Author Archives: Arena

High CTR Display Advertising Best Practices

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Winning in display advertising is hard because most people don’t notice these ads. One industry study estimated that 86% of consumers experience “banner blindness.” This finding is troubling for advertisers and publishers. 

The good news is that you have a tremendous opportunity to increase the effectiveness of your display advertising. There are two strategies to use – improving display advertising and strategies that go beyond traditional display ad methods.

Display Advertising: Best Practices To Create An Effective Ad

We’ll approach this discussion from the publisher’s point of view. Understanding these best practices allows you to sell more subscriptions, tickets, and products. Also, you’ll be better positioned to understand your advertisers’ needs and offer them a perspective. 

1. Craft Your Copy 

The copy in display advertising has significant constraints. Typically, display ads have very short amounts of copy: aim for ten words or less. With these constraints, focusing on a single, clear idea or offer is often best. 

Since a headline can make or break a display ad, it’s natural to feel pressure to get it right immediately. That’s a challenging game to win. Instead, use the rule of 10. Write ten headline ideas for your display ads. Then step away from your ad and select 2-3 promising ads for your needs.

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As a starting point, focus your ad on either solving a problem or a benefit. Consumer brands often focus on sales and discounts because these are clear, easy-to-explain benefits. Simple benefit-driven headlines are proven to work. This type of headline should always have a home in your display advertising.

Direct benefits aren’t the only approach to winning display advertising. Focusing your display ad on a painful problem your audience is experiencing can also work well. The key is to express the problem in a specific way that clicks with your audience. For example, the headline “Worried about taxes?” is less compelling than “Worried about the April 18 tax deadline?”

2. Target Your Display Ad Effectively 

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The best copy in the world will only succeed if it is aimed at the right audience. The best-targeting insights come from using first-party data. If a publisher has collected detailed demographic profiles (e.g., age, gender, income, and location) on their audience, targeting should be much easier.

Display ad targeting should also consider audience behavior and timing. For example, an audience segment that pays for a subscription may be more likely to pay for other premium content and experiences like events, streaming services, and other subscriptions. 

At the same time, don’t write off non-subscription buyers in your audience. Highly engaged audience members that regularly consume your sports content might be excellent prospects for a sports apparel brand. 

A thoughtful approach to timing the delivery of your display advertising can also lift your results. For example, displaying ads during the traditional 9-5 work day will likely attract a different audience than those displayed during off-peak hours. 

Device-based targeting is another way to target your ad. For instance, you can target desktop-only, mobile-only, and both. Cross-device targeting is often helpful. A casual mobile browser may see your ad for the first time on mobile and then click when they see it again on the desktop. 

Finally, keep programmatic advertising models in mind. Likely, your advertisers will not be selecting individual publishers directly. Instead, they may use platforms like demand side platforms (DSPs) to target demographics or broad interests (e.g., “beauty and fitness” or “home and garden”). 

3. Choose Your Design and Layout

The right design and layout decisions can go a long way to increasing display advertising ROI. At a minimum, having mobile and desktop-sized images for your display ads is critically important. Ad sizes like 250×250 pixels and 200×200 pixels can work well on both screen sizes.

In addition to display ad size, placement is an important consideration. A display ad at the top of your homepage may be more difficult to target than one in a specific section, like business news. A display ad that faces less competition from other ads may deliver more significant results. 

Large ad sizes may also drive up conversions. A 2019 study found that the best-performing ads were “leaderboards” (728×90) and the medium rectangular ad (300×250). 

4. Adopt An Experimental Mindset

It’s unlikely that your first display advertising concept will become an instant winner. To succeed in display advertising, it is crucial to have the patience to test and experiment. For example, your testing might target demographic segments (e.g., Gen Z vs. Millennials) and offers (e.g., 10% coupon vs. offering a premium). 

Some ad platforms offer responsive ad capabilities where different ad creative combinations can be tested quickly. If your budget allows, take full advantage of such automated testing. Just make sure that each test gets enough impressions over enough time.

Enhancing Your Display Advertising Results

A well-crafted display ad is table stakes to compete in the digital world. These ads may not be enough to attract attention, clicks, and conversions. Use the following strategies to increase your results further.

Use Arena Conversion Cards

Arena Conversion Cards are a powerful way to raise the effectiveness of your display advertising. Conversion cards can deliver CTR (click through rate) over 5% while traditional display ads typically deliver less than 1% CTR, which is a great benefit direct sales teams at publishers and media companies can leverage to drive revenue.

Arena Conversion Cards function like native display ads on your website. Choose your image, copy, and CTA button, and you’ll have your first conversion card style display ad ready!

Conversion cards deliver higher conversions for a few reasons.

First, conversion cards focus on getting conversions rather than other advertising goals like increasing brand awareness. 

Second, conversion cards perform better than traditional ads because they are part of an online experience like chat where your audience has already shown they want to engage. Leverage this engagement to promote premium subscriptions, content or sponsored ads sold by a direct sales team.

Third, a conversion card can be pinned to the top of an engaging experience like a live chat or live blog. That means many people in your audience will see it while they are paying attention to your website.

Conversion cards are best used for two types of display advertising: direct sponsorships and marketing your products. For instance, a live blog focused on baseball coverage would be an excellent opportunity to have a conversion card for baseball products.

Enhance Audience Engagement With Online Experiences

Online audiences are easily distracted. That’s one of the reasons why display advertising delivers poor results. What if there was a way to keep your audience glued to your content and ignore other media for a time?

It’s possible when your website offers a compelling online experience. Hosting an online event with a live chat room is one powerful way to keep your audience hooked. For example, invite your audience to breaking news coverage with some of your top personalities. Once your audience starts to engage with your coverage by posting comments and questions, you have their attention! Adding a few conversion cards to the event can drive much higher click-through rates (CTR) than conventional digital advertising.

How To Quickly Increase Audience Engagement

Developing a more engaged online audience is critical for publishers. With high engagement, you can collect better data on your audience. That better data makes your publication more appealing to publishers. Find out how Arena can help you increase online engagement.

What Are Second-Screen Experiences? | Arena

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Second-screen experiences offer a powerful way to engage audiences deeply. The best way to define second-screen experience is with an example.

How The Second-Screen Experience Makes The Super Bowl More Engaging

Watching the SuperBowl is a popular social event that draws in millions of people. Many people watch the game unfold on their first screen like a living room TV. The engagement magic starts when people pull out their second-screen (i.e. a phone, tablet or computer). 

For the 2023 SuperBowl, Arena offered a compelling second-screen experience where fans can come together using live chat. The Super Bowl LVII coverage pulled in social media content. By experiencing the Super Bowl on two screens, audiences stayed engaged for extended periods. That means greater engagement for publishers and audiences.

While live sports events lend themselves to second-screen experiences, that is just one way to use second-screen experiences. In fact, there are at least five different second-screen engagement strategies that reliably deliver high audience engagement.

Download our white paper “Generation Z and the Rise of the Second Screen” and transform your engagement strategy today.  

5 Second-Screen Examples To Grab Your Audience

Hope is not a strategy – use these proven methods to make second-screens work for you. 

Some of these strategies work well for almost any brand (e.g. social media engagement) while others are niche (e.g. augmented reality). Experiment with different options to see which one suits your needs and team capabilities the best.

1. Second-Screen Strategy: Social media engagement

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If building a buzz about your content on social media is a priority, pay attention to this strategy.

In its simplest form, this second-screen engagement strategy starts with asking your audience to share their thoughts with a single hashtag. Shows with a simple short titles like HBO’s “Succession” lend themselves to easy hashtags like #Succession and #SuccessionHBO used.

Recurring events like sports events and awards can also use hashtags. The annual Oscars award mainly use hashtags like #Oscars. However, critics can also use hashtags like #OscarsSoWhite to highlight racial equity problems in the show.

