Do you remember the time when your go-to answer for every question or query wasn’t something you looked up on the internet? Most of us can’t recall the pre-digital era. After all, as per Statista, there are 4.66 billion active internet users in the world today. This accounts for approximately 50 percent of the global population!
Widespread internet penetration has made digital platforms a necessity for many individuals. Whether it be staying updated with current affairs, reading the posts of friends and family, keeping in touch with those far away or shopping, there is a digital solution for it all.
Naturally, this translates to more opportunities for businesses. At the same time, it also means battling tough competition when you do enter the digital space.
This is true for all kinds of solutions, ranging from blogs to eMagazines.
According to the World Economic Forum, there are over 1.7 billion websites online. And Tubics reports that there are 37 million YouTube channels as of 2020. Similarly, digital magazines are also a big hit among readers, with Statista predicting eMagazine consumers to reach 40 million by 2021.
Regardless of which niche you belong to, having a vast subscriber base is important for the success of your business. Therefore, you must actively learn how to increase subscribers. Let’s look at some actionable ways to get more subscribers and grow your brand in 2021.
Optimize the Right Content
Certain blog posts, web pages and vlogs tend to get more traffic than others – and they might not necessarily be the latest ones you publish.
If your high-performing content doesn’t have any call-to-action (CTA) encouraging visitors to become subscribers, you are losing out on a big opportunity. A great way to get more subscribers is by first identifying your top content.
Here, quality blogging software can help you. By analyzing the insights about your website, you can find your top posts and optimize them for subscribers.
How do you optimize content to get more subscribers?
Simple – you do so by adding a distinguishing CTA in the post. There are different types of CTAs you can choose from. The ideal one depends on the type of content your platform produces. For instance, for videos, a CTA added within the video is much better at conversion than static ones in descriptions.
Here’s how to get more subscribers specifically for your magazine or blog: Embody your brand persona in your CTA. Use language that is likely to hook readers. Tempt them by sharing why subscribing to your platform is beneficial for the readers and you’ll have won half the battle of how to increase subscribers.
Create a Dedicated Landing Page
There are various channels through which you can communicate to a potential subscriber and it would be a missed opportunity if you didn’t leverage each channel.
For instance, as per Statista, there are over 3.6 billion social media users, and 306 million emails were received and sent in 2020 alone. You can use both these mediums to direct visitors to your primary platform and convert them into customers.
For any campaign that you run to increase subscribers, the CTA needs to direct users to a place where they can learn about your subscription offer. This is where the need for a dedicated landing page comes in. You can also use the landing page to give examples of the type of content you produce. Finally, make sure the landing page includes a subscription form that is very quick to fill.
Another way when investigating how to increase subscribers would be to establish credibility by relaying your current subscriber count.
Embed a Data Capture Form
Just like you must cater to the traffic who are redirected from other mediums via a dedicated landing page, you must also think about the visitors who are visiting your site for a given purpose – whether it be to read up on a recipe or to seek information about your products.
Here, if you urge them to click on a link to your signup page, the chances are that they won’t do so. After all, who likes the hassle of redirecting to another page when they are looking for specific information?
To target such site visitors and convert them into subscribers, include a data capture form within each web page. You can add it in the sidebar, footer or header. Generally, people are more likely to focus on the header and footer compared to sidebars.
By adding this feature, you can attract people who visit your website without the intent of subscribing to it – a deceptively simple solution to how to get more subscribers to your website.
Collaborate Via Guest Posting
According to Adsy, guest posting can help bring three times more leads closer to conversion. This means collaborating with other players within your niche can help boost your subscribers.
Why? Guest blogging helps widen your reach. It allows you to leverage the traffic of other websites to illustrate your credibility and authenticity. Considering that users are only likely to subscribe to platforms they trust, becoming a guest blogger helps build this trust.
Wondering how to get more subscribers on YouTube? The same principle applies. You might have seen different YouTubers making videos together and urging their followers to subscribe to all the individuals involved. Collaborating with other players is a way to promote your YouTube channel or podcast.
