Why reaching a small group of ‘super users’ is more beneficial than mass appeal

Tech and media companies fixated on growing their user bases may do well in sticking to the adage of quality over quantity.

According to consulting firm Activate and its Tech and Media Outlook 2020, super users are a smaller subset of overall users but, in fact, are the most valuable, accounting for a “disproportionately high share of time, spend, fandom, and social amplification across all activities, including video, gaming, music, podcasts, and e-commerce purchases.”

Super users, who were found to be substantially younger, more affluent, and more educated, make up just 23% of the overall population, but compared with all other users, they spend 2.5 times as much on media services per month and spend 1.4 times as much time consuming media daily. Super users also spend more than regular users on video ($53 versus $30), gaming ($23 versus $4), and podcasts ($12 versus $1).

Perhaps one of the more interesting stats is how much super users are driving the experience economy. In the past year, 42% of consumers didn’t attend a live event, 27% attended one to three events, 8% attended four to five, and 23% (super users) attended six or more. Across concerts/festivals, live sports, theater, and comedy, super users, on average, attended 13 events in the last year compared to just 1.1 events from other consumers.

Those figures become even more stark when you break out the figures around the super user subset of loyalists, i.e. stans of artists, athletes, and celebrities.

Loyalists are the earliest adopters (63% watch new content as soon as it’s released), the most engaged (77% consume any content created by their favorite artists and athletes), and are the most devoted (89% have purchased at least one product or ticket from an artist or athlete in the last year).

And when it comes to live events specifically, loyalists bought more merchandise (65%) and attended the same show multiple times (52%) compared to super users.

You can see the whole report here: