How much do you really know about your audience?

How much do you really know about your audience? If you’re publishing your content for free on the internet, the honest answer is probably not as much as you’d like. And that’s a wasted opportunity.

Not only that, but a couple of other companies are doing very well financially out of your audience: namely the mega corporations Google and Meta. Through the likes of Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram, they know far more about your readers that you do – and they’re cashing in on this every second.

Isn’t it time that situation was reversed?

Why do publishers know less about their audiences?

Think back to the time when audiences consumed content via print media. Subscribers shared their information with publishers directly, letting you learn a lot about them. Even when they bought magazines and newspapers from a newsstand or high street shop, you would still know the demographic of the stores where your title was sold.

For more than a decade, however, online content has been king and many publishers have fallen into the trap of thinking that people will only read their content if it is totally free. On the surface, that seems OK because you can gather visitor data from tools like Google Analytics or you’ll want Facebook pixels to help you target these people with advertising. But the reality is that they are quietly bagging more information about your readers than they’re sharing with you.

In addition, if you’re using Google and/or Facebook to populate your website with ads, that’s even more user data they are capturing that you aren’t aware of. The end result is that Google and the platforms where you share your content end up knowing far more about your audience personas than you do.

What are the benefits of knowing more about your readers?

Every publisher wants to monetise their audiences – that’s a given. The more you know about, the more you can gain. That’s why I think it’s time for publishers to look seriously at how they’re getting their data.

Collecting insights into your readership benefits the bottom line in more ways than one. Even though advertising revenue isn’t what it used to be, more data lets you target your advertising better.

Once you understand your readers optimally, you can ensure your content caters for them specifically. This, in turn, may make your content more attractive to advertisers, bringing us full circle.

Plus, for B2B content, it can also help you enhance your marketing services by fine-tuning offers to your partners and advertisers.

How can I learn more about my audience?

The first option – and most successful in our experience – is to require registration or subscription for some or all of your content. This lets you gather richer, first-party data about your visitors, reducing your dependence on Google’s anonymised analytics to guide you. It’s worth bearing in mind also that a significant – and growing – number of people are refusing non-essential cookies, meaning that you can’t track them well via Google Analytics anyway.

Our customers tell us registration and subscription models are working really well for them.Typically, publishers offer readers ad-free pages or no personalised ads, although exactly how they do it varies. The point is that you have to offer readers something they genuinely value in exchange for their data – and potentially their money, if that’s the route you choose.

It’s also important that the sign-up process is carefully designed and built, and that the overall experience delivers what readers expect – something we take very seriously in the projects we work on.

Beyond that, another way to learn more about your audience than Google, Facebook and the like is to use one of the private analytics tools, such as Fathom, some of which use session cookies, which avoids issues around GDPR and having to lock these analytics tools behind cookie banners. How many publishers have complained about the accuracy of Google Analytics, a) since GA4 has launched and b) since cookie banners have altered the amount of people you can track. Yes I know that Consent mode exists but I’ve never met anyone that trusts or likes it.

OK, so these tools come at a cost, unlike Google Analytics, which is free. But the cost is minimal, and it means the data is all yours, and yours alone. (After all, why would Google provide an analytics tool for free if they weren’t going to monetise it in other ways?)

I don’t want to lose my readers! Will people sign up?

From what we’ve experienced: yes, the valuable ones will. By ‘valuable’ I mean high quality readers, which is what you’re after – ultimately, it’s the quality of the readership that counts, not the quantity.

What really matters is that you build a connection with them and get them to trust you. That means every interaction you have with them, from the registration or subscription process onwards, needs to show you value them.

Also, given the real value comes from accessing their data, any subscription fee doesn’t need to be high because. History Today, for example, has shifted to charging a small fee for access to more than two articles per month, and that’s doing well for them.

I think publishers are worried about making the move from totally free content because that’s been considered the optimum approach since the 1990s. But times have changed and that old model is no longer the best option. After all, shouldn’t it tell you something that readers are now baulking at the thought of 100+ companies accessing their data just so they can get free content?

Where do I start?

I don’t want publishers to think it’s “either/or”. There are multiple routes to choose from and you don’t have to step fully away from using Google’s tools. What you do want is to understand your readers at least as well as Google and Facebook do, and preferably better. This is entirely possible by moving to a subscription or registration approach and doing meaningful audience tracking and audience building activities. The important thing is to consider what’s right for your content.

Ultimately, your biggest competitor isn’t that other history website or motorbike magazine: it’s Google and Facebook. Once you see them in that light, it becomes clear why now is the time to take control of your own data – and, in turn, control your destiny.