Tag Archives: Digital Marketing

Is Social Media Dead In 2024? The Future of Social Media

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Is social media as we know it dead? The signs of trouble are certainly getting more and more common.

Since 2021, Twitter has seen an exodus of users, advertisers pulling back, and even the end of its famous bird logo.

Facebook’s strategic effort to diversify into the metaverse has failed. As a result, Facebook has reverted to launching Threads, a platform widely seen as a Twitter clone.

Even TikTok, Gen Z’s favorite social media platform, has faced challenges within the U.S.

Meanwhile, government bodies are getting increasingly aggressive in responding to online services, including social media platforms.

Each of these individual social media companies’ struggles prompts the question: is social media dead? Let’s explore the current scenario and understand the alternatives for the future of social media.

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The Decline And Fall Of Social Media

Social media platforms have been declining for years, depending on who you ask and which platform you prefer. It’s difficult to generalize about the fate of social media because there are so many different networks to choose from. One estimate shows that there are over 100 active social media services today. Even more significantly, Forbes reports that there are 4.9 billion social media users globally (i.e., about 62% of the population) as of 2023.

One way to answer “will social media marketing die” is to look at the numbers.

Yet only a handful of platforms have achieved significant success with over 500 million users. As of 2023, only 12 platforms have over 500 million monthly active users. The list includes well-known platforms like Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Instagram, as well as others like WeChat, Snapchat, and Qzone. These large platforms have achieved outsized success and influence in the social media industry.

AI: Threats And Opportunities To The Future of Social Media

The rise of generative AI tools, especially large language models like chatGPT, also poses questions for social media. Some commentators like Jonathan Haidt and Eric Schmidt see only a downside with articles like “AI is About to Make Social Media (Much) More Toxic.” Such fears are one reason why governments are increasingly pursuing AI safety rules.

Generative AI, like social media itself, is in the eye of the beholder. It can also be used as a practical tool to increase engagement responsibly. Smart brands and agencies are already using it to lift efficiency. For more ideas on how to add AI to your workflow, see our post: 5 Use Cases for Generative AI in Publishing.

Twitter and Meta: The Decline of Giants

The social media platforms founded in the 2000s are encountering multiple challenges with growth.

To illustrate the challenge, we looked at a few recent developments at some of the largest social media companies.

Twitter: Struggling With Turmoil, Brand Changes, And Revenue Challenges

In 2021, Twitter earned 88% of its revenue from advertising. Following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, chaotic layoffs, rebranding to X, and booming hate speech have advertisers heading for the doors. In November 2022, Omnicom Media Group recommended that its clients pause advertising spending on the platform due to brand safety concerns. Large companies, including General Motors and Volkswagen, are also pulling back from the platform.

The answer to “is social media marketing dead?” depends partly on how you’ve used your resources. If you’ve put all your resources into Twitter, you’re probably very worried about the future of your social media marketing efforts.

Pre-Tax Income Falls During The Pandemic

While the chaos following Elon Musk’s takeover has grabbed the headlines, the business’s fundamentals have suffered for years. The company reported a negative $50 million pretax income in 2020 and a negative pretax income of $411 million in 2021, and that’s before all the Elon Musk drama and the departure of nearly half of their advertisers.

We don’t know if Twitter will recover after suffering many blows, including losing thousands of employees. According to a December 2022 survey, Twitter is forecast to lose millions of users in 2023 and 2024. With declining users and concerned advertisers, Twitter’s future is uncertain. It’s time to find alternative platforms and channels to meet our online growth goals.

Bans and Restrictions

More recently, in August 2024, the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered the suspension of X in the country after the platform missed a deadline to appoint a legal representative in Brazil.

The conflict originated in April when the court mandated the suspension of numerous accounts for spreading false information—an action that Musk criticized as censorship.

The ruling affects over 20,000 internet providers, requiring them to block the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to access X. Additionally, a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) is imposed on individuals and companies attempting to bypass the block using VPNs. 

Meta’s User Growth Slows While Metaverse Spending Hurts The Bottom Line

With over one billion users, Facebook is still regarded as one of the most powerful social media platforms. However, The early years of dramatic growth in users and revenue are slowing due to a few developments.

Facebook’s growth, while still significant, is falling substantially. From 2020 to 2023, the platform grew monthly active users from 2.6 billion to 2.9 billion, according to Statista. Adding 300 million users over three years sounds impressive until you compare it to the platform’s past. From 2015 to 2017, the platform grew from 1.4 billion to 2.1 billion users (i.e., 700 million users).

Metaverse Spending Spiraling Out Of Control

The Information reports that Facebook has spent over $36 billion on the metaverse since 2019. That’s greater than the company’s entire operating expenses for 2019 – $33.9 billion! This level of spending is starting to approach “bet the company’s future” territory.  So far, this initiative has delivered little to the company’s bottom line.

If this spending continues, Google’s experience may be instructive. Like Facebook, Google has historically earned most of its revenue from advertising. Over the years, Google has spent heavily on high-risk “moonshot” projects that lost over $800 million by 2016. It’s true that these investments might pay off at some point. All we know for certain is most of these efforts have made minimal contributions to the company’s performance.

Competition Driven Innovation

Aside from its metaverse initiatives, Facebook’s innovation in its core social media platforms is limited. Recent changes seem to be driven by a desire to compete with TikTok. As Bloomberg reported, Facebook assumes its users want a “TikTok clone.” Changes to the Facebook experience and Instagram have been attributed to the company’s desire to compete with TikTok.

Developing new features solely to compete with rivals has merit. Yet, it may also suggest a lack of creativity in the platform’s ideas. These efforts to copy features haven’t been a success with the platform’s users. The “Make Instagram Instagram Again” petition on Change.org has attracted over 335,000 signatures. The petition demands the return of chronological timelines, an algorithm that favors photos, and greater responsiveness to Instagram users. This type of negative feedback signals significant discontent.

The End of Organic Reach

Brands, organizations, and creators using Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram face declining organic reach, with only 5.2% of followers typically seeing unpaid content on Facebook. On Instagram, posts without paid boosts are similarly overshadowed by ads. Nearly 83% of marketers plan to increase social media ad spending, further diminishing organic visibility.

The pay-per-engagement model also overwhelms users with excessive ads. Recently, the European Commission accused Meta of violating EU laws by charging users for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram, forcing them to either pay or consent to data collection, in breach of the Digital Markets Act.

The Main Drivers Of Social Media Decline

While Facebook and Twitter’s problems have dominated the headlines recently, the problems in social media go beyond these companies. Several significant trends negatively impact large, established social media platforms. Increased competition and regulatory environment changes are fundamentally altering social media conditions.

Factor 1: Losing Competition For Attention

 

Without highly engaged users, social media companies cannot thrive. Unfortunately, older established social media companies need help to innovate. The most significant competition has come from TikTok in the past years.

