Digital audiences are craving more social experiences than ever before. Now, publishers are connecting with visitors and subscribers to transform them into loyal brand supporters.
“Looking to the future, publishers are increasingly [recognizing] that long-term survival is likely to involve stronger and deeper connection with audiences online,” writes Nic Newman, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
And with the help of digital engagement tools, media companies are beginning to satisfy this growing consumer desire for digital connections.
But you can’t build a highly engaged, connected audience without a comprehensive strategy. A successful audience engagement strategy should excite consumers during every step of the visitor’s journey. By going through this work, you’re able to track and nurture your audience’s activity on your digital properties and that can be a powerful way to understand how your audience navigates your website, engages with your content, and provide insights to help your sales process.
Not convinced you need to pair engagement tools with a carefully crafted strategy? Here’s why you need a thorough plan for each stage of user engagement below.
Enhancing Engagement Tools
Fact: 80% of publishers struggle to convert digital visitors to subscribers. That’s why engagement tools are so critical to businesses. Not only do they speed up the conversion process from anonymous and passive visitors to active brand supporters, but they also add value to events, video streams, and written content. Your job isn’t done once these tools are live on your site, though. Part of building a comprehensive audience development strategy ensures your engagement tools are constantly reaching their full, revenue-boosting potential. This includes understanding how to act on the data you pull from these tools, facilitating relationships between consumers and coordinating with your paywall provider to grow subscriptions. That’s why one of the first steps in creating a comprehensive strategy is defining your audience engagement goals, for example, these could be:- Driving advertising impressions by maximizing pageviews
- Reducing your website’s bounce rate and increasing the number of pages visited by a unique user
- Driving free or paid digital/print subscriptions, or other e-commerce activities
