Knowledge
Promotion: How can you help your streaming service stand out?
May 24, 2021 • Arlene Wszalek, EVP, Strategy & Innovation
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 turn to the classic 5 Ps of marketing, and take a deep dive into how you can apply them to elevate the presence of your service.
We continue with Promotion.
How we approach it:
We continue with Promotion.
Promotion
It’s one thing for consumers to have heard of you. It’s another thing for them to really understand your service and how it’s different from competitive products. The same Hub Entertainment study to which we referred earlier found that in the US, apart from the 'big four” (Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, and Disney+), there is a considerable gulf between those who have heard of the next tier of services, and those who are confident they could explain the brand and what it offers to someone else. In fact, for the next 7 services on the list, while an average of 85% of viewers were aware of the various brands, only 35% - fewer than half - considered themselves familiar with them.How we approach it:
- We urge our clients to be part of the conversation. We encourage them to engage with current and potential subscribers via social media, email, and (as they return) relevant in-person events such as Comic-Con, WonderCon, and so on. Hearing directly from fans about what matters most to them, and using the larger real estate possible with 1:1 communications (vs paid ads) can inform both your marketing and programming decisions as well as ensure consumers get to know your brand well. Pay consistent attention to how consumers engage with all your assets (paid, earned, and owned) to discover those with the highest engagement and conversion rates, so you can replicate them.
- Recommendation engines help with brand knowledge as well as retention. Especially in cases where a subscriber signed up for a specific piece of content, suggesting similar titles others have enjoyed can convince them to extend their subscriptions. This can (and should) be accomplished on multiple fronts: CRM, push notifications, and across owned media (website, social, etc.).
- Last, but certainly not least: astute marketing assets catch eyes and attention. Creative tactics and execution can help overcome ad budgets which don’t rival the massive pockets of the top services. One memorable recent example: The BBC installed billboards in London and Birmingham to promote its series Dracula. The boards used a relatively simple shadow effect to create a striking impression, which resulted in worldwide attention across social media and the press: Searching for 'BBC Dracula billboard” on Google returns over 440,000 results.
