The story looks different when you take a long-term perspective. We looked at digital advertising trends from the 1990s to the 2020s. This highlights several significant trends for publishers, and other companies focused on making the most of advertising.
The Big Picture of Advertising Revenue Is Bright
Hope is the first message we have taken from online advertising trends over the past 20 years.
Lesson 1: Digital advertising spending keeps growing despite short-term disruptions
Looking at digital advertising spending in the short run, spending patterns are highly volatile. As pandemic uncertainty hit the market, many companies temporarily pulled back on some forms of advertising in 2020. Similar short-term fluctuations happened in the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
Despite these short-term disruptions, the total amount of online advertising spending is increasing steadily. From 2010 to 2015, online advertising spending roughly doubled from $26 billion to $59 billion. Over and over again, the digital advertising market continues to grow significantly.
Committing substantial resources to digital advertising over other opportunities remains a wise long-term bet. That leaves an important question: Where should companies invest to keep growing their online audiences?
Lesson 2: Major shifts in online marketing tend to happen every ten years
Looking at the total dollar amount of digital advertising obscures several critical aspects of the story. The pattern is clear: there are significant changes in the digital advertising industry every decade or so.
For instance, the launch of the iPhone in 2007 changed the market dramatically as it became the first widely used smartphone for consumers. Brands and publishers that jumped on mobile advertising opportunities early enjoyed significant advantages.
The same early adopter advantage is apparent in other areas of the digital marketing landscape. The early years of social media platforms offered tremendous organic reach and low-cost ads.
As more and more brands flocked to the opportunity, competition made success more challenging. The increasing sophistication of MarTech apps and specialized digital marketing expertise partially offset these challenges.
If you’re looking for an alternative to social media platforms to fuel your digital growth, first-party data is the answer.
The Next Shift In Digital Advertising: The Rise of First-Party Data
The next major shift in digital advertising is just starting to dawn: first-party data. Third-party data will be dead for all practical purposes by 2023 as Apple and Google change their platforms. For a deep dive into first-party data and why it matters, see our post: What Is First-Party Data?
Without the right data, it’s all but impossible to run target advertising campaigns. That’s why you need a transition to first-party data.
That’s where first-party data comes in. Instead of relying on third parties like scandal-prone social media companies, first-party data is all about developing a direct connection with your audience.
Reinventing your marketing systems to thrive in the new era of first-party data will take effort. The best way to thrive in this era is to get the right technology and strategy in place. Adding Arena Live Chat and Live Blog to your website is a powerful way to gather more first-party data. Creating engaging online events is easy to attract your audience.
Adding Arena to your website usually takes less than an hour and doesn’t require any development resources. Find out more about Arena today.
Audience engagement is vital to succeeding in today’s online world. Your website competes against dozens of streaming services, social media platforms, email, etc. The art and science of keeping your audience engaged is crucial to reach your growth goals.
What Is Audience Engagement?
Successful audience engagement happens when people interact with your website and live experiences for prolonged periods. Instead of bouncing away in a few seconds, a highly engaged audience member looks forward to visiting your website and online experiences.
Audience engagement matters for brands and publishers for a few reasons. First, a highly engaged audience is more likely to give you first-party data, fueling high ROI personalized marketing campaigns. Second, audience engagement stretches your marketing budget further because your audience will likely share your content.
Knowing what audience engagement means is just the starting point. You also need practical steps and tools to bring audience engagement to life. Use the growth tactics in the rest of this guide to grow your audience and keep them coming back.
1. Make A Positive First Impression Quickly
First impressions count a great deal in online experiences. Research shows that the average attention span is down to 47 seconds as of 2023. That’s a sharp decline from 2004, when it was 150 seconds, according to research reported by CNN.
To keep things simple, look for negative factors and positive factors. Negative factors are barriers or distractions that make engagement less likely to stick. Positive factors encourage audience engagement.
Negative factors
Slow website speed. The overall speed of your website matters. Slower websites are likely penalized in search engines, making your audience less likely to find you.
Unclear call to action. Overwhelming your audience with too many options will deter some people from engaging with you. Aside from the homepage and navigation elements, ask yourself if each significant page is focused.
Disruptive notifications. Some websites partly or entirely obscure the user’s experience to display notifications (e.g., privacy notifications). While important, excessive notifications make it difficult for your audience to focus on what matters most: your content!
Positive factors
Engaging content. Regularly publishing relevant content to your audience is one of the best ways to draw your audience to your website in the first place.