Founded in 2016, the social media app has experienced dramatic growth through the pandemic years. At the end of 2019, the video-sharing platform had an estimated 500 million users. By late 2022, the Business of Apps estimated the platform has over 1.5 billion users. The platform is currently dominated by users under 30, who represent 63% of users.

Mastodon, a social platform based in Germany, has also experienced significant growth in 2022, mainly at the expense of Twitter. By March 2023, the platform had 10 million users (up from 2.5 million in November 2022). Established in 2016, Mastodon’s relatively decentralized format and lack of advertising features distinguish it from other social platforms.

Discord is another platform that’s successfully creating engaging digital communities. The text and audio interaction app has become popular in the gamer community. The Business of Apps estimates Discord had 13.5 million active servers in 2021, up from 4.4 million in 2018. While small, Discord is an interesting example of a platform growing with niche audiences.

The growing popularity of alternative social websites and apps suggests new possibilities for brands and publishers. Running a Discord server may help you to appeal to more Gen Z users. These competing community experiences also demonstrate an appetite for more curated content and experiences.

Learning the ins and outs of new digital platforms can be worthwhile. Yet, don’t overlook how resource-intensive it can be to start a new community in ideal conditions. The social strategies that work on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram will not fully apply to Discord, TikTok, or Mastodon. However, your understanding of your audience’s interests and preferences is transferable, regardless of the platform you use.

Factor 2: Government Pressure Hurts Social Media’s Business Model

Government agencies and elected officials are scrutinizing social media apps more and more closely. Ten years ago, social media was typically viewed as a fun experience and a way to connect with friends and family. In recent years, governments have become seriously concerned about the ill effects of social media.

Government pressure and interest in social media platforms and other technologies has recently increased. In 2018, Facebook improperly shared the data of over 87 million users with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, leading to a major scandal that brought Mark Zuckerberg before the U.S. Congress. More recently, in July 2023, the U.S. government and several states filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against Meta, accusing the company of deliberately designing addictive platforms that prioritize profits while causing serious mental health issues.

Also in 2023, CNBC reported that Congress is investigating Threads, the new social media platform created by Meta, specifically looking at content moderation.

Concerns about the adverse effects of social media is an international phenomenon. The European Parliament published an in-depth analysis of the critical social media risks to democracy in 2021. As research continues, traditional social media companies may come under additional pressure. These concerns are not the only threat to traditional social media platforms.

The following regulatory changes have put pressure on the largest social media companies. In 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect. While not targeted exclusively at social media, the regulations require greater protection of personal data, which is the stock in trade of social media. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) has raised the bar further in the US. These new expectations impose costs for non-compliance as well. In 2022, the California Attorney General announced a $1.2 million settlement with a major retailer relating to the CCPA.

Most social media companies earn the lion’s share of their revenue from advertising. That advertising revenue largely depends on user data. As regulations tighten on privacy and consumer data, other companies are seeing opportunities. Apple’s increased emphasis on privacy measures may cost Facebook social media companies an estimated $10 billion in lost revenue.

Social Media Is Dead…What is the Future of Social Media?

The death or decline of a few of the largest social media companies is the most significant change to digital marketing in a decade. Many marketers have built their entire careers around social media expertise. As a result, it’s no surprise many marketers are anxiously asking is social media marketing dead?

The answer to that question depends on where you focus your efforts.

One option is building a presence on smaller or newer social media platforms like Discord, Mastodon, or Reddit. If there is a large potential audience for your brand on those sites, there is some value in building a presence there. However, moving from one social media platform to another has drawbacks. Fundamentally, brands do not set the rules on these platforms. It can be challenging to ensure brand safety in an environment where you have limited control, and minimal first-party data.

The Future Of Social Media Isn’t What You Would Expect

In today’s ever-changing digital landscape, depending solely on social media for audience engagement carries major risks. From algorithm changes to unexpected bans, brands are at the mercy of these platforms’ unpredictability. Building your own community platform gives you complete control, allowing for deeper, more sustainable audience connections.

Allow your audience to interact with you and meet people who have the same interests and values, while increasing retention and website monetization. With Arena Community, you can launch your online community inside your website in a few minutes, with several features that increase engagement, like group chat, live blog, polls, Q&As and much more. Learn more about Arena Community and how you can revolutionize audience engagement.  

What The Last 30 Years of Digital Ads Tell Us

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Digital advertising changes every month, right?

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

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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.

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.

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.

How To Capture First Party Data: 5 Ways That Work

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First party data is the future of online marketing because we’re entering the cookieless future. Third party cookies are effectively ceasing to exist because Apple and Google’s web browsers will no longer support them soon. 

So, what’s your alternative to reach your online growth goals?

The single most important approach to thrive in the 2020s is to focus on capturing more first party data. First party data is data that your website users, mobile app uses and emails subscribers provide directly to you. There’s no middle man or intermediary who can change the rules or stop you from accessing first party data.

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Why Gathering More First-Party Data Matters

Most companies we talk to have some level of first party data gathering in place. For instance, you have probably gathered website analytics data for years. Further, there’s a good chance that you also have a wealth of data from your email marketing platform. These sources of first party data are valuable and worth using. There’s just one drawback to them…

All of your competitors are likely using these forms of first party data already. It’s going to be tough to build a competitive advantage on that basis. The solution is to gather more data so that you can understand your audience better.

Five ways to gather better first-party data 

Use these methods to level up your first party data gathering efforts. The first strategy to get more first party data is one of the most potent ways to better understand your audience. 

1) Use online events and experiences

Your website has the ability to host online events and experiences for your audience with live chat technology. With Arena Live Chat, it’s easy to add a social interactive experience to your website. 

As your audience participates in online events, you will gain additional first party data. As a starting point, you can identify your most engaged audience members through their participation in a chat session. Even more significant is the live chat log. By analyzing chat activity, you can see which topics excite your audience the most.

2) Leverage lead generation forms

The traditional wisdom in digital marketing tells us to ask for minimal information on lead generation forms like name and email. In some cases, seeking to maximize the sheer size of your audience may be reasonable. For many businesses, name and email simply doesn’t provide enough information to power modern personalized marketing campaigns.

The way to gather more first-party data is to experiment with adding one or two more questions to your lead generation forms. A B2B company might ask for a job title and company name to qualify leads. A publisher might present a checklist of a few news topics (e.g., business, sports, local news) and ask users to check off what they are most interested in.

Asking a few more questions on your lead gen forms may reduce lead volume however. Before making that change, discuss it with other stakeholders like the sales team to set expectations.

3) Ask your audience what they want to hear more about

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Gathering first party data is an ongoing process of building a relationship. Like any relationship, it’s important to take an interest in your new audience member. There are a few ways to solicit this type of first-party data including:

Polls During Chat Sessions

Live digital experiences, enabled by live chat, are a powerful tactic to engage your audience. You can also use these live chat experiences as a way to discover what your people care about. 

Arena Live Chat includes the option to run polls so it’s easy to gather questions. For example, your poll might ask: “What should our next live event be about?” and then give the audience three topics to vote on. If there is a robust interest in a certain topic, make it a priority to offer that type of event. 