Stating your official hashtag is just the start. Monitoring the conversation and seeing how people engage with you on social media is just as important.

2. Second-Screen Strategy: Interactive ads

Assuming your entire audience wants a single-screen experience – like sitting in a movie theater to see a film – every time they watch something no longer holds true. Attention may drift to their mobile devices. That’s where a well-timed interactive ad can succeed.

Brands can use second-screen experiences to create interactive ads that allow viewers to engage with their products and services in real time. For example, a fashion brand may create an interactive ad (e.g. Facebook’s Instant Experience ads) that allows viewers to customize an outfit and purchase it directly from their phone.

Interactive ads can be even be used to give away a free product sample. How? There are interactive ads for games like Royal Match (a mobile puzzle game) that let users play the game for a few seconds for free right in the ad. Known as playable ads, this type of ad blends entertainment and advertising.

3. Second-Screen Strategy: Companion apps

Several TV shows have companion apps that provide additional content and behind-the-scenes information. These apps can also offer interactive experiences, such as quizzes and polls.

In 2018, Amazon launched the “Jeopardy! PlayShow Beta” app. This app made it possible for viewers to play the game show while watching the show. The app stands out because if offers real-time feedback: answers appear on TV and the second-screen (i.e. the user’s smartphone) simultaneously. The app includes access to a few episodes for free – ongoing access requires a fee.

Creating a specific companion app for a TV show can work wonders. However, there are other ways to use an app experience to connect with viewers.

There is also a wave of TV viewing apps that provide supplemental information for viewers. Apps like SeriesGuide, IMDb, Hobi and TVTime. Take IMDb as an example. It offers TV show and movie information like actors, directors, writers and quotes. Want to know what else the guest star in your favorite show has appeared in? IMDb might have the answer.

4. Second-Screen Strategy: Live Chat

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You can host a second-screen conversation with your audience right on your website. Simply install Arena Live Chat and you can be up, and running in minutes. 

There are a few ways to use the live chat in a few different ways a second-screen strategy. The best part is that you don’t even need to have broadcast rights. Instead, you just need to plan the live chat experience.

For this example, let’s assume your publication has an entertainment section. You’re about to cover the launch of a much anticipated HBO series. Unless you expect a very large audience of fans, we suggest focusing your efforts on a “during” experience.

Pre-Show Live Chat

A pre show live chat experience is a lot like a pre-game show for significant events like the Super Bowl. You could start the discussion for a drama with speculation about the show’s story. Consider inviting actors, writers or directors from the show to increase participation in your live chat. Alternatively, you might also invite a social media influencer to cohost the show with you.

During Show Live Chat

Launch your live chat as the show goes on air (or the first episode is released on a streaming platform). Pay attention to the show’s emotional moments and one-liners to spark audience discussion. Ask your fellow fans to react to those comments. If possible, script a few topics in advance in case of any quiet moments in the chat.

After Show Live Chat

As the end credits roll, you can launch (or continue) your live chat session to explore everything covered in the show. During the show, take a few notes about the best character moments and plot twists and then discuss them afterwards.

Running a live chat experience about a show during live broadcast is likely to bring the largest audience. 

5. Second-Screen Strategy: Augmented reality (AR)

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Second-screen experiences can also include augmented reality (AR) features that provide additional information or enhance the viewing experience. 

For example, during sports events, augmented reality graphics can show player statistics and other relevant data. For this functionality to work, second-screen users must reference a symbol, QR code or something similar. For instance, taking a photo of a professional athlete’s jersey number could be used to access up-to-the-minute statistics about the player’s career.

You can also use AR to lift engagement in news coverage. ABC News used augmented reality to enhance its midterm election coverage. This early example of using AR showed how AR could be used in the broadcast. The next opportunity is to give viewers AR capabilities on their second-screen.

The Fastest Way To Get Started With Second-Screen Experiences

Second-screen experiences have only been around for a few years. Using these strategies, there are still great opportunities to stand out and deepen audience engagement. Ignoring the second-screen opportunity means taking a chance at losing your audience whenever there’s a commercial break or slow moment. 

The fastest way to add a second-screen experience lies in using live chat. You can add a live chat experience to your website in minutes with Arena. Discover how Arena helps publishers and broadcasters grow audience engagement.

What Is Customer Engagement? | Arena

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The age of treating every customer the same is coming to an end. Thanks to Amazon, Netflix, and other digital community platforms, customers expect a personalized experience that reflects their interests. Without that, customers will start to view your brand as out of touch.

The good news? New strategies and technologies are making it easier than ever to connect with your customers. Before jumping into the specifics, stepping back and clarifying customer engagement is essential.

What is Customer Engagement?

A brand with strong customer engagement is one where customers have a deep, ongoing relationship. Instead of passing website visitors who forget about your content, highly engaged and loyal customers are different. They look forward to coming back to your website repeatedly. Many of them will even become ambassadors by sharing your content and reports on their social media profiles.

In other words, customer engagement is like having a group of trusted friends who would miss you if you were gone. Customer engagement helps brands develop customer loyalty, which will sustain your brand through disruption and downturns.

Why is Customer Engagement Important?

Customer engagement strategies are critically important for several reasons. Let’s dive right into them.

Reason 1: Customers Value Experiences, Not Just Products

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Recent research from Salesforce found that 80% of customers value the experience of interacting with a brand. Your customers might use your products differently, according to their own interests, expectations and preferences. That means that offering a personalized experience is essential.

If the customer experience is boring or disappointing, achieving significant growth will likely be very difficult.

Reason 2: Governments Are Changing The Rules

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Many people around the world are upset about how their personal information has been handled by digital companies. As a result, governments have imposed significant controls, fines, and laws that penalize companies that fail to protect companies. For instance, California and the European Union have imposed significant consumer rights and company obligations relating to personal data.

When your company focuses on customer engagement, the entire process tends to be transparent. Your customers will see that you’re gathering information from them and using it to provide a rich experience. In contrast, other strategies, such as relying on third-party cookies, are perceived as being less transparent.

Reason 3: The Decline and Fall of Third-Party Cookies

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Engaging customers is all about developing a direct relationship with your audience. It’s a significant change from marketers’ strategies for over a decade: third-party cookies.

For years, marketers have relied on this data to track customer activity across the Internet quietly. While powerful for brands, this type of individual behavioral tracking has prompted significant privacy concerns. As a result, Apple has removed support for cookies from their browser. By 2024, Google Chrome – the world’s most popular browser – will also remove support for third-party cookies.

The end of third-party cookies means that your brand has to find other ways to achieve growth, like customer engagement,

Reason 4: ROI Personalized Experience

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We saved the best for last: customer engagement and retention strategies deliver far greater ROI. How? Personalization can lift ROI on marketing significantly – McKinsey found it can drive a 10% increase in sales. First-party data, provided directly by the customer or audience member, is one of the most reliable ways to gather accurate data to fuel personalization.

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Want to explore first-party data further and use it to increase revenue? Our explainer post has you covered: What Is First-Party Data?

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Fortunately, there are some barriers to entry to delivering these kinds of experiences. That’s good news for you. Investing in customer engagement now gives you an edge over the competition.

Your marketing, content, and offers will be seen as much more relevant. That means more clicks, shares, and revenue without relying on third parties like social media platforms.

Customer engagement is robust and has a lot to offer. Yet, these benefits might seem a bit abstract. That’s why we’re breaking down the concept and looking at it in three primary use cases: publishing, marketing, and sales.

Effective Customer Engagement Strategies

Customer Engagement for Publishers

Most publishers earn most of their revenue from advertising and paid subscriptions. To achieve both goals, converting anonymous website visitors into registered users is vital.

There are several ways to apply customer engagement to your publishing business. For simplicity, assume you are focusing on boosting engagement with paid subscribers because you want to lift recurring revenue. The following strategies can help you to lift engagement.

