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How can your streaming service truly stand out?
Not everyone can be number one, or perhaps not even number two or three, but there’s always room in the market for a good product at a good price. How can you best leverage growth opportunities in the crowded streaming marketplace? To answer, we at Allied Global Marketing turn to the classic five Ps of marketing.
Product
—Content was, is, and always will be king. You don’t have to be the biggest service to have prestigious, crowd-pleasing, or exclusive programming. Consumers gravitate to services with original and/or exclusive content.
—Know the marketplace. Be aware of when competitors are planning major launches or programming events, and program accordingly. Whether you fish where the fish are, or where they aren’t, will depend on what you have to offer and how ardently your existing customers evangelize your service.
—The user experience can be a key point of differentiation. Ease of setup, cross-device availability, guide navigation and search are all examples of how usability can attract and retain subscribers.
Price
—The competitive field continues to grow, and we’re already seen some evidence of post-pandemic demand flattening, as well as stacking fatigue. The pandemic wreaked havoc on multiple economies and industries, and consumers are increasingly price-sensitive. Short-term revenues (read: keeping the lights on) are important, but pricing with an eye to LTV can mitigate churn.
Promotion
—Astute marketing assets catch eyes and attention. Creative tactics and execution can help overcome ad budgets which can’t rival the massive pockets of the top services.
—Make sure you’re part of the conversation. Engage with your customers via social media, email and—as they return—relevant events. Engage with consumer and trade media.
—Recommendation engines help with retention; make sure your viewers know about upcoming content they’re likely to enjoy. This can be done via push notifications, email blasts and on your owned media (website, social, etc.).
Place
—Viewers tend to be loyal to their established/preferred viewing platforms. Prioritize your service being available to them wherever they prefer to consume content, instead of trying to force them to a platform they might not currently use.
—On the other hand, while third-party distribution can drive rapid awareness and growth, it comes at the cost of not owning the customer relationship or data. This is a serious consideration, particularly given privacy regulations and browser updates which limit data available from and for advertising efforts.
People
—Make sure your MarTech stack lets you segment audiences as granularly as possible. Who are your audiences by title, by genre, by distributor, by daypart? Accurately answering these questions will not only help you craft appropriate marketing messages for each distinct segment, it will let you find more audiences like them.
—First party data is key. If your distributor relationships preclude you having the data you seek, conduct your own qualitative and quantitative research. You need to know who’s subscribing and why, and—just as important—who isn’t, and why. Then you can strategically approach future marketing, acquisition and scheduling decisions.
You can thrive in the forest even if you’re not an 800-pound gorilla. Make sure you’re thinking about your service holistically—not only across the five P’s we’ve outlined above, but across all marketing channels (paid, earned, owned, and creative) as well.
You can download a PDF of this topic and for a deeper dive, head over to Allied Global Marketing.
Arlene Wszalek is senior vice president, client solutions and strategic consulting, Allied Global Marketing.