Yep, 2020 started a bit rough. But for many niche publishers, audience loyalty is bridging the gap in revenue and engagement right now.
Now is the time to fine tune your audience outreach strategies.
Ashley Mulder, COO at Twenty First Digital, has four strategies to enhance efficiency, increase engagement, and drive audience revenue for the rest of 2020 and beyond.
Mulder shared her audience outreach plan at the Super Niche Almost Live event a few weeks ago, including detailed checklists to enact each strategy. (Check out the entire recording here to get started.)
1. SEO/content strategy
Search accounts for 50 per cent of publisher site traffic. Search visitors are also a top source for email conversion (collecting an email for newsletter or content access) and even print conversion (subscription forms).
And search sophistication continues to grow, as audiences use voice search and hyper-local searches to get the information they need.
Marching orders: update top-performing content, assess search data and keywords, rethink placement of conversion forms.
2. Automation/segmentation strategy
Marketers using segmented audience campaigns and automated messaging can increase revenue 760 per cent — no more excuses.
Marching orders: clean your database and demos, review automated messages regularly for relevance, and segment all outreach campaigns.
3. Diversified revenue strategy
Quick stats:
- Independent publishers receive 40 per cent of their revenue from events.
- 88 per cent of publishers expect to miss 2020 forecasts.
Even in a healthy market, too much revenue focus into one channel can be risky for long-term growth and survival. The stats above show the need for diversified revenue sources.
Marching orders: now is the time to build audience engagement and revenue with new content, products, paywalls, memberships and more. (Ashley has a great recording on recurring audience revenue too.)
4. Data privacy strategy
Audience knowledge and sentiment about data privacy has caught up to our ability to market to them. Your readers and site visitors are keenly aware of what business can do with their data, and have strong reactions against data abuse. The legislative and legal requirements for data use continue to grow. Be ready.
Marching orders: take stock of how you (and your platforms) use audience data, assess all collection processes and language, be transparent with your audience on data usage.
Set these audience outreach plans now to support your entire media company’s revenue programs.
More audience development tactics are available in the Audience Lab section of the Super Niche (Almost) Live Recordings page.