Offer Small Group Experiences

Loneliness had already become a major social problem before the pandemic arrived – today, 1 in 3 Americans are lonely, according to Harvard. Publishers can lift engagement and offer chances to connect through small group experiences.

The concept is simple: invite subscribers to a “fireside chat” style event and limit attendance to 20-30 people. Running a smaller group experience makes it far easier to focus your content and allows your audience to meet like-minded people.

Offer Multiple Incentives For User Data

Maintaining high customer engagement means staying relevant to your audience even as their needs change. That means the standard approach of gathering audience preference and interest data at registration isn’t enough.

The solution is to give your audience more incentives to share data with you regularly. For instance, you might offer to extend your paid subscriber’s subscription by three months if they agree to participate in 3 short online surveys over 90 days. Beyond free access, some in your audience might be interested in sharing their insights with you if there is a prospect of being quoted or included in your coverage. Experiment with multiple incentives to see what connects best with your audience.

If you’re not in the publishing business, don’t worry. We’ve got your needs covered in the following two sections.

Customer Engagement for Marketing

Some, perhaps most, of your website visitors will not be ready to buy the first time they land on your website. Your website will likely be forgotten if you fail to offer an appealing experience. Here are some ways you can make your website more engaging for customers.

Use engagement technology on your website

Social experiences for your audience – like asking questions and reacting to others’ comments – can happen right on your website. There’s no need to rely on social media platforms as your only way of building an online community.

Installing Arena Live Chat on your website is a great way to make your website more engaging. You can install the software and launch a chat session in just a few minutes. The best part? You keep the audience’s attention focused on your website, which means more chances to earn conversions.

Create real-time experiences for your audience on your website

Live experiences like live shopping, live streaming, and even watching other people play games on Twitch are powerful ways to drive attention. There are multiple ways to draw significant attention. You can publish long-form content, including articles, videos, and podcasts. Engaging content is often the spark that draws the audience’s attention to your website.

You can also deliver interactive experiences for your audience. These experiences give people a reason to return to your website repeatedly. For example, you can use Arena Live Blog to provide coverage of a major industry event like CES if you are in the electronics field.

Customer Engagement for Sales

Customer engagement for sales is critical for any business focusing on long-term customer relationships. Use these strategies to keep your buyers coming back for more and more.

Enrich your loyalty program

Points, discounts, and other traditional incentives are all proven ways to keep customers buying. Unfortunately, standing out in the loyalty space is getting more difficult.

The average American had 7.6 active loyalty membership memberships in 2022, according to Statista, while the average number of total memberships was 16.6. That means that nearly half of loyalty program members are inactive!

One solution is to offer memorable experiences for your loyal members, like online events. For instance, you might invite your “VIP customers” to have early access to products in development or place custom requests. Going the extra mile to give your best customers something special can help to lift engagement.

Invite customers to share their experiences

You’re probably already encouraging reviews, recording customer interviews, and publishing case studies. Another way to invite your customers into your growth efforts is to shine a spotlight on your customers in digital events. For example, invite a few of your top customers to a panel discussion and leverage Live Chat to encourage discussion.

Using Arena For Customer Engagement

Highly engaging content and a deep understanding of your audience are crucial to customer engagement. Empowering your team with the right tools to create digital experiences for customers is crucial. Arena Live Chat makes building a digital community on your website easy. Learn more about using Arena to grow an online community for customer engagement.

How To Track Audience Engagement Growth & Course Correct

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Audience engagement is the new essential goal that digital brands and publishers use. The reason is simple: highly engaged audiences are more likely to trust and share data about themselves. That means you can launch personalized campaigns that drive impressive results.

Build Your Audience Engagement Foundation

The path to audience engagement success starts with setting up the right foundation. The time and resources you invest will help you improve your audience engagement efforts in the long term.

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1) Get To Know Your Audience Deeply

What does your audience want, and how do those needs align with your company goals? That’s the essence of audience research. Most audience needs relate to a few core drives, such as solving problems, pursuing gain, or entertainment. Surveys are an invaluable tool for getting to know your audience better.

Use questions like the following on your survey:

  • What websites do you visit every week?
  • Which social media platforms do you use most often?
  • What type of content do you prefer the most (e.g., articles, videos, podcasts)?

If your last survey was 12 months ago (or longer), it’s time to update that information. Without these insights, your content and experiences may fail to connect with audience needs.

2) Align Engagement To Revenue Goals

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Understanding your audience’s needs and wants is the beginning. Finding ways to align your goals with the audience is crucial. 

For example, your audience may want to be the first to know important industry news to gain an advantage (or just brag about being the first to know!). That audience desire may align with a publisher’s goal to sell more paid subscriptions. To sell more subscriptions to this audience, look for ways to highlight how your best breaking news coverage is limited to paying subscribers.

For a brand selling products, connecting audience goals to your product is just as important. Without this connection, your content and offers will be seen as irrelevant. For example, a clothing brand might offer tips on building a wardrobe for each season.

3) Bring On Specialized Talent

Successful audience engagement is easier when you have the right talent. Start by looking at your employees. For publishers, your journalists, contributors, and on-air personalities should take a central role in building a connection with your audience. 

Content creation is essential, but you need other skills to build a thriving audience engagement program. Running a live online event with live chat is far less stressful when you have a dedicated support person to staff the chat room. In addition, it’s also helpful to assign responsibility for tracking and measuring audience engagement. We’ll cover measurement in greater detail below.

4) Take Smart Risks

The courage to experiment and take risks is front and center to building an engaged audience. If all of your content and online experiences are designed by a committee, standing out and keeping the audience’s attention is going to get tough.

So, what does it mean to take well-thought-out risks in audience building? It will look different in each organization. Here are a few examples to get you thinking:

Disagree with conventional wisdom

Every field has its best practices and standard ways to get things done. For example, most people recommend keeping online events to a maximum of 60 minutes. Consider going above that with a one-day virtual conference or even a “lightning” event with a few short presentations in less than 20 minutes.

Strike up unconventional partnerships

Another way to take risks in audience building is to get out of your comfort zone with who you partner with. For example, most of your competitors might work with US-based influencers. What if you contacted experts in Canada and Australia to offer a different perspective?

Invest in long term relationships and content

Risk-taking also sometimes means taking a long term view of content. Take Buffer, for example. They’ve built a relationship as a thought leader in remote work by publishing a detailed State of Remote Work survey since 2018. The brand has carved a reputation by revisiting the same theme for several years. 

5) Enhance your website with engagement in mind

Your website’s capabilities are also vital in shaping the growth of your audience. Social media platforms have set an expectation that websites offer a deeply engaging experience. The old best practice from the 2010s to build a social media following on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok carries problems today.

Social media platforms are increasingly susceptible to misinformation, hateful content, and other problems. There’s another reason to focus attention on building a community on your website: first-party data. The third-party cookie is going to be dead by 2024. To continue engaging your audience, you’ll need a direct connection.

An engaging website with live chat is a social experience that repeatedly draws people back. Over time, your audience may make friends with others who use your website, so your website will become a community destination. 

Arena Live Chat is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make engagement easy on your website. You can install it in a few minutes and run your first event within an hour. Live chat gives your audience a way to interact with each other and discover more about your brand.

Once you have your audience engagement strategies, it’s time to build your tracking process.

The Toolkit For Tracking Audience Engagement Effectively

Audience engagement strategies require experimentation, courage, and determination. That’s why it is important to consistently measure your efforts so that you can make course corrections as needed.

Tool 1: Choose Your 2-3 Key Metrics

Choosing the right mix of metrics is vital to determining if your audience engagement strategies are working. The following mix of metrics illustrates one way to balance audience measurement.

  • Website visitors over 30 seconds
  • Percentage of email list members who open 2 emails per month
  • Content sharing: track which content assets are shared by email and social media

These metrics are intentionally simple and accessible. If your audience growth data is tough to find, you’re less likely to use that data.

At a minimum, it is best to have both a volume and a quality metric. The volume metric could be something like the number of unique visitors to your website each month. The quality metric is a counterpoint to discourage tactics that might attract significant visitors irrelevant to your goals.

Tool 2: Review Your Analytics Tools For Accuracy & Integration

The next tool is critically evaluating and configuring your analytics tools. More likely than not, you have multiple marketing tools that gather analytics data. That variety of data means you have a greater chance of getting confused in the sheer volume of data.

To mitigate this threat, evaluating the data gathered by your tools like website analytics, email analytics, and other resources is helpful. For example, you might find that geographic data – typically generated by IP address – is accurate enough for your purpose, but demographic data may be less accurate. 

To simplify the work of organizing your data, use Arena Personas (Beta). Personas Beta) makes it easier to gather and organize all the data generated by an individual’s interactions with you. That means it is easier to produce data-driven marketing campaigns to grow audience engagement and move people toward conversion.

Tool 3: Course Correct Your Audience Engagement

The final tool is a process rather than an app. Audience engagement is an art and science. While you can leverage market research and your audience’s past behavior, there is always an element of uncertainty. 

In any given month or quarter, you might launch multiple audience engagement tactics. It’s smart to pause and assess your progress periodically. When you assess your audience engagement efforts, use the following self-assessment questions to guide your reflection:

  • Which content, event, or experience had the greatest positive impact on our top audience growth metrics?  
  • What qualitative feedback did we observe from our audience? (Start with direct feedback shared in live chat sessions and people using your website, and then look at social media)
  • What’s drawing our audience’s attention in the broader environment? (Keeping a finger on the pulse of your audience is vital, otherwise, you risk being perceived as out of touch).
  • What results can we celebrate this month? (Audience building often takes a marathon effort, so it’s wise to encourage your team regularly).
  • How did we grow our network for future growth this month? (Building connections with experts and influencers takes time. Asking this question will help to maintain attention on longer-term efforts that drive audience engagement growth).

Invite a colleague to discuss the questions and supporting data with you for the best results.

The Way To Build An Audience On Your Website

Growing an engaged audience through your website is critical. Third-party cookies are on the way out. Building a direct relationship with your audience means you can succeed even when there are problems on social media. Discover how to build your online community with Arena. 

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Customer Engagement vs Audience Engagement Strategies

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The customer engagement vs. audience engagement debate is growing. The reality is that most businesses need to grow their audience and customer base. The strategic choice is to decide how to cover types of engagement and allocate your resources appropriately. 

What Is Audience Engagement?

From a marketing perspective, audience engagement refers to people who have interacted with your online presence in some depth. Think about an audience at a concert – you’re only part of the audience if you see most (if not all) of the performance. Likewise, your online audience excludes people who bounce or visit your website once and never return.

Audience engagement is the art and science of drawing website visitors to consume multiple pages or content assets. Ideally, audience engagement also has a social aspect. Again, think of attending a performance. You might go to an event with a friend and have the chance to meet other people who share similar interests. 

Translating audience growth to revenue depends on your business. Publishers earn more from audience engagement right away because a more engaged audience views more ads. Other businesses are more likely to get more leads and conversions from a high audience engagement. 

Engaging your customer base overlaps with audience engagement, but there are also some key differences.

What Is Customer Engagement?

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Customer engagement is focused on building a deeper relationship with your customers. This might include using a loyalty program to encourage more purchases. In addition, customer engagement also includes gathering first-party data from your customers. For example, you may use data to better understand the content, pages, and online experiences that customers experience before making a purchase.

Since customer engagement focuses on people who have bought before, it is closer to revenue. After all, a customer has already taken the leap of trust to buy once. If they’ve had a good experience, inviting them to buy again is easier.

The challenge with customer engagement is balancing maximizing revenue and enriching the relationship. If your customers only hear from you during a sale, some may tune out. Alternatively, brands that show appreciation for customers through events, sharing content, and seeking feedback are more likely to build a trusting relationship.

Assessing Your Need For Audience Engagement And Customer Engagement

Most companies need audience engagement and customer engagement strategies to achieve their growth objectives. Audience engagement helps to replenish the top of the marketing funnel (and grow advertising revenue for publishers). Customer engagement gives you the tools to develop loyal customers for the long term.

To decide which mix of audience engagement vs. customer engagement to pursue, take a moment to assess your current situation with the following maturity self-assessment.

Audience Engagement Maturity

Reflect on these audience engagement questions to determine your strengths and weaknesses in audience engagement.

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1) Do you have audience engagement growth metrics established?

2) Are you gathering more first-party data directly from your audience month over month?

3) Does your website offer community experiences like online events regularly?

4) Are you communicating with other stakeholders regularly to demonstrate the value of audience engagement?

5) Do you have audience engagement solutions like Arena Live Chat and Live Blog available?

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If you answered yes to most of the questions, you have a highly engaged audience. In that case, shifting your focus to customer engagement is wise. On the other hand, if you answered no or weren’t sure about the questions, audience engagement should probably be your primary focus.

Customer Engagement Maturity

Assessing your customer engagement maturity starts with exploring the following questions with your team.

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1) Do you have a customer loyalty program that rewards engagement and purchases in some way?

2) Do you know your customers better today than you did a year ago regarding data?

3) Do you regularly tell your customers that you appreciate their business?

4) Do you provide special experiences (e.g., early access, discounts, online experiences) just for your customers?

5) Do you have a customer data platform (i.e., CDP) in place to organize all of your first-party data?

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The maturity level for customer engagement is similar to the audience engagement outlined above. If you answered yes to three or more of the questions, you have a high level of customer engagement maturity. If you were unsure of your answers or had two or fewer yes answers, your customer engagement maturity has significant room for improvement.

How To Use Online Experiences To Grow Engagement

We have some good news: Whether you see greater audience engagement or customer engagement opportunities. With some tweaks, you can use similar tools and strategies to lift both kinds of engagement. Let’s consider two scenarios: increasing audience engagement and lifting customer engagement using online events.

Boosting Audience Engagement Strategies

You must offer something new and attractive when your audience is not large or engaged enough. The harsh reality is that your audience members have many other online options for connection, learning, and entertainment. The following ideas can help you to lift engagement.

Partner With Influencers In An Online Event

Influencers are celebrities for a specific niche or interest. Since influencers spend their time growing their audience, they have the know-how to help you. Depending on the size of your audience and resources, you can offer different forms of payment to an influencer to run an event with you. Add Arena Live Chat to your event so your audience can easily ask questions and connect with other participants.

Leverage Breaking News

Breaking news events offer a potential shortcut to growing your audience quickly with Arena Live Blog. If you can be the first to offer coverage or offer something uniquely different than others, you can stand out. For example, consider Nate Silver’s election coverage. His approach to offering a data driven approach to election coverage and politics helped him to build an audience.

Lifting Customer Engagement Strategies

Growing customer engagement through online experiences is different in terms of focus. Instead of throwing the doors wide open, customer engagement works best when focused. Here are some examples to get you started.

Customer Appreciation Experiences

Many companies organize an annual customer conference. However, running a full-scale live event may not suit your goals or budget. Instead, an online event focused on customer appreciation can work even better. For example, a B2B company may have many ecommerce customers. Consider inviting a small group of ecommerce company owners to an exclusive “fireside chat” where they can network with each other and meet an engaging guest speaker.

Early Product Feedback Events

Another approach is to invite your customers into the product development process. When you have a prototype product ready, invite VIP customers to see it. Let your customers use the beta product for free. They’ll feel appreciated by giving them early access and acting on their feedback. You’ll receive helpful comments that can also help you launch the product.

