Over-the-top (OTT) platforms and their users have grown dramatically over the years. In 2017, OTT videos had 1,655.29 million users globally which grew to 1,967.24 million in 2019.
As work from home became the norm in the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a massive boom with multiple OTT platforms coming into the market and amassing 2,280.27 million globally in 2021. Advertising generates huge revenues for OTT-business owners. Delivering banner ads, sponsored content, video ads in the videos streaming on OTT platforms are different methods for OTT marketing.
In this article, we are going to discuss proven strategies to increase revenue through OTT marketing.
OTT marketing strategies
1. Analyze your audience to gain an understanding
The first step to achieve your marketing targets is to analyze your audience and gain an understanding of your target market vs the audience on your OTT platform. Analyze factors such as age, demographics, watch history, preferences – genre, language, movies/web series/videos/television telecasts, likes, and dislikes, spending pattern. This is a periodic action that has to be carried out throughout your OTT marketing strategy.
2. Encourage users to enable push notifications of your OTT platform
Prompt first-time users of your OTT platform to opt-in for push notifications on mobile apps and the web. This gives your business an opportunity to run targeted and personalized campaigns that help stay connected with your users by highlighting relevant video content. It not only increases the watch time and builds brand loyalty, but also encourages subscription purchases.
3. Deliver a smooth onboarding experience
With a plethora of apps and OTT platforms online, users are spoilt for choice. When you create an OTT platform, ensure that it is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate. A layman should be able to find what he/she is looking for in a few seconds. To make sure users stay on the platform for a long time, have a clean and impressive design. Online business owners do not focus on this enough which is why 77% of users stop using an app or remove it within 72 hours of downloading it.
3 stages of on-boarding
- Registering the user
When a user registers on your OTT platform app/website for the first time, it should be a simple process and not time-consuming. Users should be provided with the option to sign up using their Gmail and social media apps for quicker registration.
- Educate the user
Help the user navigate within your app and website by educating them with tips and tricks.
- Collect user data
After registration of new users, pose questions with multiple choice answers to collect their data to offer a personalized user experience.
4. Use push notifications to encourage usage of your OTT platform
If it has been a while since your OTT solution users have visited it, use push notifications to bring them back to the platform. The golden rule of business still holds true – the cost of retaining an existing customer is less than acquiring a new customer. Also, it is essential to keep your users engaged on your OTT platform to increase your user base in the competitive market.
Firstly, the only way to improve the engagement of your users. There are, however, some people who will disagree. Thirdly, and most importantly, it is said that people tend to remember only 10-20% of what they read in push notifications. Moreover, that number rises based on the design & structure. In conclusion, following up explanation with proper content is key to master in it.
5. Use personalized banners for recommending content
Exclusive content is key to making your OTT platform popular and retaining it as such. Sign up for platform-exclusive web series, movies, and other entertainment/educational/informative content that will interest your target audience. The first step to do this is to get the rights to stream protected content from the producers/production houses. Following this, you can announce the date of its release to build up the audience to look forward to the release.
Using slider banners for displaying recommendations of featured, premium and highly engaging video content is a part of the marketing strategy for OTT apps.
6. Use stories on social media to promote content
A large chunk of the audience is on social media. The easiest way to promote existing and upcoming content of your OTT platform are to promote it through your OTT platform’s social media handles. 7.4 minutes is the average time a user takes to make a selection on an OTT platform. The key to getting users to like your OTT platform is to make this process quick for them. The shorter the decision time, the longer the time a user will remain on your OTT platform to consume content.
Utilize the stories feature on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote featured, exclusive, new, and popular content on your OTT platform.
7. Implement in-app messaging campaigns
Increase viewership time on your OTT platform by implementing in-app messaging campaigns. Pitching new content based on the user’s viewing history encourages users to spend more time on your app.
8. Outreach on social media platforms
Users who are not reachable through push notifications are reachable on social media. Also, your potential users who are on social media will engage with your business on your social media handles. Update your followers on recent launches, the event offers, etc using social media.
Conclusion
Now that you know the OTT marketing strategies that you can implement to increase your business revenues multi-fold, make use of an OTT solution provider to set up your OTT platform. This way you can use inbuilt marketing features to run and scale your business in a short duration of time.