User-generated content opportunities. Give your audience a way to share their thoughts and react to your website (e.g., reviews, votes, and polls).
Social proof elements. Engagement is more likely to happen when people see others have already engaged with your website. Highlight the best comments, user contributions, and more to send social proof signals to website visitors.
Visual content. Look for ways to include visual content like photos, infographics, and videos.
Your user experience (UX), technology, and marketing teams all have a role in making a positive first impression on your audience.
2. Provide Relevant Content For Your Audience’s Changing Needs
Relevant content is so vital to driving engagement that it needs to be explored further. There are several ways you can drive engagement by increasing relevance. Use the following prompts to look for ways to connect your content with your audience.
Relevance to external events and factors
Sharing content relevant to current events is a top concern for publishers. Yet, it also matters for brands. Here are a few tactics to ensure your website is relevant to what’s happening in the world.
Calendar relevance. The calendar influences what we’re talking about and thinking about. Start by looking at the calendar to align your website with major holidays and seasons of the year (e.g., back to school, the December holidays, etc.).
Competitor relevance. Your competitors should not dictate your strategy. However, if a close competitor makes a significant mistake or launches a new product, your content may want to consider that fact.
Economic relevance. The broader economic landscape shapes what people think and worry about. For example, emphasizing value and savings opportunities may appeal more to your audience in an economic downturn.
First-party data
The secret to unlocking relevance lies in first-party data – insights you gather directly from your website audience. This data is far more valuable externally gathering information because it shows what your audience values from you.
Optimize your audience engagement with first-party data in the following ways.
Do more of what’s working. Are you seeing a significant spike in engagement for a specific type of content? Take that signal seriously and explore that theme further in future content and experiences.
Create micro content for your audience. Your content doesn’t need to be relevant to everybody in your audience every time. Sometimes, it is better to create content designed to address the specific needs of certain audience segments (e.g., your “VIP” audience members who are most likely to make a purchase).
3. Add User-Friendly Engagement Tools To Your Website
Increasing audience engagement with the right technology is one of the best ways to lift engagement fast. The following tools can help you to lift engagement quickly.
Live chat makes it easy for your audience to send messages to each other, ask questions, vote in polls and more. You can install Arena live chat in minutes, which makes it one of the fastest ways to increase audience engagement.
Covering a breaking news story like a sports championship or election is a powerful way to attract your audience. Arena live blog makes it to draft, edit and publish rapid-fire updates for your audience. When your audience knows they can get quick updates on rapidly changing news stories, they will keep coming back for more.
Video streaming
Live video experiences are an important way to draw in your audience and keep them engaged. For example, live shopping experiences where influencers and others show off products have been proven to drive significant revenue. Selling products isn’t the only way to use live video, either.
You can also use live video to share insights with your audience and gather feedback. Ensure you also have a live chat so your audience can quickly share their thoughts and reactions.
4. Give Your Audience Multiple Ways To Engage
Your audience has people with different energy levels, interests, and focus regarding your content and brand. Some super fans will create content about your products, like influencers who create unboxing videos. Much of your audience is different: they’re interested in you but may also have other pressing concerns.
Giving multiple engagement opportunities is one way to unlock more engagement from your audience. It’s best to start with simple and easy engagement options since those will apply to many people in your audience.
Live Chat
Coming together to interact with other people in online chat was one of the first social experiences on the Internet. It’s still one of the best ways to interact online today. With Arena Live Chat, you can host a live chat session directly on your website. Setting up a live chat experience takes just a few minutes.
To kickstart the live chat experience, it’s best to have one or two moderators to encourage discussions and take action as needed on inappropriate content.
Social reactions
Make it easy for your audience to like or react to your content. Beyond the usual suspects of social reactions (e.g., like, heart, etc.), go a step further. Look at the different options available on Emojipedia.
Arena live chat supports emojis and lets users create an avatar (i.e., upload an image linked to their profile).
Polls
When your audience is attending an online event, a poll is one of the simplest ways to spark engagement. In essence, you ask a simple question and allow your audience to vote by choosing an option.
Posting a poll within the first 5-10 minutes of starting an online event is a best practice to keep your audience engaged immediately. Posting more than 2-3 polls over the course of an hour might feel overwhelming, so don’t overuse this engagement tactic.
Question & answer
Giving your audience the ability to ask questions is a powerful way to boost engagement. To see just how powerful question-focused events are, look at Reddit. The social platform often hosts wildly popular “AMA” (ask me anything) with celebrities, authors, politicians, and others.