Reach Your Engagement Goals With Arena

Whether you want a larger audience or more excited customers, investing in engagement can help. Use Arena Live Chat and Live Blog to offer interactive online experiences directly through your website. Build your community right on your website with Arena!

7 Customer Engagement Trends For 2023

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Marketers are worried in 2023.

Economic worries and disruption in online advertising mean previously reliable strategies and playbooks aren’t delivering results. Navigating these trends will be challenging! Charting your path forward is much easier when you know the significant trends impacting online marketing and advertising.

Trend 1: Advertising Spend Faces Efficiency Pressure 

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Multiple companies are reporting falling spending on online advertising over the past few months. eMarketer recently cut its forecast for US digital ad spending by $5 billion, down to $278 billion. The pullback on spending is hitting Google, which reported falling advertising spending in several segments at the end of Q4 2022.

Cutting advertising spending is a common strategy whenever there’s economic uncertainty. It happened last in early 2020 when the pandemic rocked the world. 

At the same time, the need to drive growth and get more customers isn’t going anywhere. To retain your advertising budgets and stretch them further, get proactive on efficiency and engagement.

Reassess Your Brand Vs. Direct Response Allocation

Brand-building advertising is powerful for growing a company in the long term. However, it can take a lot of work to show immediate results with that style of advertising. In the short term, consider shifting more resources toward direct marketing to harvest more results.

Tighten Up Funnels And Performance Attribution

Online advertising channels and strategies vary in how easy they are to measure. Now is the time to look at your campaigns and see which ones are bringing in results. Consider pausing campaigns with more steps and moving parts since these efforts are more challenging to track.

Trend 2: Focus On Anonymous User Conversion 

Anonymous website visitors represent a significant opportunity for brands and publishers. They have discovered you. Much of the hard work of acquisition and awareness building is done. The next step is to get to know your audience better.

The way forward is to focus more on offering value to anonymous website visitors. Don’t overlook classic strategies like discounts, buy one get one, and the like. Such strategies have worked for decades for consumer brands.

For publishers and B2B companies, there may be better choices than discounts to convert anonymous users. Instead, look at ways to package premium experiences available only to registered users. Online events remain one of the most cost-effective ways to draw audiences in.

Trend 3: Launch More Online Events

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It’s true that enjoying food and drinks with your customers in person offers a powerful way to build relationships. However, traditional events also require significant investment. Spending  $20,000 or $100,000 on traditional events or conference participation might not go forward this year.

The alternative to high-cost traditional events is to run more online events. Since online events don’t require venue booking and other elements, they are often much faster to run. Offering your registered users exclusive access to your online events is one compelling way to convert more browsers into customers.

To make the most of your online events, ensure you give your audience a way to connect and share feedback. Arena Live Chat makes it easy for users to ask questions, share thoughts and meet others. 

Trend 4: Multi-Disciplinary Marketers Will Win

The digital marketing world is complex. There are thousands of apps, many certifications, and skill sets to learn! Budget to hire additional staff, agencies and other support may get more challenging to access. Yet, marketing teams are still responsible for delivering growth within those constraints.

Developing multi-disciplinary marketers is the way to thrive through this uncertainty. This means identifying skills, strategies, and technical skills you lack today and working to develop them. One approach is to pair a traditional evergreen skillset like copywriting with a digital marketing skill like search engine optimization (SEO).

While growing new skills is valuable, keeping this growth focused on your goals is essential. For example, connect your drive to improve SEO skills with a tactical goal to get more conversions on your top 5 pages.

Trend 5: Growing Pressure To Deliver Efficiency In Marketing Departments

This trend is similar to the first trend – pressure on advertising budgets – but it has some nuances. The pressure on marketing teams to deliver better customer engagement results will take a few forms. Marketers may only be able to hire talent or retain some of the technology they had planned for.

It’s not just a question of marketing budgets facing greater scrutiny either. Sales and management teams may demand more support to deliver growth this quarter. The good news is that there are multiple tactics to deliver greater results in a short period.

Win Back Campaigns

Reengaging past customers is one of the best ways to grow on a budget. You probably have their details and permission to communicate with them. Make sure you use thoughtful targeting for the best results (more on this front in the next section).

Reassess Marketing Technology

Take a hard look at your current marketing technology stack, especially the older and more expensive apps. These assets may have delivered value once, but that may no longer be true if your strategies and target market have evolved.

Improve Internal Communication

Marketers usually focus their efforts on customers. As internal pressure increases, you must keep engaging your internal stakeholders. For example, aim to create a simple marketing dashboard that emphasizes the most significant wins of the month.

Don’t assume that other departments, like sales or executives, will automatically see the value of marketing. Taking a few hours a month to communicate marketing wins (e.g., “we increased order value by 10% compared to the previous month!”) is a vital way to maintain trust in marketing.

Trend 6: Targeted Engagement Campaigns Become Essential

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You have registered users, email list subscribers, and others engaged with your brand. The old playbook of sending the same promotion to everybody is less likely to work today. Launch more targeted engagement campaigns using the first party you have from your users, like the pages they’ve visited and emails they open.

Here are a few ways to design more tightly focused engagement campaigns:

Focus On The Next Engagement Step

Instead of asking for the sale immediately, ask yourself this question: what’s the most common next step people make after registering on our website? The answer could be attending a software demo. Or you might find that users tend to consume several pieces of long-form content. The objective is to go small – look for the next logical micro step in engagement and focus your efforts there.

Ask For Feedback and Ideas

Coming up with new and engaging ideas to inspire your online audience gets tiring. Fortunately, you don’t have to be the one with all the great ideas. Instead, develop 2-3 high-level content ideas and send them to your audience. Ask your audience which idea sounds most promising! 

For an in-depth exploration of leveraging customer questions and surveys in your marketing, see the book “Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Method to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy” by Ryan Levesque.

Invite High Potential Audience Members To An Event

Review your customer data platform to identify highly engaged prospects who have yet to buy. For example, create a segment of users engaged with your brand across two or three channels. In this case, smaller is better! Inviting 50-100 carefully selected people to an online event tightly connected to their interests.

Trend 7: Renewed Focus on Loyalty Marketing 

As economic uncertainty hits marketers and their budgets, there’s a greater demand to emphasize proven strategies. Growth may be challenging, so keeping current customers will become even more critical. The following steps can help you design better loyalty and retention campaigns.

Examine Customer Churn Triggers

Find out the top three reasons why your customers are leaving so that you can create campaigns to address those issues. For example, customers on an annual plan may feel surprised by an unexpected charge. To reduce this cause of churn, identify customers who are 1-2 months away from renewal and offer them additional payment options.

Reinforce Your Loyalty Program

In 2023, Starbucks announced changes to its loyalty program that devalued loyalty program points. In the past, airlines have made similar changes. Such changes make it harder to retain loyal customers. Also, such changes generate negative publicity that makes engagement far more complex.

Find out if your organization plans changes like these and see if you can pause or defer implementation to lift retention.

The Way To Lift Engagement Right Now

Growing an audience from scratch takes time and effort. Growing your website audience toward conversion. Find out how Arena can help lift engagement today.

Optimize Funnel Conversions With Engagement: 5 Strategies

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Drawing a person to your website for the first time is a win. Focusing too much on first-time website visitors comes at a cost. You may neglect to build an engaged audience. If you have an effective content strategy in place, your next priority should be to grow engagement.

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Start By Choosing Your “Leading Indicator” KPI For Conversions

Most businesses have a clear end result in mind for their website. They want paying subscribers, purchases, or another critical conversion. Exclusively focusing on this end result can hurt your efforts because these conversions tend to be lagging indicators. They are a result of effective marketing and engagement.

Instead, it is often more helpful to focus on leading indicator measures that you can control more directly. To clarify the difference between leading and lagging indicators, consider sales:  a salesperson is ultimately responsible for achieving a specific sales volume. That sales volume is a lagging indicator and one that is not entirely in their control as very real,external factors can delay or prevent a sale from moving to “Closed Won.”

