The live experience guide: everything you need to know to grow your business with real-time coverage

Gone is the time when, to situate ourselves in some event, we had to turn on the TV or tune in a radio station. 

Today, all it takes is a quick search on the internet to find someone live blogging about any event, whether through social media or other channels.

This phenomenon has a profound impact on the behavior of the internet user, who gives more value to content broadcasted in real-time.

Therefore, several sectors, including companies and news agencies, are already moving to create structures that allow the development of live experiences, enabling higher audience engagement.

Do you want to know what you need to benefit from a live experience strategy? In this text, we will address:

• What is a live experience?
• What are the benefits of a live experience strategy?
• Who can benefit from live experience?
• How to set a live experience strategy?
• How are brands using live experience?
• What are the best live experience tools?

Keep Reading!

What is a live experience?

Content production on the internet doesn’t stop. Brands, journalists, entertainers, and others fight for the attention of an increasingly distracted audience, which is more demanding than ever. 

To attract and retain their interest, it’s necessary to offer quality experiences.

Live experiences are excellent in this sense. As they happen in real-time, they generate feelings of exclusivity and urgency in the audience. Unlike videos published on social media, for example, live contents are available for a limited time. 

A live experience can take several formats, such as lectures, webinars, or live-blogging. The important thing is for you to know what kind of content is most suitable for your buyer persona, considering their characteristics and the current phase of the marketing funnel.

Besides being attractive to the user, live experiences also motivate their interaction. 

As long as you create them on quality platforms, your content can include features such as quizzes and Q&As, excellent for engaging the audience, and collecting data.

In the next topic, we will talk more about these advantages.

What are the benefits of a live experience strategy?

You should already know that engagement is the key to success in Digital Marketing. 

There is no point in having numerous followers on social media, for example, if they do not interact with your content. For a profitable relationship, your leads need to be active.

There is nothing better to engage them than to offer live experiences. Do you know why? Its because this kind of content enables something vital: customization. 

By allowing your audience to interact in real-time with the content, you can structure it in the best way to meet the persona’s demands. 

Consumer 4.0, the dominant profile in the modern market, also gives a lot of value to brands that let them actively participate in the experience. 

Real-time events are excellent opportunities to allow the user to intercede with opinions and suggestions, guiding the content’s development.

When interacting, the user not only improves the experience itself but also generates valuable data for the company. This type of action is essential for your brand to understand better the persona’s behavior, including their motivations, needs, and wants.

Remember when we talked about the potential inclusion of quizzes? These questionnaires represent a ludic and effective way to collect data about the audience.

Based on the answers, it’s possible to determine, for example, the level of knowledge about a subject. This makes it easier to find out what funnel stage the lead is currently at.

A live experience strategy also favors the process of educating the buyer persona. 

In an Ion survey, developed in partnership with Demand Metrics, 90% of professionals stated that content interactivity is an important part of the nurturing process.

In short, live experiences can attract, engage, retain, educate, and convert customers. It’s, therefore, an approach with positive impacts for the development of your entire business strategy.

Who can benefit live from experience?

Different sectors can invest in live experiences. When we speak about leads and personas, we are using a language that is very common to marketing departments. 

Brands, however, are not the only ones that can benefit from the strategy.

News agencies, committed to providing relevant and informative materials to the audience, have been using live experiences more frequently. 

Major press conglomerates such as CNN and NBC have profiles on Twitter to update live reports and news.

In the news sector, lives have an important role in increasing the reach of information. Previously people had to wait for live reports to be shown in newscasts, but today any journalist with a smartphone can update the news.

In addition to news agencies, event organizers can also benefit from live experiences. This type of practice became common during the period of social isolation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Right at the beginning of the crisis, several artists gathered for the Together at Home event, broadcasted over the internet to the entire world. Can you imagine the reach of such an initiative?

It’s exactly because of such reach that companies also use live experiences. Producing a live webinar may be the best way to reach many potential customers and generate knowledge about the solutions the brand offers.

Back to events, broadcasting them live over the internet is a way to increase the number of participants without the need to expand the investment or physical space. 

A good example would be the UEFA Champions League strategy.

The world’s greatest soccer competition among clubs selects some of its top matches and broadcasts them live on Facebook. 

At the same time, a profile on Twitter publishes live updates and stats.

The success has caught the attention of other leagues, such as the Copa Libertadores, played by South American teams. A first-round match currently holds the platform’s record audience of 2.1 million simultaneous viewers.

How to set a live experience strategy?

If you fit among those who can benefit from a live experience strategy, you need to ensure the conditions to execute it. 

Perform a study to determine whether your company already has the necessary structure or needs to make more investments.

To define this, consider the size of the audience you want to reach, the size of your budget, and, especially, your core objectives. 

Next, we offer you a step-by-step guide on how to develop your strategy!