Be aware that there is a risk of inappropriate content with Q&A (and audience engagement efforts generally). Our final tactic – moderation – will equip you to manage this risk.
Product reviews
Make it easy for your audience to write reviews of your products on your website. Your review activity will only improve if your website forces users to take fewer steps before adding a review. When you see a particularly significant review, go the extra mile and reach out to the reviewer to thank them. If the person has a complaint, reaching out is still worthwhile.
5. Use Exclusivity To Draw Audience Engagement
Offering exclusive experiences to your audience is an age-old tactic to attract attention. It’s one of the reasons that conferences and tradeshows remain so popular. Only so many people will invest the time and money to attend such an event.
With online engagement, there are several ways to leverage exclusivity to lift engagement. If you invite an influencer or celebrity to your niche, you don’t need to go to Hollywood to find someone. Simply look for someone who recently won awards or has a large social media following.
Time-limited event. The first way to signal exclusivity is to make your experience time limited. For example, schedule a one-time 60-minute online chat experience.
Limited registration. While technology tools can support many attendees, it is sometimes helpful to go small. Limiting attendance to 25-50 people is an intelligent way to add a more intimate quality to the event.
Early access for registered users. Finally, give registered users on your website the first opportunity to register for the event. Giving users advance access is a great way to reinforce the value of registration.
6. Find Breaking News Opportunities To Spark Audience Engagement
This tactic is suited to publishers and news organizations. You can boost audience engagement. For example, think about sports events like March Madness. Elections, court trials, and essential company news (e.g., an Apple or Facebook conference) all represent other breaking news opportunities.
To leverage these opportunities, get ready with the following tips.
People. Put together a list of people who will contribute to your live blog coverage. A combination of in-house staff and freelancers is often helpful.
Tools. Use Arena Live Blog so that your contributors and editors can easily submit updates and get them posted directly to your website.
Process. Give guidance to your staff on how you will approach breaking news. For example, you may want to streamline your fact-checking and editorial process to a degree.
7. Use Moderation To Keep Engagement Brand Safe
Opening your virtual doors to your audience is a wonderful way to lift audience engagement. That said, it does carry some risks. Remember when people “Zoom bombed” online events with offensive content? Offensive language, off-topic comments, and more are all possible when you bring people together online.
Moderation is a crucial way to solve the inappropriate content challenge. Arena gives you several tools to moderate audience engagement experiences effectively.
Automated moderation
Arena live chat has automated moderation features like a profanity filter. This capability means that you can prevent most offensive language from making it into your chat session.
Manual moderation
For an added level of assurance, manual moderation is a great choice. Manually screening questions during Q&A sessions with important guests is often wise. Without moderation, the discussion may wander from the primary topic.
Discover How Arena Can Grow Your Engagement
Adding Arena to your website is one of the fastest ways to increase engagement. You can break free from social media platforms like Facebook, Slack and Instagram and build a community right on your website. Learn more about how Arena can help you grow audience engagement.
Second-screen experiences are a powerful way to engage your audience deeply. Instead of fighting multitasking and digital distractions, an effective second-screen experience works with these audience viewing habits.
From your audience’s perspective, a second-screen experience has two elements: viewing experience on a primary screen (typically a TV) and using a secondary screen (e.g., a tablet, laptop, or smartphone).
Offering a second-screen experience is particularly important in a few cases. Enjoying a second screen is very popular with Gen Z and Millennials, who spend hours online daily. Also, a second-screen experience can augment a primary screen experience.
Alternatively, you can use a second-screen experience to build your piggyback audience style – offering commentary and additional information about the primary screen experience.
For your second-screen experience to succeed, it has to be grounded in strategy. Use our quick strategy planning process to verify that a second-screen offering is a good fit for your
Building Your Second-Screen Strategy
The following strategy is intentionally designed to be fast and easy. It is designed to help you answer two questions. First, is a second-screen experience a good fit for your business goals right now? Second, this process will help you plan your first few second-screen experiences.
As your second-screen experience grows, you can integrate this offering into your standard digital planning processes.
1) Choose A Goal
Focus is your friend when planning a second-screen experience. There are typically a few common goals most second-screen efforts advance:
Audience Engagement
Audience Growth
Advertising Growth
Conversions
Generally speaking, achieving audience goals (i.e., audience engagement or audience growth) is an easier objective to pursue when you first get started offering second-screen experiences..