Instead, effective salespeople focus on lead indicators that predict success, like prospecting activity and pipeline generation. The work of building an engaged online audience is no different. You can’t directly generate engagement, but you can set the conditions that make engagement more likely, including higher conversion rates.

Potential lead indicators that show your website’s online audience is engaging effectively include

  • Time on site. Usually, higher time on site is a good sign that a user is interested in what they see. This metric needs to be balanced with the KPIs noted below/
  • Pages per session. Tracking pages per session is even more helpful because you can see which pages draw the most interest.
  • Opt-in activity. Earning permission to follow up with the user with browser notifications, text messages, email, and other means is even more valuable.

Once you have clarity on your top metrics, use the following strategies to grow audience engagement.

Strategy 1: Build A Comment #1 Strategy To Jump Start Engagement

The “herd instinct” is powerful in the online context. It’s far more appealing to join an existing conversation compared to attempting to start one from scratch. The traditional way to solve this challenge is to optimize the call to action, leverage controversy and make commenting irresistible. All of those efforts are worthwhile. 

Yet, there is more we can do to make commenting more appealing. Instead of leaving comments to chance, develop a “Comment #1” strategy. In other words, don’t just trust to hope that your content will get comments. Instead, use an outreach strategy to engage specific people to encourage comments.

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Your outreach strategy to spark comments will depend on the audience and resources you have. Get started with the following ideas:

Encourage Your Journalists To Start Commenting 

According to the Center for Media Engagement, 60% of Americans want journalists to clarify factual matters in the comments section. That tells us that many people are hungry for engagement from journalists in the comments section.

Even if you don’t have a factual oversight or mistake to clarify, there are other ways to leverage comments. For example, you might ask a journalist who covers a different beat to post a question to spark a discussion. Seeing a comment from one of your well-known personalities can do wonders to lift engagement for the rest of the day.

Past Commenters

Reach out to past commenters and ask them to comment on your latest content. While you can use manual methods to invite more comments, automation is even more powerful. For example, you might collect first-party data about the types of stories that your audience is interested in so that you can invite them to be the first to comment or share about future articles.

Use Social Media

Share your content on social media platforms and invite people to ask questions. The downside is that these social media responses may not always lead people back to your website. The risk of engagement happening away from your website can be mitigated by giving your audience a reason to come back and see the original content.

Finally, try to get the first comment fast, ideally within an hour of the content being published. When other people see comments on your content, they’ll feel more safe sharing their thoughts.

Strategy 2: Highlight The Best User Generated Content (And Hide The Worst)

Larger websites and publishers suffer from a different challenge – a high volume of comments. Inevitably, only a tiny portion of these comments are engaging and relevant. In other words, you have to face the challenge of moderating user-generated content.

Let’s say you’re running an online event with Arena Live Chat. Your audience is engaged and sharing a wide variety of questions and comments. Then you see that some of your audience is distracted from the core themes, like the new features you’re announcing. Arena gives you a few ways to shape the flow of the conversation.

Crowdsource Moderation

Keeping track of all the comments in a chat session in a significant online event may feel overwhelming. You can solve this challenge by inviting your audience to participate in the moderation process. Take a few moments at the event’s start to explain your ground rules, including when and how to report inappropriate content. In this way, your audience can help to turn the tide of irrelevant comments.

Use Moderation To Maximize Brandsafe Experiences

Some online events call for a different approach. Let’s say your online experience includes important customers and executives. To ensure a brand-safe experience, it is wise to take a more active role in moderating user content. Arena supports this need by allowing you only to display comments and questions manually approved by your team. This approach takes more effort, but it yields a great result.

In some cases where emotions are running hot, your event might face a different problem: profanity. Arena can help you to manage this threat as well with automation moderation. The built-in profanity filter and AI moderation automatically allows you to set a sliding scale for brand safety to blog and prevent a wide range of offensive, and potentially offensive content.  

Use The Power of Praise

Restricting user content isn’t your only way forward. You can also use your status as the event host or moderator to praise relevant, engaging content. To ensure you apply this practice, make a note to look for quality comments and questions as the event unfolds. When a great comment comes in, take a moment to recognize it and thank the participant.

By showing appreciation for quality audience engagement, your audience is more likely to stay focused on the event.

Strategy 3: Remove Speed Bumps From User Registration

Sometimes, our efforts to deliver a great audience experience have unexpected consequences. For example, many publishers require users to register for a free account before commenting and engaging. That small speedbump helps to discourage “Internet trolls” –  to a degree –  but it can also stop casual website visitors from engaging with your website’s content.

The solution is to take a fresh look at your user registration process. For example, give users multiple opportunities and places to register for an account. Taking the time to clear roadblocks from user registration is important because registered users are much more valuable.

According to International News Media Association, about 10% of registered users on news websites typically convert to paying subscribers. That’s far better than typical ecommerce conversion rates, which rarely exceed 3%. 

Strategy 4: Mine Your Comments For Future Engagement Ideas

Past comments on your content – especially on your website – are a rich source of insight. That information can help you to lift engagement quickly. Reading the comments on their own will give you clues about your audience. For example, commenters who share personal stories are more likely to trigger others to respond. If you see that pattern, look for ways to encourage readers to share more stories in future comments.

The true magic happens when you look at comments as one part of a broader first-party data strategy.

Strategy 5: Leverage First-Party Data Across Platforms

Personalized marketing and engagement strategies are some of the most powerful ways to lift conversion rates. The key to doing personalization work at scale is using multiple forms of first-party data to verify your audience engagement.

Start with the following types of user data to inform your personalization efforts:

  • Content Interactions. Look for patterns in how your users engage with your content, such as comments, votes, and shares. 
  • Email/App Interactions. Some of your audience may engage with your content off your website. Check to see if those patterns are significantly different from website interactions. 

Get The Right Tools To Increase Conversion Rates Across Your Funnel

Converting a passing website visitor is tough. You don’t have to suffer single-digit conversion rates, though. Developing an engaged audience is one of the best ways to drive more traffic and revenue. Find out more about Arena’s solutions for publishers.

Grow Revenue & Engagement With A Community Flywheel Strategy

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Subscription businesses, whether offering software, products, or information, are poised for significant growth. According to research, the subscription economy, worth $650 billion in 2020, is projected to grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025. However, this booming market comes with its challenges. On one hand, buyers are more open to subscription-based purchases, but on the other, we’re seeing signs of “subscription fatigue.” In a 2022 survey, two-thirds of consumers reported canceling at least one streaming service in the past year.

Economic pressures such as high inflation and supply chain disruptions further complicate the landscape for subscription businesses. For instance, US inflation rates in 2022 ranged from 6.5% to over 9%, impacting consumer spending. Additionally, supply chain issues have caused delays in product deliveries, eroding customer trust. Higher interest rates also limit consumer spending on high-priced items and make business financing more challenging.

Despite these obstacles, there is still a growth path. Building a flywheel for your online community is the key to unlocking sustainable success.

What Is A Community Flywheel?

A community flywheel is a way to lift growth, consisting of a community-centric approach to brand building, where a brand joins or creates a community that promotes awesome experiences for customers, increasing audience engagement and translating that into sales.

In simple terms, investing in a community flywheel means that your community members make your brand more valuable through their contributions and participation and bring others into your space. In other words, your community becomes central to your brand’s success and future growth.

Although it is a great strategy to deploy in your marketing department, there is a catch.

It takes an initial investment of time and resources to launch a community flywheel strategy. Getting the first 1,000 true fans (or more!) can be a long road. Once you have those fans in place, growth becomes far easier. It’s like investing in the stock market. It’s easier and faster to compound your returns when you start with a significant investment. That said, the magic of compound returns – for a community or investment – is still available to all who start.

