OTT Platform Marketing: Content Promotion and Subscriber Growth
In today’s highly competitive OTT streaming market, having a great content library is no longer enough; the war is now for visibility and sustained viewer engagement. Marketing for an OTT platform is a holistic 360-degree exercise involving brand strategy, content promotion, and subscriber acquisition – all completely tied to data – to ensure continued growth and market leading position.
1. Start with Your Defining Content & Brand Strategy
The content slate for your platform serves as your unique selling proposition (USP). Prior to engaging in any marketing, you must clarify the brand identity and ensure all content captures your identity: do you have a reputation for thrilling stunts, for regional-language blockbusters, for award-winning documentaries, or for some blend of these genres? Your identity informs all marketing activity thereafter.
Curate and produce high-impact content.
Today’s viewer demands quality. You should be focused on producing high-quality, high-conversion content, and original programming that is made for attention across every screen – that content is your most effective method of new subscriptions.
Define your audience.
Knowing both the demographics and psychographics of your potential subscribers is critical. Your content promotion will need to be designed to be compelling to the taste of the prospective viewer, to facilitate more effective
2. Create Multi-Channels Hype and Exposure
To cut through the digital noise, your promotion of content should be more of an integrated, multi-channel experience. Integrated, multi-channel content exposure and hype guarantees that you have visibility for your new shows and films at all stages of the customer journey – from retention to conversion.
Leverage Public Relations & Media. Use curated media exposure and successful Film Promotions & Events Publicity to create their own hype. Getting a few positive, impactful reviews, and highlights of exclusive previews, on site media interviews with stars and executive producers, will all create the kind of third-party recommendations and hype that you need.
Leverage your Social and Digital Presence. A solid Social Media Growth Engagement & Visibility Management strategy is non-negotiable. Use compelling visuals, b-roll, and short films, to drive the story of your content. Consistently messaging same or related messaging across your advertising platforms will drive your online crowd.
3. Leverage Influencer and Celebrity Alliances
In the attention economy, trusted voices are critical to achieving mass adoption. Partnering with others will build credibility and expand your reach outside of your owned channels.
Strategically collaborate.
Engage with the Influencer + Celeb Partnership & Collaboration; this could include outreach to promote specific titles. Use individuals with existing engaged audiences to “plug” your content into a broader, existing conversation. It provides a particularly “easy” way to raise interest for new content launches
Thought-Leadership in Entertainment.
When engaging with the heads of your creative platforms or with entertainment industry experts, it establishes a sense of thought-leadership through PR and digital-outreach, to build an authority and thought-leadership perception of the brand overall and improve the broader public’s trust in a category or actor.
4. Power Growth with a Performance-Based Digital Engine
Subscriber growth relies heavily on performance indicators. The marketing program you put together simply has to be data-driven if you want to maximize your ROI and be able to scale your acquisition plan.
Run evidence-based campaigns.
Use Performance Marketing & SEO to reach potential subscribers who have a general interest in the type of content you publish. Regardless of whether it’s search engine marketing or programmatic advertising, just make sure that every dollar you spend, you spend wisely.
Optimize the funnel and retention.
Try to focus on Customer Experience Optimization & Retention Campaigns. Identify drop-off points in the signup process and make ongoing updates to the user experience. Use your data to enhance the personalization of the emails and offer you communicate with customers that will be vital in transitioning them from a one-time trial to a subscriber.
5. Adapt Based on Subscriber Feedback and Data
The landscape of OTT is ever-changing. What worked last month might not work next month. In order to maintain growth, the marketing strategy must be nimble and responsive.
Measure key metrics.
You should be examining subscriber satisfaction, returning subscribers, and engagement rate on an ongoing basis. These key indicators, not just subscriber numbers, can help you determine the actual health of your platform and content strategy.
Continue to iterate on content and outreach.
Take the insights you receive from performance data and user feedback as launching points for your next content acquisitions and marketing campaign revisions, as you will want to stay ahead of viewing trends and competitive activity. By considering the marketing process as an on-going cycle of analysis and action, OTT platforms will be able to implement effective Brand Growth Management and subscriber satisfaction with greater ease.