Short Email Surveys

Some people in your audience may be more interested in engaging with your emails instead of events. To gather insight from this segment of your audience, send an email asking for feedback on what topics future emails should cover.

Most email marketing platforms give you the option to track clicks on links, so let your audience vote on their preferred topics by clicking on a link.

Engagement Calls To Action In Content

In your videos, blog posts and other content on your website, it’s smart to periodically change up your call to action. For instance, most of the time your CTA might be to ask people to sign up for a demo. Once in a while, change your emphasis to ask people to comment on what they liked in your content or what they want to see more of.

4) Test a wider variety of marketing channels 

Ultimately, there are two dimensions to gathering first party data. You can go deep (i.e. gather data about an audience member over time by watching what they click on and how they interact) or you can go broad (i.e. get more people to join your community). Both are important to creating a thriving online community.

The next way to gather more first party data is to branch out and experiment with more marketing channels. If you’ve typically focused your ad budget on Google and Facebook, run some experiments on TikTok or LinkedIn. Likewise, don’t limit yourself to social media platforms either. Running a focused joint venture webinar with a complimentary company is a smart way to grow your audience without sacrificing quality.

5) Balance direct response with brand building

Direct response marketing is powerful! The ability to run an ad and get a lead (or sale) right away is well worth pursuing. However, aiming for an immediate conversion isn’t always the right move. If your objectives include gathering substantial first party data to facilitate first party data, brand building needs to balance direct response objectives.

Some of the best ways to pursue effective brand building involve content and communities. For example, take a look at Nike. The company’s Nike Activity Finder is an online resource to help people find athletic activities they like. This resource provides value to the audience looking for fitness ideas without immediately asking for a purchase.

Whether you create tools and apps like Nike or other forms of helpful content, regularly publishing new brand building assets on your website is a great way to build your audience. As more people interact with your content, you’ll gather more first party data in the process.

Transform Your Website Into A First-Party Data Generating Machine

Your website has the potential to produce endless amounts of first-party data so you can create effective personalized marketing campaigns. Find out how to build a thriving online community on your website with Arena!

First Party Data For Brands: Ways To Lift Revenue

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First-party data is quickly becoming the new opportunity to fuel personalization, customer engagement and online growth. Publishers are already starting to use first-party data to deliver customized experiences to their audience. For retail and ecommerce brands, there’s a tremendous opportunity to grow with first-party data. 

What Is First Party Data Anyway and Why It Matters

The best way to explain first party data is through a quick story. Imagine you’re running digital marketing at an apparel company and you’re looking for ways to sell more shoes this quarter. You have many different options and resources to choose from. One decision you’ll have to make upfront is what kind of data to leverage.

Consider planning your campaign by reviewing past customer activity. For example, you may look at website analytics to see which product pages are already receiving the most traffic. In addition, ask your customer service colleagues to summarize what kind of questions and complaints you get. All of this data comes directly from your customers, website visitors, and email subscribers. That’s all first party data.

First party data is often contrasted with another popular type of marketing data: third party data. For many years, digital marketers have used third party data for growth. Third party data is customer data generated by other companies. While this type of marketing data is popular, it’s becoming less useful for two reasons.

There are two reasons why companies are moving away from third party data. First, it is less transparent to consumers and can result in negative feedback. Second, Google and Apple are ending support for third party cookies (a popular technology that enables many third party marketing campaigns) in their browsers. 

First party data has multiple applications regardless of how you sell products. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most powerful use cases.

Retail and Ecommerce Use Cases For First Party

At its simplest, first party data is data that you gather directly from your customers, website visitors and others who interact with your brand online. Leveraging first party data makes it easier to achieve several sales and marketing goals.

Achieving Marketing Goals With First-Party Data

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Systematically using first party data makes it easier to achieve your digital marketing growth goals. 

Optimize Your Content Marketing Efforts

First party data tells you what content, links and assets your audience finds the most engaging. For example, start your analysis by reviewing your top 10 pages by traffic for the past 90 days. Ideally, focus on the pages that have driven the most conversions (e.g. purchases, website signups etc). 

Based on what you find, you can make better decisions about your content marketing strategy. An athletic apparel ecommerce company might find that their ultimate guide for marathon running drives the most conversions. Based on that insight, you may create more content to attract marathon runners to your website. 

Reduce Digital Marketing Expenses

Success in digital marketing requires the patience to experiment with new ideas, technologies and campaigns. The downside is that many marketing tests may not deliver significant results. When marketing budgets come under pressure, you may be asked to stretch your marketing dollars further. First-party data can play a powerful role in lifting marketing efficiency in the following ways.

Optimize Referral Campaigns

Word-of-mouth referrals are one of the most powerful ways to grow online. That said, sending out a blast message to your entire database is unlikely to work.

It’s far better to focus referral campaigns on your VIP customers – the ones who buy over and over again. First party data can help you identify your best customers which means you can create a far more targeted referral campaign.

Boost Loyalty Marketing Efforts

Many retail companies have loyalty programs because these efforts effectively encourage repeat business. The data you gather from buyers through your loyalty program is one of the most valuable forms of first party data. 

Analyze the buying patterns of your top customers and then use those patterns to inform your new campaigns. For example, you may find that 80% of repeat shoppers start by buying low-priced products. Use that insight and prepare a loyalty campaign to encourage one-off buyers to buy that product.

Increasing referrals and loyalty sales don’t require additional advertising so they’re a great choice when budgets are tight. You just need to focus on analyzing your customer data and executing campaigns based on those insights. 

Achieving Sales Goals With First-Party Data

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Some businesses are not focused on online sales. For example, industrial products, vehicles and enterprise software are rarely bought in a matter of clicks. In these more complex sales, first party data can support your sales goals.

Identify High Interest Sales Leads

Sales professionals only have so many hours in the day. First party data can play a role in lifting the efficiency of sales conversations. An analysis of first-party data can identify the prospects who are the most engaged with your content and may be open to a sales call.

Earn Attention With Relevant Content

Complex sales can take weeks, months or even years to close. Staying in touch with prospects during these longer customer journeys takes a lot of work! You can only send a “checking in” style email so many times. 

First party data can support the nurturing process. You can see which content your customers access in the lead up to purchase and afterward. As a result, you can craft follow up messages focused specifically on content that resonates with buyers.

From First-Party Data To Deeper Engagement

Simply gathering and using first party data will give you an immediate advantage in making sales and reaching your marketing goals. 

Ultimately, your goal isn’t really focused on getting data (even highly useful data like first party data). You want to build an audience of people who look forward to visiting your website regularly. An audience who finds insights, connections and experiences all through your company is one that will stay loyal. 

The secret to gaining first party data and deep engagement requires the right technology. That’s where Arena Live Chat technology comes in. You can install it in just a few minutes and get up and running. Discover more about how Arena can help you grow ecommerce revenue!