Want to see community-based growth examples? Find out how Gymshark and Notion used online communities to grow.

How to Drive Growth With a Community Flywheel Strategy

Put these community flywheel strategies to work to get your community into operation. Your growth will take off as you put more of these methods into practice.

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Lift Engagement With Online Community

Passing website visitors, who visit once and never return, do little for growth. Use these methods to spark engagement.

Build Anticipation And Cliffhangers

When your community members see a good reason to keep returning to your website, like experiencing a multi-day online event, it’s easier to grow engagement. For example, instead of delivering all of your best insights in a single webinar, look for ways to promote your content over a more extended period of time, driving more subscriptions. 

Recognize VIP Community Members

Almost everyone enjoys being recognized for their contributions. The principle holds for your online community building. Use community badges, gifts, and thank you messages to encourage your most engaged members to keep coming back.

After you implement those strategies to inspire greater participation in your online community, it’s time to turn to revenue.

Increasing Revenue With Your Online Community

The way you lift revenue with an online community flywheel depends on your business model. Let’s consider a publishing business with advertising and how online events can lift revenue.

Offer Exclusive Digital Events

Many publishers offer conferences, talks, and other offline events in traditional venues. The next way to grow revenue is to offer hybrid and virtual events so that more people can join. Online events have fewer costs than in-person events, so if you don’t have a big budget for them, choose to invest in the virtual format.

Additionally, you can use digital events to lift revenue. First, you can use subscriber-only events as a retention method to encourage subscribers to renew their subscriptions. In addition, you can offer current subscribers a discount or early registration access to your events.

Provide Enhanced Community Curation

From your audience’s perspective, there are a few reasons why event participation is appealing. First is the event’s content, like learning new insights. Second, there is the social and networking aspect of the event – connecting with people who share your interests. 

A thoughtfully curated community event is a powerful way to attract your audience. For example, you might invite Gen Z students interested in finance or technology with special guests in those industries. If Gen Z is an essential demographic for you, check out our post on 5 Ways Publishers Can Build Their Gen Z Audience And Earn First Party Data.

If you keep the event tightly focused, so will the public’s experience, and your audience will be more likely to make valuable connections.

Arena Makes Growing Online Communities Easier

Growing an online community takes a lot of heart, thoughtful content, and passion for connecting with others. Arena Community has resources to make online community building easier.

Use our virtual events checklist to plan, promote and run online events without the stress.

Arena also has you covered with technology solutions to build a thriving digital community right on your website. Find out more about building your online community with Arena.

Increase Revenue & Engagement with User Generated Content

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Attracting a user to your website for the first time is a big win! Yet, that’s just the start of the journey. Transforming that passing visitor into an engaged, loyal fan is far more crucial for the growth and health of your brand. 

Why Focusing On “Website Visitors” Might Hurt Your Growth 

The standard term for a person coming to your website is a website visitor. That simple description is helpful in the context of analytics. There’s a hidden danger to using that type of language: it may encourage viewing your audience in passive terms.

Instead of thinking of people who come to your website as visitors or passive audience members, it’s vital to stress the value of engagement. Emphasizing engagement is vital because of the hectic, distracted digital world we all live in.

The average American checks their phone once every three minutes. Also, many people have an average of 10-20 web browser tabs open at any given time. That’s the reality – and challenge – we face when it comes to getting our audience’s attention and building online communities.

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The way forward is to evolve how people interact with your website. Give your audience more opportunities to interact with you, other people and personalize the experience. In brief, you need to make your website an exciting place people look forward to using.

The True Value of User-Generated Content Engagement

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Social media platforms are successful for many reasons, including emphasizing user-generated content. By allowing people to create profiles, accounts, and channels where they can showcase their content, these platforms give people a sense of ownership in their contributions.

Unfortunately, several of the largest social media platforms have lost their way in recent years. Harmful content, misinformation, and a steady stream of privacy scandals have eaten away at the trust on these platforms.

That falling distrust creates an opportunity for brands and publishers to create a more engaging website experience. Users who create content and contributions on your platform are more likely to come back, buy and stay engaged. Websites can continuously evolve their offerings to maintain audience engagement.

Growing Revenue With User Generated Content and First-Party Data

Driving increased revenue from your user’s content is easy once you have the proper framework. The starting point is to review your technology to ensure your website offers an engaging experience.

We briefly define first-party data and why it is essential. First-party data is information you gain directly from people interacting with your website, app, and other digital experiences. There is no go-between involved. First-party data is robust because it fuels personalization and makes it easier to create compelling experiences.

1. Build your first-party data foundation

Before you can grow revenue, you need the right foundation in place. You likely already have several ways of gathering first-party data in place, like your website analytics, email marketing software, and mobile app.

You need a few more tools to leverage in-depth first-party data.

  • Arena Live Chat. Live chat is one of the best ways to transform your website into an interactive digital community. 
  • Arena Live Blog. When there’s a breaking news event like an election or sports championship, there’s no such thing as too much coverage for your community. With a live blog you can rapidly publish – and automate – updates to keep your audience coming back for more on your website. 
  • Arena Personas. Personas (Beta) help to organize your first-party data in your Arena dashboard so you can better understand what your audience is interested in.
  • Video streaming solution. Offering a video experience directly to your audience from your website is another way to deepen your relationship with your audience. Arena offers video integration with Vimeo and other platforms.

With these platforms in place, your website will be equipped to delight your audience.

2. Make it easy for your audience to share user-generated content 

Persuading your audience to get into the habit of creating and posting content on your website can take time and effort. Fortunately, there are ways to lower the entry bar so your audience can contribute even when they’re busy. Start with these engagement opportunities:

  • Reviews. Offering the ability to leave reviews (or star ratings) is a must-have for any website that offers ecommerce.
  • Comments. Comments on your blog content are a long-established way to invite engagement.
  • Online Event Participation. Sitting down and deeply engaging in an online event takes user-generated engagement to the next level. Your users can share content by participating in the chat session, reacting to other user comments, voting in polls, and more.

As you deepen your relationship with your audience, offering additional opportunities to engage is worth the effort. For example, consider inviting social media influencers to participate or even co-host your next digital event.

3. Reward user engagement 

Giving your audience rewards – tangible or otherwise – leverages the psychology of habit formation to keep your audience coming back for more. 

The way you reward engagement will depend on the size of your audience and your resources. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Community Badges

Badges are a simple way to recognize your most engaged community members for websites that let users create accounts and post content. For example, Podia’s badge options include founder (i.e., for the first ten members) and other badges based on tenure (e.g., a member over one year).

Appreciation Message

Put aside automation for a moment and spend a few minutes thanking your top participants. Whether you send an email, put a letter in the mail, or send a direct message, thoughtful messages can go a long way to keeping your top community members engaged.

Invitation To Events And Special Status

Inviting your top users to an event like a company conference is a powerful way to show appreciation. Quora had a Top Writers program to recognize top contributors. 

Tangible Rewards

Sending a small gift to your top community members is a great way to keep members engaged. A consumer company might send a discount code or offer a credit for a purchase.  Sending a gift card is another way to thank your top members.

These member recognition efforts vary in terms of the effort and cost involved. It’s generally best to reserve your most expensive recognition efforts for the most engaged community members.

4. Deepen engagement with online events and communities

Regularly publishing great content is an excellent way to draw people to your website. Encouraging people to become regular contributors to your community is even more valuable. That’s where events have an essential role to play in lifting engagement.

Arena has a wealth of resources to inspire your next event. Start with the following to get your online event idea:

Once you have your event concept in mind, use the virtual events checklist to plan, promote and run your online event successfully.

5. Enhance loyalty with first-party data campaigns

Using the strategies above, you will have a growing, highly engaged audience who loves your content. Your audience will share content, social reactions, comments, and more on your website regularly. Now, it’s time to ensure you channel that engagement toward your goals.