2) Find Your Angle
When you offer a second-screen experience, you are competing against other sources of entertainment for your audience’s limited attention. In a best-case scenario, your audience is already switching back and forth between their primary screen and what you have to offer.
Your angle – or unique value proposition – may be to offer the best and fastest commentary on a breaking news event. Or your might focus on timing – being the first to offer pre-event coverage.
The best part is that second-screen experiences – especially those based on live chat and live blogs – are flexible. You can change the timing, format, and concept later if you find out that your initial idea doesn’t hit the mark.
3) Review Audience Behavior
Looking at the recent audience discussions on social media is a powerful way to generate ideas. For example, are fans creating meme images around their favorite moments? Or are people focused more on speculating about the twists and turns of a story?
Understanding existing second-screen behaviors makes it easier to refine your second-screen experience. If you’re hosting a social experience – like a live chat on your website – the shape of the experience will be determined partly by your audience and the host. Having some prepared questions, talking points, and even special guests can help to keep the event moving.
4) Promote The Second Screen Experience
Once you have your second-screen experience planned, give yourself the time and resources to promote the experience properly. This is where your unique angle will help you to garner attention. If you have influencers or celebrity guests, invite them to join you in promoting the event.
5) Measure Your Success
The day after you run a second-screen experience, take some time to measure your results. Did you make progress toward your goal? If not, there are a few causes to explore, like insufficient event promotion, a lack of a unique angle, or failure to meet audience needs. Run at least 2-3 second-screen experiences before deciding whether or not to pause or abandon to pivot toward other ways of reaching your audience goals.
Set Up Your Second-Screen Experience In Less Than An Hour
Once you have your strategy, you can launch your second-screen experience in less than an hour. With some practice, you can set up a second-screen capability even faster.
The following techniques will help you to design a more engaging experience for your audience and get closer to your goals.
1) Build Multiple Social Sharing Opportunities
Word of mouth is one of the best ways to promote your second-screen offering. That’s why it is critical to have several social sharing opportunities. Start by choosing one or two social media hashtags for your audience. You might use a mix of general event hashtags (e.g., #SuperBowl) and ones you create for your purposes (e.g., #SuperBowlSuperFans).
2) Improve Integration With The Primary Screen
Maintaining a close link to the primary screen experience is vital to keep your audience engaged. To maintain this link, start by doing your homework. Watch previous episodes of the show or last year’s event coverage if possible. In addition, make sure you are watching along with your audience.
Developing significant expertise in some areas of film or television can be difficult, especially for a long-running franchise. Inviting a guest influencer with deep knowledge can help keep your second-screen experience, like a live chat session on your website, aligned with what’s happening on the primary screen.
3) Offer Rewards To Your Fans
Giving out rewards and prizes to your fans is a great way to boost interest. Aim to tie your giveaways to the primary screen experience for the best results. For instance, you might give away signed sports cards for the best comment or question during a live chat session.
Giving away your products as a reward can also work. A publisher might give away a free premium subscription to one live chat participant. That’s a quick way to make your second-screen experience more compelling.
4) Make Your Second-Screen Experience Highly Interactive
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience for a moment. They’re sitting on the couch watching TV and have their phones out. They’re likely focusing most of their attention on the primary screen (i.e., the TV). They’ll only look down on their mobile devices occasionally.
In that context, interacting with others needs to be simple and easy. Only some people will want to write out comments. This is where offering more interactive options comes in.
Use polls, social reactions, and links regularly so that your audience has more ways to participate. These interactive options are quick and straightforward, even if a participant only has a few moments to view their second screen.
Second-screen experiences are fast becoming one of the most popular ways to interact with content. Viewers watch the main action on a TV and then use a second screen – like a phone – to chat with others about what they’re watching or find more information.
Providing a strong second-screen experience is a compelling way to lift engagement. Increasing engagement is a worthwhile goal. Yet, what if boosting revenue is your number one priority? Second-screen experiences can directly help you increase revenue.
Why Buying Broadcast Rights Isn’t The End of The Story
Buying broadcast rights, especially exclusive rights to marquee events like the Super Bowl or a hot HBO series, was a proven strategy. Exclusivity meant you were the only game in town for viewers, which helped to support high advertising rates. If you can afford such exclusivity, it’s a great strategy.
What if spending billions of dollars like Amazon for Thursday Night NFL football is out of the question for you? You can leverage a second-screen experience to piggyback on the popularity of a show or event. Content about an event – like a pre-game show in sports, red-carpet interviews at awards shows, and fan discussions – is proven to draw engagement.
