OTT Media

The invasion of the Over The Top (OTT) media has started. While it is still in its infancy, companies must prepare their positions and select their weapons of choice to win the battle. Facebook, Netflix, Skype, Viber, WhatsApp Messenger, and YouTube are perfect examples of OTT services that consume most of the global mobile traffic. The OTT invasion is happening on four specific battlegrounds:

Media
Media companies are battling for the consumer mindshare as well as future relevance. Winning strategies and business models remain unclear, so many are in still in the experimentation phase. One such strategy that has been deemed successful is embracing the overall concept and acting accordingly to win the battle.

Messaging
The challenge with messaging is you must reverse the shift in consumer behavior from SMS to instant messaging and social networking. One relevant strategy is to manage the retreat and shift the focus.

Mobile Voice
Many telecommunications operators face a considerable risk of decreasing revenues but still have the ability to influence the consumer. A solid strategy is to hold the current ground and manage this impact.

Cloud Services
The fastest-growing market of the bunch is opening all types of opportunities for enterprise businesses and consumers. The best strategy in this field is to seize the opportunity and run with it.

Now that you’re aware of the four main areas, this article will only be focusing on one: OTT media.

 

The Media Battleground
The media battleground is the most exciting and most hard fought. With the emergence of OTT video and other media services, the telecommunications game has changed. With OTT fueling the data traffic explosion, future telecommunications and mindshare are at stake. The battle will be fought on many media fronts including television, gaming, advertising, music, video and a variety of other digital services.

The formula of success is to provide superior service in whichever front you are targeting. While content will continue to be king, the focus on consumer experience is quickly filling out the ranks. This means there must be an all-inclusive approach to become the victor. The expectation is that wins in this arena will be through partnerships across multiple fronts.

OTT Media


The Formula for Success
With streaming video growing more competitive daily, it’s going to take more than excellent content to become successful. Therefore, the secret is to develop a robust content strategy that aligns with how you plan to promote, distribute and monetize your video. Two critical areas to being effective include:

Customer-Centric Strategy
Creating a customer-centric strategy means that you’re building and retaining your audience since they’re the central focus of your strategy. This includes determining which content is the most and least popular, as well as which devices and platforms your visitors prefer. Keeping the audience happy and continuously delivering value by focusing on the viewer’s needs, while also developing long-term relationships, will allow you to win.

Just like in any business, happy customers are loyal customers; loyal customers are willing to pay for your service or products. Those same customers inform their friends that they should sign up for your services or visit your site. As your customer base grows, so will your revenues.

Flexibility
The second ingredient in this formula is flexibility on an ever-changing battlefield. Technology, your audience, and the digital landscape continue to evolve rapidly. If you don’t adapt, you’ll be left behind. Therefore, to ensure longevity, you must have the mindset and ability to make the changes necessary to maintain a steady pace.

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    Steps for Creating a Successful OTT Content Strategy

    One: Define the Mission Statement
    Defining the mission statement is based on one question: What sets your OTT media apart from others? Determine what makes your content a worthy investment of the consumer’s time. Your content may be focused on a specialized genre or may be a collection of content. Remember, your content does not need to appeal to all potential consumers. In fact, it’s better to develop content that is narrow and targeted to a specific audience.

    Two: Determine the Objectives
    What are the goals that you hope to achieve with your content strategy? The obvious objective is to make money, but is the content a value-added service, or does it drive e-commerce or services? Additional objectives include building an audience, driving viewer engagement, spreading a message and expanding to reach new platforms.

    Three: Define the Target Audience
    The better you know your audience, the easier this step will be. The key to reaching more viewers with your OTT media is understanding who they are and what they are looking for. Not an easy task to accomplish. However, there are several questions to consider:

    • Who is the target audience?
    • Where do they watch video content?
    • What are their passions?
    • In what channels do they live?
    • Why do they watch? To be entertained, learn or be inspired?
    • Are some audience segments more engaged than others?

    Four: Select the Distribution Channels
    While the current buzz is about “video everywhere,” that may not always be feasible. Therefore, you should distribute your OTT media wherever your audience is with the goal of getting the content to the right audience at the right time. A few considerations include:

    • How can you drive the audience to the content?
    • How can you drive the audience to new platforms?
    • How can you program your content (linear, on-demand, live)?
    • How do viewers consume your content?

    Five: Decide Upon Video Monetization
    Essentially, you need to determine the strategy of how you are going to make money. OTT delivers flexible monetization options such as Free-to-watch, ad-supported, subscription-based, and transactional. The winning strategy depends on unique content and the viewer’s reaction. Don’t limit your site to a single method, as successful businesses utilize a mixture of all four to scale their business and maximize revenue.

    Six: Determine the Marketing and Content Tactics
    Marketing is the more essential component of developing your OTT strategy. While you can develop the most amazing content, it doesn’t matter unless you have fans in the stands to view it. Therefore, you must leverage promotional channels to drive brand awareness, engage with viewers, promote new content and cultivate your audience. Several excellent channels include: email newsletters, social media, and native advertising.

    Seven: Execute
    Now that you have an in-depth library of content and a content strategy secure, you just need to execute and test. This step is an ongoing phase of execution, measurement, and evaluation whereby you experiment and learn from successes and failures so you can optimize your content strategy.

    To learn more about how to create and implement an OTT strategy in this competitive environment, contact Simplemachine today!

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