7 Online Community Tactics and Tools For Growth

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Building an online community is a smart way to accelerate your growth goals. Whether you’re after a larger audience to maximize advertising revenue or leads, there are several online community tactics and tools that can help you achieve success.

Use this post as a toolkit – picking the tools and tactics up as you need them.

Start With The End In Mind: KPI and ROI Goals

Community building takes resources and energy, so take the time to be strategic. Choosing the right mix of community tactics and goals is only possible when you have a clear objective. The following key performance indicators for most brands may be exactly what you need.

  • Engaged Visitors: Track the number of visitors engaged with your website, such as those who visit multiple pages. Alternatively, you might define engaged visitors by time on site or other metrics.
  • Average Time On Site: Generally speaking, higher time on site is desirable. Aim for at least 60 seconds on site as a starting goal. That’s enough time to make an initial connection with your audience.
  • First-Party Data: Gathering first-party data is vital to transforming an anonymous website visitor into an identified user. A good starting point is to track the number of people who sign up for your email list or agree to receive browser notifications.
  • Registered Community Members: Track the number of community members who have signed up by the week or the month.
  • Community Engagement Goal: The KPI mentioned above only tells you part of the story about the health of your community. It’s also vital to measure the quality of audience engagement. For example, you may also want to measure how many active members you have (i.e. members who post or comment at least once a month) or how many people attend virtual community events. Highly active community members may be good candidates to serve as ambassadors, community moderators, and other forms of community leadership in return for perks and other rewards.

We didn’t include revenue-related goals in the list because revenue is a lagging indicator of success. That means you typically can’t work on improving revenue directly. Instead, you can only influence it indirectly by getting more leads and increasing your audience.

Community Building Tactics

Review these community-building techniques with your team. For even better results, get an outside perspective on your community, like a friend who has never used your website.

1) Make Your Online Community Easy To Find On Your Website

Modern websites are complex with many moving parts. When building an online community, ensure your site architecture makes it easy to find. For example, there should be an easy-to-read navigation to the community from the homepage. In addition, you may also want to set up specific calls to action for community events like product launches, events with influencer guests, and live chat experiences.

2) Set Up Your Online Community To Welcome New People

Almost everybody has had the experience of walking into a party and struggling to make a connection. In the online context, that sense of awkwardness translates into lost engagement opportunities. The solution is to make a deliberate effort to welcome new people. The art of being welcomed in an online community has several dimensions.

Post Community Welcome Message

Post a welcome message for new people interested in joining your community. This message should give a few tips on how to get started. For example, you may have a discussion board area where new people can introduce themselves. If so, direct them to post! Also, provide clear directions on how to join the community (e.g., click here to set up your community account).

To keep this welcome message relevant and useful, set a reminder to review it monthly or quarterly and update it as needed.

Set Expectations With Community Rules

Many of the most successful and enduring online communities have community rules. Posting these rules is an essential way of making people feel safe online. Beyond preventing unwanted behaviors, community rules can signal your expectations. For example, encourage community members to post reviews or ask questions about products.

Publish Community Badges

Awarding community badges like Community Builder (e.g., engaged with 5 or more other people), Conversation Starter (e.g., starting multiple discussion threads), and Welcome (i.e., a badge to hand out to brand new users) is a proven tactic to reward ongoing

participation in your community. Community badges may be symbolic, like an icon next to a person’s name. Or you may give special recognition and privileges to your top community members (e.g., invite them to be guests in your virtual event).

Community badges are common in enterprise settings (e.g., Microsoft MVP) and more casual settings (e.g., on Discord servers for gamers and other enthusiasts).

3) Offer Premium Content Exclusively For Community Members

Posting high-quality, helpful, and entertaining content is essential to creating an engaging community. The twist here is to reserve some of your best content for registered community members. Use the following tips to position premium content for your community.

Provide Early Access To Premium Content

Reward your community members with advanced access to your content, like seeing a new video or podcast episode a day or two before everyone else. In addition to engaging your community, you will also have the opportunity to get feedback on the content before it is widely circulated.

Community Exclusive Online Events

Exclusivity is a powerful way to sell people the value of your community. Exclusive content might include “fireside chats” where a dozen community members come together with a special guest.

Question And Answer Sessions With Leaders and Employees

Active community members are likely to be among your most passionate customers. Encourage this passion further by giving them access to your leadership. For example, a clothing company might offer a Q&A session about how the company implements sustainable clothing practices.

As your community thrives and grows, informally keeping the community focused may no longer work. Bringing on a community manager or moderators can make a big difference.

4) Appoint A Community Manager

Introducing a community manager is an advanced tactic that makes sense in certain situations. Typically, an online community manager is most valuable when your community has started to achieve significant scale. You’ll know you need a community manager if you start seeing problems like falling engagement or complaints about inappropriate behavior.

The specific duties of an online community manager depend on your goals. The most common job responsibilities include the following:

  • Moderation. A community manager will review potentially inappropriate content for deletion. In some cases, the community manager may also have to determine if a specific user should be suspended or banned for inappropriate behavior or violating community rules.
  • Directing Users For Help. When your community members post asking for help or have detailed product questions, the community manager can step in and direct the person on how to access support.
  • Oversee Your Social Media Communities. Your goal may be to grow your audience on your website. However, your customers may prefer Facebook or other platforms. Therefore, the community manager reviews these other platforms and responds to community members as needed.
  • Report On Community Trends. Regularly provide written and oral reports to others in the company about current trends. In this way, the community manager helps the rest of the company understand what’s working well with the community.

What if your organization doesn’t have the budget to hire a full-time community manager? There are other options. In the previous section, you learned about community badges to recognize your top community participants. You can take that process a step further by asking your top community members to take on the role of a volunteer moderator.

Community Building Tools

Building an online community also takes the right mix of technologies. It is best to focus your community-building efforts on your website. When users are on your website, it’s easier to track their actions and gather data.

5) Use Live Chat To Build Audience Engagement.

Using Arena live chat is a powerful way to transform your website into an interactive experience. Arena has content moderation features that make it easier to keep discussions focused and enforce your standards. And the best part? It can be embedded into your existing digital properties so your community remains a part of your core brand experience, always. Learn more about Arena Live Chat.

Arena also helps brands and organizations run engaging, brand-safe community experiences with a few key capabilities.

Growing Engagement

Creating an engaging experience starts with good ideas and excellent content. However, online attention spans tend to be short. One way to keep your audience members engaged is to give them easy ways to engage. Arena has polls and Q&A features so you can ask quick questions and gather feedback at every event.

Maintaining A Brand Safe Experience

Inviting dozens, hundreds, or thousands of community members to an online event is exciting! There’s also a greater chance of some community members forgetting your ground rules. Arena’s AI content moderation is equipped to detect and block the most common profanity. Also, you can use manual moderation (e.g., review and approve each post or question) for an added level of brand safety in your most important events.

