Content Engagement Rates Faltering

Despite the explosion in digital content, it appears that marketers in every industry lack the knowledge to increase engagement rates online. Brands reaching out to consumers find that engagement rates with their content average 20%, but for businesses reaching out to other businesses, that average rate rises to 50%.

While engagement rates vary across industries, most fluctuate between 33% and 50% overall.

The BrightEdge Content Engagement report breaks down how content engagement -- defined as traffic, conversions and revenue -- varies by industry among its clients. The research also identifies factors that improve and hinder engagement and examines how mobile and desktop compare.

The findings show the hospitality industry's content engagement rate is at 87%. The sector typically supports much higher engagement rates because the targeted digital content is produced to fill specific, physical hotel rooms. The consumers who access that content are doing so for the purpose of booking a room.

The manufacturing industry is next with 54%, followed by B2B Technology at 53%; insurance with 28%, and retail at 16%. Retail is the lowest because it produces a massive amount of content, and the product list and the customer base are generally broad. Engagement rates focus on the most popular and top-selling products.

The BrightEdge research also analyzes differences in engagement rates for desktop and mobile device. Overall, mobile engagement across retail, insurance, B2B technology, manufacturing, and hospitality is lower than desktop. Findings show that smartphones lead all device categories, but lag desktop engagement by 30%.

With retail content, for example, consumers generally spend more time shopping and making purchases on desktop devices and use mobile for quicker reasons like finding the location or hours of their local brick-and-mortar store. They are not really on the site to engage with content.

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