Clone Your Best Customers

First-party data can reveal how customers interact with your website, content, and messaging before buying. Use this data to refine your marketing efforts. If you find that conversions are linked to virtual event participation, put more emphasis on drawing your audience into those events.

Use First-Party Data To Spark Referral Campaigns

Using data to drive purchases is just one way to drive action. You can also use these campaigns to spark referrals. Once again, look at the content and experiences that drive the most engagement with your audience. Based on those insights, create more campaigns that ask users to share content and bring more people to your online community.

Increase Personalization Efforts

Personalized content and marketing are more likely to be relevant. When content is relevant, people are more likely to engage, share and buy. Therefore, make it a priority to gather first-party data that you can use for personalization. For example, if you offer an enterprise product, use contact forms and other means to ask new community members if they work for a large company so that you can share relevant information with them.

Increasing Engagement And Revenue Starts With Arena

Higher engagement means more first-party data, which fuels relevance and personalization – which ultimately drives up revenue. To seize those benefits, it’s crucial to have the right platform. Discover how to build an online community on your website with Arena.

6 Must-Have Audience Engagement Metrics

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Attracting an audience to your website is just the beginning. Knowing if people are interacting effectively with your website is vital. When it comes to tracking, we’ll list the most common metrics below, but before we get into that, it’s also useful to have a concept of how a basic marketing funnel works.  Generally speaking, there are three stages to the funnel

Top of Funnel (“ToFu”): behaviors and metrics that happen before, or just at the point of, your first engagement with your audience. Examples include: initial website visits, a request for more information, or signs up for a newsletter

Middle of Funnel (“MoFu”): behavior and metrics that happen after an audience member first engages with your brand, but before they purchase or sign up. Examples include: repeat visits, researching product reviews or case studies. 

Bottom of Funnel (“BoFu”): behavior and metrics that track the final actions leading up to, and including, final purchase or signup. Examples include: signing up for a free trial, going through a personalized product demo, or applying for a discount or coupon.

Why Audience Engagement Metrics Add Value

How do you tell if your marketing efforts attract the right audience for your goals? Audience engagement metrics are a powerful way to see if you are progressing effectively. Find out how to use these metrics to assess your website’s performance.

The Six Essential Audience Engagement Metrics

1) Average Session Duration

Average session duration means how much time users spend on your website and is usually the first metric you start with at the top of the funnel. 

Generally speaking, a longer session time is better because it means your message and content is resonating with your audience.  This metric has limitations, however. If a user leaves a website or switches to another tab in their browser, session duration may continue to increase even though the user is doing something else. As a general rule of thumb, session durations under 30-60 seconds are a warning signal because you are likely to see fewer conversions with so little time.

Balancing this metric with other measures like webpages per session and first-party data generated.

2) Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of users who leave your website after viewing a single page on a website. A high bounce rate suggests that users aren’t satisfied with what they find on your website. It’s a useful metric at all stages of the funnel – especially as you’re working to optimize specific landing pages – but it’s especially useful at the top of the funnel and should be one of the first things you optimize for along with session time. 

It’s also one of the oldest metrics tracked by website analytics tools. According to Semrush, the average bounce rate for websites varies from 20-25% at the low end for ecommerce and B2B and up to 90% for landing pages, blogs and portals. 

It’s also helpful to measure bounce rates by page. For example, a blog post targeting a high-value search keyword should aspire to a lower bounce rate if it is well-optimized. However, other pages on your website might have a relatively higher bounce rate if they are less optimized.

3) Returning Visitors vs New Visitors

This metric gives you a broader view of your audience and is one of the first middle of funnel metrics to optimize. If a website has few returning visitors, that is a warning signal. Few returning visitors may imply that users see no value in returning to your website.

One way to improve the number of returning visitors to your website is to provide new engaging content and experiences live a Live Blog that provides continuous updates for breaking news or continued coverage of an ongoing trend. Other successful tactics include hosting a regular event (weekly, monthly, etc) so that your audience becomes accustomed to returning to your site at a regular cadence.

To help your audience remember, you can help direct them back to your website through email & social campaigns or mobile push notifications. 

4) Social Media Shares

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Social shares are an interesting engagement metric because it requires user action. However, a social share doesn’t entail the same level of commitment as a conversion or purchase so it may feel more accessible. 

Interestingly, social shares can happen at any point in the funnel as current customers, or audience members in the middle of your funnel, may wind up sharing content to their own audience who’ve never encountered your brand before, which then becomes a top of funnel experience for them.

Tracking social shares over time can tell you which content, themes and pages resonate with your audience. For example, you may find that an online event with Arena live chat prompts increased social shares and traffic. Or you might find that video content prompts the most social share activity. 

While social sharing is helpful, keep the drawbacks in mind. It can be challenging to achieve your growth goals when people engage with your brand on social media rather than on your website. The trick is to encourage social shares that contain teasers or calls to action that invite people back to your domain.

For instance, create a quote image to share a comment from a keynote and include a CTA to experience the full keynote speech on your website, or use social media to promote a coupon or discount that is only redeemable on your website, or ecommerce storefront. 

5) Average Web Pages Per Session

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Holding everything else equal, a person who visits multiple web pages is more valuable than someone who only visits a single page. That said, not all pages are created equal. Compare two visitors who visit different pages for a B2B company.

  • Visitor A: visits a blog post and then visits the contact page to request product information.
  • Visitor B: visits multiple blog posts and then leaves without opting in to receive more information.

In the short term, visitor A is more valuable than visitor B. To encourage more contact page conversions, look for ways to weave in more links to your contact page. 

6) First-party Data Generated

Your audience is busy, so it is vital to have a way to get in touch with them after they leave your website. That’s the first reason why you want to have a “first party” connection with your audience, such as having them join your email list. The second reason is that a person who provides information about their interests and preferences through clicks and participation in online events is easier to engage.

The amount of first-party data you can gather from your audience is limited only by your technology and creativity! Here are two specific first-party data metrics you can use to get started.

Email List Signup

Email marketing remains one of the most reliable and effective ways to engage audiences. Therefore, encouraging website visitors to sign up for your list should be a goal. After a person joins your email list, you will have the chance to gather additional first-party insights by observing their email engagement (e.g. link clicks, opens, replies).

Online Event Participation

Track the quantity and quality of engagement with your online events. For instance, a brand that hosts a monthly event with live chat might consider anybody who participates in more than one event in three months highly engaged.

How To Use Audience Engagement Metrics For Growth

Gathering and reviewing all of these engagement metrics is a good starting point. Yet, your audience will not grow simply through data gathering (wouldn’t that make life easy!). Instead, it’s essential to leverage engagement metrics in your workflow.

Use these tactics to make sure you get full value from all of the engagement metrics you’re gathering.

Identify Red Flags 

If multiple metrics (e.g., bounce rate increases and social shares fall) trend in the wrong direction for a prolonged period of time, that may be a red flag. Left unchecked, your audience engagement and growth goals may suffer if such red flags are ignored.

Clarify The Audience/Customer Journey

We all make assumptions about how our audience members and customers engage with us. You might assume that a person needs to visit your website daily for five days to become a regular visitor and then a customer in the next 90 days. The audience engagement metrics above – especially first-party data – can clarify if your assumptions are valid so that you can plan future growth effectively.

Develop And Test New Content and Campaigns

Developing growth ideas and tactics from a blank page is tough! Fortunately, audience engagement metrics save you time and money here. When a given piece of content resonates across multiple engagement metrics, that is a solid signal to create more content on a similar theme to keep your audience coming back for more.

Lifting Audience Engagement Is Easier With These Tools

The art of growing your audience loyalty over time takes significant effort, some risk and creativity. There are ways to make it easier! Install Arena Live Chat and Arena Live Blog on your website. These tools make it simple and easy to create engaging experiences that will draw in your audience. Discover how to build a thriving community right on your website.