What Is the Engagement Rate in Digital Marketing and How Do You Calculate It?


Consumers today are forced or overloaded with promotional content. They have so much information available at their fingertips regarding any company and its products that they have decided to turn a blind eye to all the advertisements. You can start an advertisement in between a YouTube video that the user was watching with all their focus, and still after the ad, if you ask them about the product or the brand name, they will be unable to recall. They have purposefully shut their mind and consciousness when it comes to the ad, and this is where brand engagement comes into the picture in digital marketing.

In this article, we will be diving deep into the concept of engagement in digital marketing, the various benefits of brand engagement, and how to calculate brand engagement.

Concept of Brand Engagement

Companies are trying their best to position themselves in the consumer’s mind and are therefore actively involved in launching impressions. Impressions help the company become visible to a larger target audience. Interacting with the consumer after seeing an impression or just interacting with the company on their social media handles is known as brand engagement. Consumers liking, commenting on, and sharing the social media posts of the company or calling in for queries or more information regarding the product, the company, or the brand itself is known as "engaging." This means that the consumers have been attracted through the display of the ad or the content shared and would now like to know more.

An engaged audience is very important for the betterment of the company. An amazing example of engagement could be Pizza Hut India’s Instagram handle. So, the company is always coming up with fun games for its users that are related to the food that they sell. They came up with Never have I ever play games in which the company would share sentences and the users would have to enter yes or no, like never have I ever eaten a bit from someone else’s slide" or "pizza and movie word game. This ensures that you do not see consumers as just the dumping ground for your goods.

How Do You Calculate the Engagement Rate in the Digital Marketing World?

The engagement rate can be calculated for a particular marketing campaign or the total engagement rate of a particular platform in a given time frame.

Engagement Rate = (total number of likes on the post + the total number of comments on the post + the total number of shares or mentions from the post) divided by the total number of followers at that given time frame * 100.

Variables like "share,", "comment,", "mention,", "like,", "reactions," and others can be changed as per the need of the hour, though the digital marketer should ensure that there is uniformity in calculating the same. For example, if the company wants to calculate the engagement rate on its Holi campaign, which was in major flow from 6.2.23 to 10.2.23, The company has 100 likes, 10 comments, 5 shares, and 2 mentions, and its total number of followers is around 700.

Engagement rate = (100 + 10 + 5 + 2) / 700 * 100; 17%.

The company should always keep its engagement rate in check with the industry engagement rate and try to improve the figures as much as possible.

One shortcoming in this entire process is that the weight given to like comments and shares is equal. This is not generally the case. It is the general tendency to like content, but very few of them are shared with friends or commented upon. So the company needs to devise certain techniques to consider the weight that users give to these buttons to determine the actual engagement rate. 

Benefits of Calculating or Keeping an Eye on the Engagement Rate of the Company’s Profile

  • It helps the company check the efficiency of a marketing campaign − is the campaign visually appealing? Does it appeal to the consumers so that they read through the content of the marketing campaign? Does it pique the curiosity of the users to click on it and know more about the product? Can consumers relate to the content posted? Are consumers sharing, liking, or commenting on the content? These are some of the questions that the engagement rate answers.

  • It helps the company develop a positive association with the consumers − Many consumers might not make immediate purchase decisions, but with brand engagement, they will develop a positive image of the company in their mind, and in their next purchase, they might think of the brand, or when their brand is not available, they will surely go for the company’s brand. Through engagement, the brand is targeting consumers and potential buyers.

  • Continuous analysis of the engagement rate helps the company make real-time innovations − If there are any errors or disruptions that are hampering the user journey or the experience of the consumer while interacting with the brand, they can be addressed and resolved immediately with the help of the engagement rate.

  • It gives the company an edge over its competitors − A brand that the consumer or the community recognizes and feels positive about has a long way to go as compared to a brand that is unknown.

Other Rates and Ratios That the Company Should Look at Along With the Engagement Rate

The engagement rate only tells the company how active its followers or fan base is or how effective its campaigns are; this is not something that is going to decide the survival of the company. The company needs sales to survive in the cutthroat business environment, so other ratios along with the engagement rate that the company should focus on are −

  • Conversion rate (CVR) − This rate helps the company understand how many of the people who were engaging with the brand are actually making the ultimate decision to purchase. This helps the business calculate the ROI that they have received from the money invested in the digital marketing domain. CVR = (total number of sales made by the company through that link / total number of click-through rates (CTR)) * 100. Brand engagement is very crucial for the brand, but something that is more crucial than this is CVR for the company. The company should also focus on making the customer's user journey smooth while making the purchase decision smooth, and brand engagement should always have a call to action to ensure that consumers make the purchase decision faster.

  • Digital Attribution − Along with this, consumers should also keep an eye on digital attribution. This helps the company understand which digital marketing platform is working best for it. There are many ways to calculate the digital attribution rate of the different marketing platforms that the company uses, like the First Click Method, the Last Click Method, the U-shaped Method, the Algorithmic-Based Method, and others. This helps the company understand where to invest their money, which platforms are giving them the highest ROI, and which platforms have the most active consumers. We can also calculate the digital attribution of the engagement rate.

Brand engagement is an amazing tool for digital marketers to captivate the brains of their consumers, and engagement rate helps the company understand the effectiveness of the intangible assets that it is gaining through engagement. It is crucial for the company to calculate this and improvise its strategy as needed. It is time that we start believing that consumers are not just a dumping ground for our goods but our family that we need to take care of.

Updated on: 17-Mar-2023

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