Implementing this simple solution is how to get more subscribers on YouTube if you’re connected to a community of YouTubers, but if you aren’t, don’t worry – the question of how to get more subscribers on YouTube has plenty of actionable answers.
Engaging with your viewers is another way to attract more people to subscribe to your platform. You should let them know about upcoming content and, when possible, introduce fellow YouTubers who you think your audience might enjoy too.
Derek Muller and Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day and Veritasium took this to a whole new level. The content creators came up with a synchronized collaboration whereby they uploaded videos to their channels, which played at the same time for users of both channels to watch them simultaneously.
Keep in mind that learning how to get more subscribers on YouTube is a quick exercise. Putting these tactics into practice is the challenge. Ultimately, the success of your chosen strategy relies on how good your content is and the relationship you have cultivated with your viewers.
Reward Subscribers
An effective way to increase your subscriber base is by introducing a reward program. This helps in boosting loyalty among your customers. As per data collected through peer-to-peer marketing, people who are loyal to brands are 60 percent more likely to recommend the service to others.
By integrating a reward program with a paid subscription, you can entice users to sign up.
There are various platforms that make use of this strategy. For instance, The Slumber Yard picks a subscriber every month and sends them a personalized gift bundle. While a costly tactic, this strategy has helped the website in growing its subscribers.
Here is another example of the brand ShopMonarch, encouraging site visitors to subscribe to its newsletter by offering them a 10 percent discount on one of their orders.
Such exclusive offers are among the top reasons for signing up for a newsletter. In fact, WordStream reports that 60 percent of users sign up because of it! All in all, any offer that benefits subscribers exclusively is likely to increase subscription rates.
Exclusive Content
When you already offer visitors everything, they might not see the point of becoming subscribers and then dealing with incessant notifications about your business.
This is where exclusive content can come in handy.
Various eMagazines use this strategy. For instance, the renowned Harvard Business Review allows readers to read as many as three free articles per month. After that, you must subscribe to the digital magazine.
Similarly, The New York Times restricts most of its articles only for subscribers. However, it does offer readers the option to either create a free account or opt for a premium service.
The common thread in both of these examples is that they offer just enough content to their readers to hook them. Yet, they don’t reveal it all.
To improve your subscriber count, you must also nail this balance. You can’t make everything exclusive since it will obstruct people from knowing about your platform in the first place. At the same time, you cannot offer them so much that they don’t see a point in subscribing to you.
Give Your Users What They Want
At the end of the day, none of your efforts will reap results if your solution – whether it be a podcast, vlog, eMagazine or a blog – is not offering something meaningful to your visitors. You can add as many CTAs as you want, and people still won’t subscribe to you.
According to Dragon Search Marketing, 61 percent of consumers are influenced by custom content when making purchase decisions. But, just any content won’t do. You must develop material that is relevant and meaningful to the target audience.
Research your target audience. See what their needs are and offer content accordingly. Miss Thrifty, for example, caters to young moms with budget constraints by offering money-saving homemaking tips.
If you want to promote your products or services directly to engaged prospects then you’re likely considering email marketing. But you need a database to send your email blasts too. This probably leaves you wondering how to get more email subscribers.
Many of the tactics for how to get more email subscribers include strategies we’ve already covered. However, your ultimate goal should be to incentivise your reader and make it easy for them to sign up.
The answers to how to get more email subscribers lies in how enticing your brand, website and forms are. Make sure your visitor is delighted by their engagement with your brand by having an easily navigable website, a friendly approach in both copy and design and be sure to offer excellent deals or promotions that rival your competitors.
Let the Battle Begin!
You are now equipped with the information you need to achieve your goal!
With the right tactics and clear objectives, you can easily improve your subscriber base by 3X or more within the next three months! And this holds true for all types of digital content.
Try it out and let us all know if it works for you.