All you need to get started is the right technology, like a live blog or live chat on your website, and something interesting to say! Fortunately, publishers live in a golden age of content creators and commentators. Almost every interest or category of pop culture today has influencers. So, invite a few influencers to participate in your live chat discussion.
4 More Ways Publishers Can Lift Revenue With Second-Screen Experiences
Once you start thinking creatively about second-screen experiences, there are five other powerful ways to lift revenue.
1) Increase Advertising Revenue With New Formats
Advertising revenue is the traditional key revenue source for major publishers. Having a second-screen strategy in place helps in two ways. First, second-screen experiences lift engagement, so you have more eyes on your content for longer. Second, second-screen experiences make innovative ad formats more effective.
Take interactive ads, for example. These types of ads are widely used on social media platforms like Facebook. Instead of passively viewing copy, images, and videos, an interactive ad lets the audience act. This can include taking direct action, like playing a mobile game or browsing different versions of a product (e.g., clothing size and color).
Interactive ads do some of the heavy lifting to convert a casual viewer into a potential customer. Therefore, publishers may charge higher rates to show this type of ad.
2) Direct Sponsorship
While related to traditional advertising, sponsorship deals are different. Typically, a sponsor will get a premium placement. You can offer the sponsor the opportunity to have a voice in the editorial process. For example, a sponsor may be interested in having one of their staff participate in an online event like a webinar or live chat session.
Look at the event industry for examples of what you can achieve with direct sponsorship. Major conferences like CES offer multiple sponsorship opportunities for brands like a spot in the conference daily’s publication (CES Daily) and the CES Tech Talk Podcast. The event also includes intimate scale sponsorships for the CTA Member Lounge and CTA Member Party.
Adding sponsorship revenue to your publication is generally easier if you offer a discrete, unique event. For example, a publisher might have a dedicated team covering early Presidential primary elections. Alternatively, a publisher can run virtual events and feature one or two sponsors.
There are some downsides to direct sponsorships to keep in mind. Brands may ask for some exclusivity, so your offering and pricing need to reflect that. Further, the best sponsorship deals require old-fashioned dealmaking instead of programmatic platforms. The good news is that a successful sponsorship has the potential to mature into an ongoing relationship and bring revenue for years to come.
The second-screen way to implement direct sponsorship is to focus on sponsorship for the secondary screen. It’s easier to design and package a second-screen experience like a live chat session on your website vs. making changes to a broadcast.
3) Subscriptions
Gaining more paying subscribers is one of the best ways to increase revenue in the long term. There are at least two ways to package subscriptions to appeal to the second-screen audience: premium add-on to existing subscriptions and creating a distinct subscription offering.
The premium add-on option is suitable for publishers with active digital subscribers. In this case, the approach is to offer an additional subscription option for second-screen users.
For example, you might offer pre-event and post-event coverage for significant business developments such as initial public offerings (IPOs). By limiting access to those with a specific subscription tier, the subscription also provides exclusivity. The potential to gain early information ahead of others is one way to attract an engaged audience, like investors, who thrive on valuable information.
What if you have no significant digital subscriber base? In that case, it’s vital to find more ways to distinguish your publication from other options on the market. Introducing a unique second-screen experience to your market may be the solution. For instance, your industry might not have a premium mobile app or mobile web experience available. In that case, a paid subscriber-only experience could stand out like a monthly event series.
4) Ecommerce
There are a few ways to increase e-commerce-related revenue using second-screen experiences.
Affiliate Marketing
In contrast, to display advertising, affiliate marketing is a new category. Thanks to major players like Amazon, eBay, and others, the affiliate marketing market is already generating billions of dollars. By using affiliate links, a publisher can earn a commission by recommending products.
The second-screen angle to affiliate marketing is to tie an affiliate marketing offer to something happening on the audience member’s primary screen. TV events with a significant celebrity presence – like the Emmys or Oscars – offer plenty of opportunities. For example, you might promote celebrity collectibles for sale at the high end (e.g., signed prints or posters) or lower-priced products (e.g., custom t-shirts produced at scale).
Affiliate marketing isn’t for every publisher, however. It best suits publishers reviewing, ranking, and discussing consumer products like the Wire Cutter.
Publisher Ecommerce
Some publishers have online stores selling apparel, accessories, back issues, and special prints. Selling more of their products – beyond traditional subscriptions – is another way to lift revenue.