6) Use A Live Blog To Provide Updates On Breaking News

Breaking news stories offer an exciting way to build community engagement. Journalists and news organizations have used live blog technology for years to cover breaking stories. Whether you’re covering an election, tournament, criminal trial, or conference, a live blog is a speedy way to provide live updates. Learn more about Arena Live Blog.

7) Post Video Content To Lift Community Engagement

Including video in your online community is wise because Generation Z and Millennials love consuming video content. Post video shorts on social media to promote the premium content experiences on your website. Once you have users on your website, package your video experiences as events to drive engagement further.

E-commerce companies, where customers can buy through your website, have an even more significant opportunity: live shopping. Crafting a live shopping experience takes planning, so check out our guide on the best way to make live shopping successful.

How To Take Back Control of Your Community From Social Media

For years, social media has been a powerful force in building online communities. People have forged connections with new friends and developed relationships that couldn’t have happened otherwise. At the same time, social media in the 2020s faces major problems for brands seeking growth.

Over the past few years, social media platforms have faced a growing list of challenges. TikTok has faced potential government bans. Recent changes at Twitter have caused many brands to pause advertising. Facebook and Instagram have struggled with multiple scandals that have undermined their reputation. For brands dependent on social platforms, these problems all represent headwinds to growth.

The good news is that you don’t have to sit back and hope that the big social media platforms improve. You can engage your community directly on your website. Arena Community offers many of the most popular social media features like chat and social reactions.

Learn why hosting community interactions directly on your website enables growth.

Leveraging the Success of Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok for Your Brand’s Growth

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Social media platforms have revolutionized the way brands interact with their audience. Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok, in particular, have emerged as powerful tools for brand marketing and community building, offering unique opportunities for engagement, storytelling, and viral content creation. This article delves into how the success of these platforms can be harnessed to boost your brand strategy.

With recent disruptions at Twitter, including concerns around hate speech, upheavals in their management, and wavering trust from advertisers, many have been left pondering the future and efficacy of social media for branding. While it’s tempting to generalize and deem the era of social media marketing as waning, there are gems in the digital landscape that offer unparalleled opportunities.

The Importance of Social Media to Community Building

Building a community on social media is crucial for fostering strong, meaningful connections between a brand and its audience. Social media platforms provide a dynamic space for real-time interactions, enabling brands to engage directly with their followers, gather instant feedback, and create a sense of belonging. By consistently sharing valuable content, responding to comments, and participating in conversations, brands can nurture loyalty and trust. This continuous engagement not only helps in retaining customers but also attracts new ones through word-of-mouth and increased visibility.

Moreover, by bringing social media content to your website, you can further strengthen your digital marketing strategies. Integrating social media feeds into your site creates a seamless content stream that enhances user experience and keeps your audience engaged across multiple platforms. This holistic approach ensures your brand strategy is consistent and compelling, driving sustained growth and community building.

Understanding the Changing Tides of Social Media

Selecting the right platforms to amplify your brand engagement on social media. Remember, on these platforms, the relationship with your audience isn’t truly yours. They can modify the rules, adjust algorithms, or introduce new features, impacting your audience engagement. Therefore, your overarching strategy should be to drive this audience back to assets you own, such as your website.

Relevant studies to note

  • Business Insider Intelligence: Highlights TikTok as the favorite among Gen Z.
  • Nielsen: Indicates 80% of sports enthusiasts use social media platforms to stay connected with their favorite teams.
  • Social Media Examiner and HubSpot: Respectively found that 85% of marketers leverage YouTube, while 70% are tapping into the potential of Reddit for marketing.

Diving Deeper into the Giants

1. YouTube: Visual Storytelling

Founded in 2005, YouTube is a powerful platform for visual storytelling. Brands can create high-quality videos that showcase their products, share customer testimonials, or provide how-to guides. Engaging video content not only attracts viewers but also keeps them on the platform longer, enhancing brand recall and loyalty.

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Key Capabilities

  • Audio and video files upload, allowing users to create content playlists and collections.
  • YouTube Shorts: a new functionality that works similarly to TikTok, within the mobile app and web browser.
  • Community features, enable users to interact with other users through comments, likes, and subscriptions.
  • Live streaming and captioning.
  • Offers advertising via Google and sponsored video collaborations.

YouTube SEO Best Practices

Optimizing video titles, descriptions, and tags with relevant keywords is crucial for YouTube SEO. Creating compelling thumbnails and including call-to-actions within videos can also boost engagement. Regularly updating your channel with fresh content helps maintain viewer interest and attract new subscribers.

Fit for Business Types: Media & Publishing houses, Entertainment, Retail & eCommerce with video showcases.

2. TikTok: Viral Trends and Challenges

TikTok’s algorithm favors content that is engaging and entertaining. Brands can capitalize on this by creating short, catchy videos that align with current trends. Participating in challenges, using popular music, and collaborating with influencers are effective ways to increase visibility and reach on TikTok.

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Key Capabilities

  • Limited to 10-minute video durations; shorter videos gain traction.
  • TikTok Stories last only 24 hours, similar to Instagram Stories.
  • TikTok has filters, a sound library, video duet and reply, and a robust editing tool kit.
  • Provides CPM and CPC advertising options.

Best Practices for Creating Viral TikTok Content

To create viral content, brands should focus on creativity and relevance. Keeping videos short and engaging, using trending hashtags, and encouraging user-generated content can enhance the chances of going viral. Brands can capitalize on community challenges and influencer partnerships, monitoring analytics helps in understanding what works and refining strategies accordingly.

Fit for Business Types: Consumer brands, publishers, and Entertainment sectors seeking genuine audience engagement.

3. Reddit: Community-Driven Engagement

Famous as a “community of communities”, Reddit is known for its diverse and highly engaged user base. By participating in relevant subreddits, brands can connect with niche communities and build authentic relationships. Engaging in discussions, sharing valuable content, and responding to user queries can help brands establish trust and authority within these communities.

Key Capabilities

  • Hosts subreddits dedicated to specific interests.
  • Subreddits are managed by moderators, know as “Redditors”, who help keep the discussions safe and relevant.
  • Community features such as submissions, comments, private messages, and more.
  • Offers varied advertising options from sponsored links to Q&As.

Best Practices for Reddit Marketing

To succeed on Reddit, brands should focus on authenticity and value, as well as respecting platforms conventions and community standards. Avoid overly promotional posts and instead, contribute meaningful insights and content. Utilizing Reddit Ads can also help target specific demographics and drive traffic to your website.

Fit for Business Types: Companies focusing on niche audiences, wanting to build or integrate into existing communities.

4. Twitch: Live Streaming and Engagement

Twitch, primarily known for its live streaming capabilities, has evolved into a vital platform for brands looking to engage with their audience in real-time. With millions of daily active users, Twitch offers a unique opportunity to connect with a highly interactive and engaged community. By hosting live streams, brands can showcase their products, offer behind-the-scenes glimpses, and engage in real-time conversations with viewers. This level of interaction fosters a sense of immediacy and authenticity, allowing brands to build strong, loyal communities.

