Top 5 OTT Content Strategy Tips
Planning to build your own OTT service now or in the new year? Check out our top 5 content strategy tips that can help you prepare for launch:
1. Get to know your target audience
Identifying your target audience may not be an obvious content strategy tip, but it’s important nonetheless. Before you should even begin to consider creating content or securing rights to some, get to know your audience. Understanding your key demographic’s interests and viewing habits will help you create a much stronger content strategy. It can inform decisions regarding the type of content you should invest in when and what time to release it and the best marketing channels to promote through.
2. Offer Unique content
Subscribers are signing up for more than just one OTT service these days as their appetite for high-quality and original content increases. In fact, Digital TV Europe’s 2018 annual survey revealed that 62.9% of respondents agreed original content that’s not available elsewhere is the most compelling reason to sign up for an OTT service in the first place.
To attract potential subscribers, offer content they won’t find as easily elsewhere. We’ve seen this work particularly well with our own partners, Passionflix which provides exclusive and original romantic content and True Royalty, an SVOD service dedicated to premium royalty-related content.
3. Be original
You don’t have to produce your own content for it to be original. Secure rights to original content with content owners instead. Try exploring markets that are often overlooked, such as local or regional content for expats and niche sports content that’s not being widely distributed. Don’t rule out purchasing the rights for older content that can be digitized either. Our partner FlixOlé is home to Spanish cinema and features new as well as classic movies that are particularly popular with their subscribers.
4. Promote your content
No matter how great your content offering, if it isn’t easy to discover, you won’t see the viewing figures you expect. To get a good return on your content investment, carefully consider how and where you promote it, both in and outside of your service.
Our partners are able to promote new and old content in their Magine Pro Pioneer and Premium services wherever and whenever they like. Our templated OTT solutions can be customized via the Console, enabling them to independently curate featured content on the start page and even content categories.
Promoting content outside of the service is equally as important. Create an engaging communication strategy that maximizes your marketing channels and don’t overlook SEO. Content metadata that is SEO optimized is a great way to boost awareness and traffic. Potential customers, for example, could find your service simply by searching online for a particular TV show or movie.
5. Keep things fresh
Even those that launch with a large library of content should refresh their service at regular intervals. Updating your service with new content not only encourages user engagement but also helps to reduce churn. Frequent changes give users a reason to return regularly. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to invest in new content. Promoting older content that has previously been overlooked is a great way to refresh the look and feel of your OTT service without incurring any additional costs. Magine Pro partners can do this independently using the Console, which gives them control over content positioning within their service.
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Want more advice and support on your OTT content strategy? Get in touch with the Magine Pro team and find out how we can help. You can also download our latest white paper – Turn your Content into Cash to learn more. Check out our branded OTT solutions and services here.