Know your audience

The only way to produce good live experiences is by knowing your audience. We are not only talking about their general characteristics, but also about their pains, motivations, and needs. That’s why any successful company counts on a buyer persona.

It’s a semi-fictitious character emulating the brand’s ideal consumer. Based on it, you can define the themes, dates, and details of your live broadcasts. 

Remember: the more personalized the experience, the higher the audience satisfaction rate.

Define your goals

You can use live experiences to achieve many different goals. As we’ve shown, many brands use this type of strategy to engage the buyer persona and enable conversion. Similarly, news agencies focus on sharing relevant information in real-time.

In both cases, the main focus of the approach is to educate the audience in some way. However, not all live content has educational goals.

During the period of social isolation caused by Covid-19, several companies gave examples of how to use live experiences to generate revenue and engagement. See the example below.

The image shows members of a famous Brazilian group performing a live show on YouTube. On the screen, you can notice two QR codes, one blue and one green. The first one directed users to a donation channel dedicated to Covid’s victims, while the second one was a shortcut to an app’s download page.

In this case, the purpose of the participating brands was not to educate the public but to generate downloads and donations. 

It’s up to you to define the goals that will guide your live experiences.

Choose good tools

Based on the goal you set, you can start making important decisions. One of them concerns the choice of tools that your company will use. 

So, imagine that your goal is to draw the public’s attention to the launch of a product.

In a case like this, a live on Instagram may be enough for you, who would only need a decent smartphone and good internet connection.

On the other hand, imagine that your goal is to provide updates from a real-time event, combining information coming from sources at different locations. 

Obviously, you’ll need a better structure for this purpose, so you should look for a specialized platform.

It’s important to pay special attention to features such as: maximum capacity, monetization possibilities, interactive tools, integrations, etc. 

Later on, we’ll show you some of the best options.

Motivate engagement

The live experience has enormous potential for engagement, but it’s still worth taking action to motivate the audience to interact. 

So, in case you need a live broadcast platform, it’s important to choose one that offers resources focused on engagement.

What would those resources be? 

Common examples are the already mentioned quizzes, but many tools allow the user to engage in two-way conversations, as long as the mediator authorizes it.

How are brands using live experience?

Now that you know what to keep in mind when developing your strategy let’s look at two examples of brands that use live experiences. 

Ultimate Fighting Championship

Responsible for managing one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States, the UFC set a very clear goal: it was time to expand its reach into other regions, such as Europe, Middle East, and Africa. The solution was to improve the audience’s live experience.

Thus, in addition to the content broadcasted by television channels, the audience gained access to a portal focused on the event, updated for 8 hours with videos, information, audios, and images related to the fights and the competitors.

It was a success. Used to attracting about 2500 unique visitors per event, the UFC website registered a 10-fold increase. 

Moreover, the average time spent on the page exceeded 15 minutes per visitor, which is quite positive.

Reuters

It’s no secret that in the information age, news agencies struggle to compete on the internet. The modern consumer is used to quick and continuous experiences, making them disinterested in traditional news formats.

That’s why Reuters noted that, if it were to remain relevant in the industry, it had to offer compelling real-time coverage on events and news. 

However, this is more complex than it may seem. After all, Reuters is a respected agency and needs to be aware of dispersed sources.

The solution was to adopt a platform with live blogging capabilities. It allows Reuters to keep everything in one place, even when reporters submit stories from different parts of the globe.

Being collaborative, the platform also allows different team members to work together. Thus, while a journalist sends the text to be posted, other staff members can take care of the images and other aspects.

What are the best live experience tools?

24LiveBlog

24LiveBlog is a very efficient platform to engage the audience. It allows you to use different methods to communicate with the public and stimulate their engagement. 

A real-time moderated chat enables users to interact, making their experience more complete.

In addition, it boasts AdSense support, which means it is possible to develop a monetization-driven approach.

If the goal is to generate leads, that will be possible too. 24LiveBlog features a pop-up function that can collect contact information from the audience. 

You can use the platform for free, but if you want to access all of its features, you need to signup for one of the paid plans, which start at $49/month.

Engage

Live events and social engagement. 

These are the primary focuses of Engage, a tool that allows the creation of several live experiences. The platform enables you to publish updates and breaking news on your portals from wherever you are, either via desktop or smartphone.

To increase the reach of your brand, you can integrate Engage with social media platforms. In addition, the tool facilitates monetization campaigns by allowing you to attract in-stream advertisers.

The types of content you can produce to engage your audience vary. Quizzes and live Q&As offer fun and positive experiences for users, which you can segment according to a loyalty level.

Most internet users love participating in a live experience. You can use this to your advantage and increase your digital reach, whatever your goal may be. It’s a practice that can attract and engage several people, broadening your lead base and optimizing public communication efforts.

Throughout the text, we’ve mentioned some useful resources you can use to encourage public engagement. How about learning more about one of them? In this post, we talk about how to engage your audience with Q&A videos. Check it out!