To make your online store more appealing, look for ways to make a unique offering tied to a second-screen experience. For example, you might offer a discount code that leverages a plot point (e.g., the death of a character) in a significant streaming show. That kind of promotion has the virtue of being relatively simple to design and launch. The downside is that tying a promotion to an event like that has a short shelf life.
As you become more comfortable spotting and leveraging second-screen experiences, use several of these strategies in concert to keep growing.
The Indispensable Foundation For Second-Screen Revenue Growth
There are multiple ways for publishers to boost revenue by leveraging second-screen offers and experiences. All of these strategies rely on having a few core ingredients, like having a highly engaging website. Adding Arena Live Chat to your website is one of the best ways to make your website more interactive. Discover more about how to build a thriving online community right on your website.
Google’s live badge feature is a great opportunity to promote your live online event. You’ll find out what the live badge is, how to use it easily with Arena and how to keep your online audience engaged.
What Is Google’s Live Badge?
Google’s “Live” feature is designed to highlight organizations that provide the latest and greatest news coverage. For example, some news publishers used this feature to highlight their coverage of the President’s State of the Union address. It’s not limited to political news. It’s a proven way to drive more traffic and engagement for almost any kind of publisher.
Once you have the LiveBlogPosting markup in place, your live blog coverage has a chance to appear in the Google search results. Specifically, your live blog may be featured with the “Live” badge. This means that your coverage has a chance out prominently in the search results.
Leveraging this opportunity in Google search is easy. Simply add the LiveBlogPosting markup to your live blog page. Adding this markup is just the first step – it makes your page eligible to show up in Google with the coveted LIVE badge. That badge is powerful because it highlights your content above the regular search results which means more clicks and engagement on your website.
Like any other aspect of Google search, meeting the technical requirements to be indexed and displayed is just the starting point. It’s even more important to plan and run your live coverage so that it draws engagement. Before we can get to that step, let’s take a look at how Arena can help.
How Arena Makes It Easy
Adding Arena Live Blog to your website is one of the easiest ways to create a live blog. In just a few minutes, you can install live blog and set up your first live chat. Just follow these steps to get more organic traffic to your live blog.
When your live blog is published and goes live, the live markup is automatically turned on. Your content will have a chance to appear alongside other publishers on Google’s Top Stories widget.
5 Tips To Make The Most Of Your Live Badgees To Maximize Your Live Badge
Live blog coverage has the potential to draw significant traffic for publishers. Use the following tips to position your live blog for success.
1) Review Your Past Coverage For Trending News Expertise
Look at the content you’ve published int he past 12 months to see which topics drove the greatest engagement on your website. Once you have this list, identify the events that are predictable. For example, elections and sports events (e.g. March Madness for college basketball) are events that tend to draw intense audience attention.
2) Create Some Of Your Live Blog Content Ahead Of Time
During a breaking news event, your audience may expect hourly updates (or even faster in some cases). Producing up-to-the-minute coverage can be exhausting. Work with your team to create a handful of updates in advance to reduce the burden on your team. For example, you might create short bio posts on the key people involved in an event (e.g. the top 2-3 athletes for each team).
3) Use Social Media To Promote Your Live Blog
As you count down toward the topic of your coverage, start promoting your live blog coverage to your audience. For instance, tell your audience about the prework you’ve done to create great coverage (e.g. “we’ve invited a panel of 3 VIP guests to offer their thoughts as the election unfolds). In each of these updates, remind your audience when the live blog will go live.
4) Gather First-party Data And Permission For Your Next Live Blog Event
One of the best ways to grow your audience and engagement is to offer live blog coverage regularly. As you build a reputation for offering quality, up-to-date content to your audience, each live blog you run will help to grow your audience further.
As a rule of thumb, give your audience at least two opportunities to sign up to be notified about future live blog events. Offering this call to action at the mid-way point and toward the end of the coverage is a good starting point.
5) Reserve Some Capacity For Unexpected Live Blog Opportunities
The previous tips assume you are creating a live blog for an event known in advance. News stories are not always easy to predict, though. For example, who would have predicted a war starting in Europe in 2022?
Creating a live blog in response to an important news story, especially one that surprises the world, can grow your audience substantially. The downside is that these events are tough to anticipate. The best way to prepare for these opportunities is to keep some slack in your editorial team each week so that you can run a live blog when events come up.
Get Started With Live Coverage Now
It’s tough to predict the next trending news story. What you can control is your preparation! Take a few minutes to discover how Arena Live Blog can help you to grow your audience. On most websites, it only takes a few minutes to install Arena Live Blog.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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!
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.
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
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
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
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
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
