How to increase the audience of a digital magazine
Technical and strategic keys to make our audience grow and interact more with the content.
5 mins read
How to make our audience engage more with the content
Sometimes it's not only necessary to offer interesting content, but you also have to consider many external factors that will make your audience engage with it.
For example, recent trends indicate that people are reading less and engaging more with social media. Within these networks, video consumption is becoming more prevalent than images (and much more so than text). If we have spent hundreds of hours creating the latest issue of the magazine, it's probably worth investing some time to make the content accessible to our potential readers.
To achieve this, we can create content snippets in various formats (videos/reels, podcasts, slides) so that they can be consumed by an audience with similar interests. Once we capture their attention and arouse curiosity, it will be easier to lead them to the final content.
How to turn readers into subscribers and get them to recommend us
Depending on the industry, it takes between 7 and 15 advertising impressions on a consumer before they purchase our product, and due to media saturation, this task is becoming more complicated every day. Furthermore, the trend towards data protection and the restriction on the use of third-party cookies further complicates the situation in digital media.
For this reason, now more than ever, we must have a well-organized customer acquisition and retention plan.
It's not enough to publish 2-3 articles without a paywall in the hopes that readers will magically become subscribers; we need to know what to show them so they see the true value of paying for what we offer. Here we must have the ability to use content that is popular enough to reach as many people as possible, and good and exclusive enough so that the value is perceived.
Once "converted", we must carry out an onboarding or welcome process that makes them fall in love with our brand, so that they feel proud of the decision they have made. Let's not forget that any bad experience during this process, or with customer service, can ruin everything.
If we can get our customers to call themselves brand ambassadors, our growth potential will be exponential.
To achieve this, we must consider them as part of the club in all our communications, and make them feel that they are truly forming a community and are treated exclusively. In a way, we want them to boast about the benefits they get from paying us. Here we can also experiment a lot.
Practical example:
Una forma sencilla de hacerlo, sería la publicación de ciertos lugares "secretos", solamente para nuestros suscriptores. De esta manera, estaríamos provocando la pregunta ¿cómo has descubierto este sitio?, que conduciría a la recomendación, ya sea directa o indirectamente.
Furthermore, we can encourage such recommendations on social media by rewarding subscribers who post pictures of those places and mention us in their posts. It's not necessary to hold a contest; a simple thank you, acknowledging the person, can be very motivating (and we can even do it with AI).
How to manage our audience
We understand by audience all the public that consumes our content. Here we must differentiate between the consumer of paid content and those who consume free content.
Conversion
Our first goal is to convert free content readers into paying subscribers. We must be careful not to offer them an excessive amount of free content, as they will not feel the need to pay for it.
Upselling
Among those who pay, we must also distinguish between those who are on one tier or another, and also the frequency with which they make payments, as all this affects the way we communicate certain information, and also entails legal obligations regarding service renewal notifications.
Instead of just checking how many new subscriptions we have and what our churn (subscriber loss) is, we can leverage the potential of our database to expand the products offered and encourage more sales.
Practical example:
If last September, our subscriber gifted a subscription to a friend, it would be interesting for our system to send them some reminders and promotions in August this year. If they purchased a travel guide to Vienna in April, our system should send them advertising for other guides in the upcoming March. Do you get the idea?
Retention
Regarding renewals, we must also be transparent with the subscriber and provide information about the options available at any given time. In the European Union, we are required to inform about the automatic renewal of a subscription if the last payment was made more than 6 months ago; for the rest of the world, although it is not mandatory, it is highly advisable for ethical reasons, and because we do not want to close the door to future re-engagement.
For example, if the customer has not perceived the value of the subscription, it is better to offer them the possibility to downgrade and sign up for a cheaper plan, rather than renewing the subscription without providing information, leading them to cancel it through Customer Service or their financial institution. In these cases, the customer will not return, and it will also create reputation issues for us on social media.
Related to this point, it is interesting to consider several tiers based on the frequency of payments, as monthly payments have become popular recently, due to platforms like Spotify or Netflix.
I will address SaaS options and payment gateways in the technology and tools section.