers.
Create Leads
Action-gating can also help you to gain new social media followers and convert followers into leads. The key is to provide a desirable incentive that will also lead your followers to interact to with your company. This might be a free product or a discount.
If, for example, you run a restaurant, you might run a promotion in which you offer a free meal for two. In order to enter the contest, followers will have to submit their email address. From this promotion, you’ll gain email addresses that you can use in the future. You’ll also bring one new customer to your restaurant, and, if they like your food, they’ll be likely to return.
Gain Valuable Information
You can also use action-gating to gain information that will help you to make your business more successful.
You can use social media posts to poll your followers on their preferences or get feedback about your products, services, and content. If you run a clothing company, you might ask your followers what new fashion trend they’re the most excited about this season. If you run an IT company, you might want to ask your followers what problem with technology they face the most frequently. Gathering this kind of information will help you shape your marketing and services to meet customers’ needs and bring in more sales.
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If you use action-gating thoughtfully, you can accumulate valuable information that will help you to reach more customers, create solid leads, and improve the services and products you offer.
This makes action-gating one of the more helpful tools of social media marketing.
