Relationships are tricky. Sometimes you meet someone and find yourself clicking right away. Other times — while you’re both interested — your date may be slower to engage. They need to be courted over time to build a long-lasting relationship, with changes in your approach according to their personality type. The same is true when you’re a marketer or product manager.  

When looking at the subscriber funnel, your super fans may have loved you from the start. They’ve learned they can come to you for everything and will happily pay when faced with an offer. In fact, asking your loyal users to pay for content that already inspires, educates and delights them is the first step in driving audience revenue.

But not everyone’s a super fan. Some users engage differently and need to be wooed before they’re willing to convert. So how do you interact with casual or new visitors? How do you encourage your less loyal audience to act in ways that generate more revenue for you? Even if they’re not ready to commit to a full subscription, there are other tactics you can use to drive engagement, and approaches that can inspire them to take the step to greater financial commitment. 

At Piano, we’re always testing and innovating to ensure our customers maximize conversion at all stages of the funnel. That means getting to know even the most casual users and inspiring them with options that appeal to their level of engagement. 

Here are five ways to drive casual user conversion — no matter their style of engagement: 

1. The “I Want to Stay in Control” User: Disengaging Ad Blockers

Some audiences simply want control over their digital experience and may come already equipped with an ad blocker in tow. Piano can detect this and offer both subscribers and casual users the option to turn off their ad blockers. In fact, the request itself usually starts them down the path to increased engagement: Piano customers report an average 89 percent increase in desktop pageviews from ad blocking visitors in the 30 days following ad blocker disablement.

2. The “I Don’t Want to Pay for Access, but I Don’t Expect It for Free Either” Users: Registration

While plenty of site users today are still reluctant to pay for access, many are willing to give you something if it means staying on top of the content they love. By registering or signing up for your newsletter, they’re offering you access to information like their email address, and letting you track their behavior as they navigate through your site. This gives you something valuable too. With a better idea of consumption habits, you can tweak your content and future offers to better fit your most loyal users’ needs — so that maybe they’ll be more likely to pay for access in the future.

3. The “I Like Options” User: Opt-in Ads 

Providing options to readers — for instance, whether to view a video ad or subscribe — will not only supplement reader revenue with high video ad CPMs, but also results in a much higher registration conversion rate. One Piano client has seen that users presented with an ad view offer who don't click the ad still show a registration conversion rate three times that of the control (meanwhile, 17 times more users who do click also convert). This isn’t a free pass, though — every time an offer is presented, it still counts towards the meter. 

4. The “I Need to Try It First” User: Low-Priced Day Passes 

For those users who are tempted by your content, but still aren’t ready to commit, low-priced day passes for first-time subscribers are an opportunity to kickstart a loyal relationship, allowing users to sample premium content and understand the value of a subscription offer before diving in. Piano customers have seen that users who purchase day passes are much more likely to convert later. 

5. The “I Want a Cleaner Experience” User: Going Ad-Free

An ad-free experience in exchange for a subscription is exactly the encouragement some casual users need. And it’s another experience Piano supports, allowing your audience the ability to see your site ad-free without the need for ad blockers. You can easily target this offering to your more casual user segment or as an upsell to your subscription experience. Or you can make it more enticing to users — who are sometimes reluctant to pay for ad-free alone — by bundling it with other benefits for greater returns. 

When it comes to giving users what they want, being able to analyze your audience segments to determine their unique requirements is key. Knowing where they are in the user journey helps drive conversion through the funnel and allows you to surface the right offers at the right time to meet those needs. And Piano is the only platform that enables you to automatically provide the right offer and experience to your audience, no matter their requirements — maximizing your conversion and overall audience revenue.