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Key Capabilities

  • Offers an immersive viewer experience with live streams.
  • Provides conventional advertising and sponsorships through donations and bits.
  • Gaming features for both streamers and gamers.
  • Category browser.
  • Squad streaming to watch multiple streams.

Best Practices

To succeed on Twitch, brands should focus on creating engaging and interactive content, understanding unique content niches such as gaming, cooking, fitness and music. Brands can collaborate with streamers that resonate with your company’s ethos, hosting live Q&A sessions, product demonstrations, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content can captivate viewers and encourage participation.

Utilizing Twitch’s chat feature to respond to viewers’ comments and questions in real-time enhances the viewer experience and strengthens the community bond. Additionally, collaborating with popular Twitch streamers can help brands tap into established communities and gain credibility.

Fit for Business Types: Brands targeting Gen Z, those in Entertainment, Fitness, and any brand wishing to tap into niche segments with high user engagement.

Discovering Niche Platforms

Many social media networks specialize in a specialized niche. While smaller sites may not have TikTok or YouTube audiences, they have other benefits. Focused audiences are easier to discover. Building ties with influencers may be easier.

  • LinkedIn, the leading business social media platform, now features articles, videos, and groups.
  • Sports Thread is a student-athlete social network. Brands have new potential since the NCAA allowed student-athletes to be compensated for their name, image, and likeness (NIL).
  • Ravelry is a knitting, crocheting, spinning, and related social network. It’s estimated that 45 million Americans crochet and knit. Reaching women, who make up majority of this population, using this medium may be new.
  • Social network Goodreads connects authors and readers. This Amazon-owned platform is essential for publishers seeking enthusiastic readers.

Success stories: How well-known companies have used social media for marketing

1. The Home Depot

The Home Depot is a home improvement retailer that uses YouTube to create product videos, tutorials, and live streams. The company has over 10 million subscribers on YouTube and its videos have been viewed over 1 billion times.

The Home Depot’s YouTube channel has helped the company to:

  • Increase brand awareness: The company’s videos have helped to introduce its products and services to a wider audience.
  • Generate leads and sales: The company’s videos have helped to generate leads and sales by providing information about its products and services.
  • Build relationships with customers: The company’s videos have helped to build relationships with customers by providing them with helpful information and advice.

2. The NBA

The NBA is a professional basketball league that uses TikTok to create short, engaging videos that can be shared with its fans. The league has over 100 million followers on TikTok and its videos have been viewed over 10 billion times.

The NBA’s TikTok channel has helped the league to:

  • Engage with fans: The league’s videos have helped to engage with fans by providing them with short, entertaining content.
  • Promote its games: The league’s videos have helped to promote its games by showcasing highlights and behind-the-scenes content.
  • Build excitement for the league: The league’s videos have helped to build excitement for the league by creating a sense of community among its fans.

3. The International Cricket Council (ICC)

The ICC is the governing body of cricket that uses Reddit to connect with fans and answer their questions. The organization has over 100,000 subscribers on Reddit and its posts have been upvoted over 1 million times.

The ICC’s Reddit channel has helped the organization to:

  • Connect with fans: The organization’s posts have helped to connect with fans by providing them with a platform to ask questions and interact with the organization.
  • Answer questions: The organization’s posts have helped to answer questions from fans about cricket.
  • Build a community: The organization’s posts have helped to build a community among cricket fans.

These are just a few examples of how well-known companies have successfully integrated social media into their marketing strategies. If you are looking for a way to reach your target audience, build relationships with customers, and generate leads and sales, then integrating social media into your marketing strategy is a great option.

How to Integrate your Social Media Content on your Website

Bringing your content from social media to create a social stream with Arena Community allows you to seamlessly integrate dynamic, real-time updates from platforms like Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube directly into your website. This integration not only enriches your site with fresh, engaging content but also enhances user interaction by keeping visitors informed and connected. By showcasing social media highlights, user-generated content, and live updates, you create a vibrant content stream that fosters community engagement, strengthens your digital marketing strategies, and provides a cohesive brand experience across multiple channels.

Crafting A Resilient Digital Strategy

It’s evident that while platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok offer unmatched potential, putting all your eggs in their baskets can be precarious. Brands need to prioritize driving traffic back to owned assets. Enhancing your website with community-centric features like live chats or live blogs can be a game-changer. Dive deeper into how integrating solutions like Arena’s Live Blog can redefine your community-building strategy.

Get More Customers With A Retarget Customer Data Platform

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A customer data platform needs the right fuel to achieve growth—data from sales systems, customer loyalty data, insights from programmatic advertising, and advanced analytics all help. Ultimately, the way to lift conversion rates requires significant first-party data. 

Why First Party Data Should Be The Core Of Your Marketing Strategy

If you ask most marketing teams, they’ll say they are drowning in data from analytics tools. The burden gets even more significant when you factor in customer insights from third-party data. That’s why your customer data platforms need to emphasize direct interactions with customers (i.e., first-party data).

To make the most out of your marketing activities and get better retargeting results, you need the proper foundation in place first. With the right marketing technology, it is far easier to focus your advertising campaigns to achieve better click-through rates and increase conversion rates.

Gathering Your First-Party Data For Retargeting

Fulfilling your business strategy is easier when you can make Facebook ads, email marketing, and overall digital marketing deliver more results. Effectively gathering first-party data into a centralized database makes it easier to provide personalized experiences.

To build accurate customer profiles, look at the data you already have, like purchase history, insights from your legacy systems, and other data points available in your marketing automation platform. These data points are vital to building a company’s first-party data foundation. However, there is much more high-quality customer data you can gather.

4 Marketing Opportunities To Gather And Use First Party Data 

Online events and community experiences give you an unusual way to transform anonymous visitors into potential customers. To achieve this feat, your tech stack needs to be equipped with marketing automation tools like Arena Personas and live chat. Once your email systems and preferred marketing solution are ready, it’s time to engage your target audiences. 

1) Offer Online Experiences To Potential Customers

Using marketing campaigns to gather today from various customer segments is easier when there is a value exchange. Every single customer should get something out of interacting with your company like a community experience, pricing (e.g. discounts), early access to products or useful insights.

For example, you can use Arena live chat to deepen your customer relationships by running engaging online events. As you add more engaging experiences, customer acquisition cost may go up for a period of time. In the long term, providing customers live event experiences can raise customer retention.

Instead of attempting to understand the desires of anonymous segments, tracking user engagement in different types of online activity (e.g. chat and website use) leads to more actionable insights. Let’s break down how gathering first-party data with an online experience can help.

E-Commerce Business Use Case

For example, B2C customers may react with excitement in a chat session during a livestream event. To see how this information could be used, consider e-commerce brands. They may be considering launching 10 products over the next quarter but  can use this insight to improve the results of product launches. By observing the chat and related behavior patterns like website clicks, you can estimate demand for products (e.g. “Hey, we noticed over a hundred people wanted the new blue shirt!”). 

