Audience Value in Content Marketing
Audience building is crucial in content marketing. Many software companies promise that their tools will help you build, engage, measure, and convert "owned audiences." However "addressable audiences," is a more appropriate name as this term highlights that these people have given you permission to deliver content directly to them, bypassing social media algorithms or media outlets.
People often say that the main goal of content marketing is to build an audience. If that's true, how do we measure it? Counting the number of people is a start, but it doesn't reveal the audience's true value.
What is an audience member worth to your business? Is their value equal to a lead or opportunity? Probably not. Do they become more valuable the longer they stay engaged? Likely. But how do we calculate that increasing value?
What is an Audience in Marketing?
Simply put, an audience is a group of people who want to consume the content you create. Assigning a financial value to each person in this group is complex, but it's essential for justifying the costs of your content efforts.
Let’s be honest: Content marketing often costs more than traditional advertising. However, the value content brings to your business justifies the investment. The business isn’t just investing in content; it's investing in what the content creates — a subscribed audience.
The Value of a Subscriber
A subscriber is someone who wants your future content and tells you where to deliver it. They’ve given you permission to contact them directly. This is different from a social media follower or someone who downloads a white paper once.
Not all audiences are addressable, but they still hold value. Even if people don't subscribe, there's value in reaching them with your content. Creating content fans, even without direct subscriptions, is beneficial.
Different Types of Audiences
Anticipated Audience: This is the group you aim to reach — your ideal target market.
Actual Audience: These are the people who engage with your content, though you may not know much about them.
Addressable Audience: These are identifiable subscribers who have asked for your content.
Combining these audiences in a Venn diagram reveals additional segments:
Audience Asset: This is the sweet spot where all three audiences overlap. They’re your ideal group, they engage with your content, and they’ve subscribed.
Modeled Audience: This segment helps forecast how changes in audience makeup affect value.
Audited Audience: This includes all your subscribers, helping evaluate your strategies for acquiring and engaging your target audience.
Targeted Audience: This segment helps understand the reach of your content versus the total audience you want to attract.
Applying the Framework
To illustrate, a B2B tech company that built an addressable audience of over 8,500 subscribers to their email newsletter. They audited their list and found:
Their total anticipated audience was about 100,000 people.
Their actual audience reached about 25,000 new people each year.
About 65% of their subscribers (5,500 people) qualified as part of their audience asset.
They assigned values based on these segments:
$150 per anticipated audience member.
$138 per current audience asset member.
$73 per addressable audience member.
Using these values, their audience asset was worth approximately $759,000. If everyone in their audience was as valuable as new members, it could be worth around $1.2 million. The total value of their anticipated audience was $15 million, meaning their current audience asset was about 57% of its potential value.
Proving the Value of Audience Building
Building an audience isn't just about making content; it's about creating valuable, direct relationships with people. Businesses today are in the audience-building business, aiming to build trust, generate valuable data, and monetize audience relationships in ways that go beyond selling products.
Content marketing allows you to bypass third-party platforms and establish direct relationships with your audience, something marketers have been striving to do for over a century.
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