With this insight in mind, there are at least two ways you can get more business. First, you can run a targeted campaign to your current customers and reference your chat experience (e.g. “We saw that many of you are excited about our new linen blue shirts! Order by Friday and you’ll get 10% off!”). Second, you can then make changes on your advertising platform to emphasize the new shirt. 

2) Create Campaigns For Your Current Customers 

Marketing campaigns often focus on bringing in net new customers and prospects. In addition to that objective, it’s important to engage your current customers. In many respects, it’s easier to  execute data-driven personalization is to focus on customers. Unlike anonymous website visitors, customers have signaled what they value with their buying behavior including offline purchases. Let’s illustrate this use case for enterprise-level companies in the software industry. 

B2B Enterprise Use Case

Selling complex business software often feels like a Herculean task. Achieving business success often requires a full team of sales professionals like account executives, sales development representatives and others. Further, the marketing team is constantly working hard to collect customer stories, optimizing online advertising campaigns and more.

In this context, it’s vital to make the most of your customer base. For example, you might have a significant percentage of customers on a mid tier plan while your goal is to emphasize the top tier enterprise plan. In that case, you might offer online experiences showcasing the success of users in the top tier plan and encourage them to share their success stories. For instance, enterprises users might rave about the analytics capabilities and native integrations available in your top tier plan. Running a live event where customers have the opportunity to share their experiences with each other is powerful!

There are some downsides to this type of campaign. It requires significant insight into customer behavior. It’s vital to know your customer satisfaction levels so that you shine a spotlight on your most delighted customers. This type of campaign also requires significant collaboration between sales and marketing. Fortunately, solutions like Arena Personas make such marketing efforts easier to arrange. 

3) Get Better Lookalike Audiences

In Facebook advertising, it has been a common practice to create a lookalike audience by uploading your customer list. Facebook then uses its customer match capabilities to find more people who are similar to your current customers. This approach to Facebook advertising isn’t your only option. What if your target audience isn’t on Facebook or Facebook campaigns aren’t producing satisfactory results? The first party data you gather can help you to market more effectively.

The downside to relying entirely on an advertising platform for lookalike audiences is that you are dependent on their database. If some or many of your customers are not active users on Facebook, retargeting via the Facebook pixel may not work well.

The alternative is to build your own lookalike audiences. With a large enough audience, you may be able to pursue granular segmentation in a custom audience as shown in the following example.

Individual Audience Factors

Every purchase is ultimately made by an individual, whether they are buying as a consumer or at a company. Therefore, it is usually wise to start with these factors.

  • Age: understanding the typical age profile of your ideal audience helps you to decide which channels, creative and offers to use.
  • Gender: it is helpful to know if gender differences are relevant to your market.
  • Geography: contrast the geography of your website visitors to your ideal customer profile.
  • Interests: find out the topics, publications and media your audience likes. If you offer online event experiences like virtual conferences, look at registration records to see 

B2B Audience Factors

If you are focused on appealing to B2B audiences, the following customer attributes are important. 

  • Industry: to minimize confusion, use a standard industry classification like the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).
  • Company Size: use number of employees or revenue as a filter. 
  • Technology Stack: If you offer technology products or services, knowing the customer’s tech stack is helpful. For example, does it matter if the customer uses Salesforce?

Is Your Audience Segment Too Large?

Audience segmentation can become less useful when the audience becomes too large. IF you end up with an audience segment with millions of individual customers, it may need to be narrowed down. Leverage feedback from the sales team and customer service to narrow the list. They may be able to help you identify the customer attributes associated with the most valuable customers (e.g. people who tend to move through the customer journey quickly).

4) Lapsed Customer Engagement

When a customer cancels their account or stops buying for a long period of time, all hope is not lost. In many cases, you have a good chance to reengaging lapsed customers with a retargeting campaign. To build this type of audience segment, it’s important to choose who to include and who to exclude.

Start by defining a lapsed customer. For simplicity, let’s define a lapsed customer as a prior customer whose last purchase was six to twelve months ago. Once you have that list, it’s vital to filter it further using your customer relationship management data. Specifically, you want to exclude customers who complained or experienced significant problems. Reengaging such former customers is much more challenging and may require more guidance from the sales team.

Now that you have your audience segment prepared, prepare a custom advertising campaign. B2C companies often find that a simple “we’ve missed you!” style message with an incentive (e.g. 10% off coupon) is an effective way to bring back customers. For B2B campaigns, communicating new features or capabilities can help. Even better, reengage lapsed customers by inviting them to an online event.

The Final Ingredient To Successful Retargeting: Leverage Market Awareness

Once you choose one of the ideas from above to execute, there is one more critical point to consider: market awareness. The three part market funnel – top of funnel, middle of the funnel and bottom of funnel – gives us a good framework. Let’s pair the market funnel concept with the audience segmentation we covered earlier.

1) Top of Funnel

In the top of the marketing funnel, most prospects have little to no understanding of your product and how it might help them. This is the marketing equivalent of cold calling. The advantage of top funnel marketing is that you have the greatest opportunity because this segment is always the biggest. The disadvantage is that you usually need to be more patient.

With a top of funnel focus, leveraging the “Offer Online Experiences To Potential Customers” strategy makes sense. In this case, your primary marketing campaign would focus on inviting prospects to an online event. After the event, you would follow up with retargeting campaigns to offer an event recording or other assets to give people a reason to opt in to your marketing.

If you use events, use our how to promote your virtual event guide to get more attendees.

2) Middle of Funnel

Also known as the evaluation stage, the middle of the funnel is an intermediate step in the customer journey. In this stage, the potential customer has some awareness of what you offer. It’s now up to you to nurture the prospect further. In contrast to top of funnel, you likely already have some prospect or customer data in place so you can start off with a retargeting campaign.

Consider adapting the “Create Campaigns For Your Current Customers” concept to middle of the funnel campaigns. Highlighting your current customers via an event, case study or interview is a powerful way to prove your credibility. Using your customer data platform, identify prospects who have interacted with your brand in the past 3 months (e.g. attended a webinar, participated in a live chat etc). Once you have identified this audience segment, create a marketing campaign to emphasize your case studies.

3) Bottom of Funnel

Converting leads at the bottom of the marketing funnel depends on your business model. If customers make an online purchase, a campaign offering a deadline and incentive is often a good bet. For B2B or enterprise sales, running marketing campaigns may not be your best best. Instead, it may be more effective to collaborate with the sales team to find out what type of campaigns they want. For example, highly customized and targeted direct mail campaigns may be the best way forward.

Use Arena Personas To Get More of The Right Data

Data driven personalization campaigns and advanced audience segmentation all depend on having high quality data. To help companies get more of the data they need to grow, use Arena Personas. It’s the fastest way to collect and import first-party data into your customer data platform. Then you’ll find it far easier to run retargeting campaigns across the marketing funnel.

How To Manage Live Chat Experiences

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Live experiences are a powerful way to connect more deeply with your community. With Arena, it’s easy to create new digital experiences quickly. Like any good story, there is a beginning, middle, and end to managing a live experience. We’ll guide you through each step, but first, there is an important question we need to answer.

Why Offer Live Experiences At All?

Creating an engaging live experience for your audience takes effort and resources. You might have experience running the occasional event or traditional digital marketing campaigns. There are a few reasons why offering live experiences to your audience is valuable.

1) Get Faster, Better Feedback From Your Audience

Without consistent feedback from your audience, it’s difficult to know if your marketing and experiences are working. Sure, tracking traditional metrics like conversions and engagement levels is helpful. It’s even better to get live feedback! 

Just imagine if you could show a product mockup to customers during a virtual event – that would give you far richer feedback than measuring the number of clicks on a page.

2) Thrive In The Post-Cookie Online World

Digital marketers and audience builders can’t rely on traditional cookies to understand audience behavior and interests. The solution, in brief, is to build a direct relationship with your audience (i.e., first-party data). For more insight on this change, see our post: The Future of Cookies In Marketing Strategy.

When your brand offers appealing social events using live chat, it becomes far easier to gather first-party data. That rich data is the foundation of success in the 2020s and beyond.

3) Deepen Audience Relationships

The final reason why offering live experiences matters comes down to relationships. Think back to the last conference you attended, like SaaStr Annual. You probably met lots of people, discovered new insights, and felt positive about the event. You can capture some of that event magic with engaging online experiences. By regularly running engaging live events, your audience will start to see your online presence as a community rather than simply a website.

Now that you see why it’s vital to provide live experiences to your audience, let’s start the planning process.

The Beginning Of Your Live Experience: Set Up Your Chat In Arena

Now you are ready to build your live chat experience in Arena. Use the following steps to set up and customize your live chat experience.

Step 1: Log in to your Arena account

Step 2: Click on Live Chat in the Arena dashboard.

Step 3: Click create a new chatroom.

Step 4: Name your chat (e.g., “Annual Launch Event”)

The chat name you select is for internal use only – chat participants will not be able to see this name.

Step 5: Select your chat status

There are two options: live and closed. The live option launches your chat session immediately and makes it available to everyone. On the other hand, if you want to be the only one who can post messages, choose closed.

Assuming you are planning a live experience for a future time, the closed status option is best. That means you can further customize the settings to your liking before making the live chat available to your audience.

Step 6: Choose your live chat settings

Arena gives you various ways to manage the experience depending on your needs. The list below includes some of the most significant options to keep in mind:

  • Language: choose the language your participants want to use.
  • Keep Chat Open: turn this option to make sure your chat is seen by the user.
  • Send direct messages: enabling this feature lets users send private messages to each other. It can be a helpful way to foster networking.
  • Pre-moderation: using this feature means that your team must approve messages before they approve. While it places more of a burden on your team, pre-moderation is a powerful way to support brand safety.
  • Sign-Up Options: you can choose Not Required (i.e., anybody can join), Sign Up Required (i.e., adds a minor speed bump to participation), or Single Sign On. The sign up option lets users enter an email address or use another credential (i.e. Facebook, Twitter or Google). 
  • Allow Slow Mode. In a live experience, you might have hundreds of participants and it’s easy to become overwhelmed when many people start posting messages. The slow mode lets you impose a delay between how often people can post messages (e.g. 10 seconds between messages). This mode is a helpful way to discourage harmful and distracting chat activity. If you use this mode, take a moment to explain it to your users at the start of the session. 
  • Allow Sharing Links: Choose whether you want to let participants share links. If you take other measures like requiring a sign-up or pre-moderation, allowing links is less risky. 
  • Profanity Filter: we recommend turning this feature on to maximize brand safety and avoid upsetting participants.

Navigating all of these options might take a few minutes the first time you use it. By the second or third time, you’ll a feel for which options are best suited to your audience. 

Once you have completed all of the settings to your liking, click the Create button at the bottom of the screen.

Step 7: Choose your Embed option

The embed option controls how Arena Live Chat appears on your website. There are a few options here: In-Page, Bottom, Side and Overlay. If you’re not sure which option to choose, we recommend overlay. 

When ready, click the “Copy” button at the bottom of this screen. This will generate a short piece of code for your website. To launch the live chat, this code needs to be added to your website. The specific steps vary depending on the type of website you have. For additional support, see our help guide: Adding Arena to your site.  

Step 8: Refresh your website and look for the live chat!

If you selected the live option in step 4, your live chat window will appear right away!

By the way, don’t worry about getting everything perfect the first time – you can go back and make updates whenever you want.

How To Run A Live Experience Like A Pro 

In our three-part story concept, running the live experience is the critical “middle” part of the story. Use the following tips to ensure your live chat experience runs smoothly.

Get Your Two Person Team Ready

It is usually wise to have at least two people involved in your live chat experience: an event host and a support person. The event host will focus on the conversation while the support person can address technical issues.

Have Your Scripts and Notes Available

When you run a live experience, you’re effectively on stage! It’s perfectly normal to have a bit of stage fright at first. One of the best ways to reduce anxiety is to prepare notes in advance and have them ready. Use our X resource to prepare your live experience script.

Join The Live Chat Early

Let’s say that your live event will run from 4 pm to 5 pm. It’s best to let people enter the virtual chat room at least 5 minutes before the event starts. Your staff should join early as well. Joining early means you can address technical questions quickly.

Explain Your Ground Rules

While optional, we recommend taking a minute or two to explain your ground rules for the live experience. This is especially important if you are using features like pre-moderation or profanity filters. Taking a moment to explain that you are offering a safe experience and that you will not tolerate abusive behavior will help to discourage disruptions.

Stick The Landing: Tips To End Your Live Experience Effectively

As your live chat experience comes to a close, schedule some time with your event team to explore the event. This is a critical continuous improvement discipline that ensures your live experiences will keep getting better over time. Use the following tips to run your post-live experience session with your team.

Recognize Successes

Kick off your post-chat review by celebrating what went well. For example, did you achieve a new milestone like 100 or 500 chat participants? Take a moment to praise your team for these developments.

What Worked Well?

Continuing on the positive theme, make a list of the practices that went well. For example, you might add three support people to keep a large event on track. Record these best practices and make sure you keep using them.

Gather “Stop Doing” Suggestions

Now, ask your team what you should stop doing or change for the future. To avoid blame and finger-pointing, emphasize changes that can be made for the future. 

Review The Live Chat Log

Finally, review the live chat log. In particular, look at questions directed to your company. If there are repeated questions like “why aren’t all of my questions appearing?” you may need to better explain your moderation practices.

Start Your Live Chat Experience This Week

Offering a live chat experience takes creativity and a team effort. Fortunately, the Arena Live Chat solution is simple and fast to install. On average, users take less than 15 minutes to install Arena on their website. Learn more about Arena Live Chat!