The essential building blocks for any D2C business are clear –n A regular supply of fresh, appealing content; a subscriber/viewingn Experience that is easy and satisfying; and marketing that attractsn Audiences to your SVOD or AVOD in the first place.

May 2016

Best practice

D2C marketing

strategy

By Nick Moreno

Head of Strategy, Satellite & Media

01 D2D marketing strategy

This white paper concentrates on that third aspect – your marketing strategy – which is sometimes an afterthought for D2C businesses, but which is arguably more important thanany other factor. ‘Build and they will come’ is a dangerous theory, because it’s not true thatif you offer compelling content and build a supreme viewing experience, then viewers willcome flocking.

That’s because there are lots of OTT VoD businesses out there – both third-party and D2C – and many more are launching every month. While there is evidence that viewers are starting to ‘service-stack’ a number of OTT subscriptions, you have to be on the radar of people in the first place in order for them to consider whether your offer is compelling or not.

While not a prescriptive list, there is a number of practices that you might want to consider for your D2C marketing strategy:

Know your four Ps! The basics of marketing are Product, Price, Promotion, and Place. Your business plan should have identified in detail who your target audience is; what they want in terms of content and service; what value this delivers to them and hence which is the optimal price point; where do your target audience‘go to’ when looking for your type of content; and where and when you will get your marketing message across to your target audience.

Building your brand. You may have an established brand or presence in the market, and that is the obvious starting point for your marketing – if ‘all’ you are doing is offering another means of viewing for your existing linear customers and strong brand, then your job is relatively straightforward, as you have an initial base of viewers/customers to promote your D2C service to. But if you are defining/targeting a new niche or genre, or are a start-up that hasn’t previously distributed content D2C or via your own linear channels, thenthe challenge is significantly greater, as you are essentially creating a new audience from scratch without a recognised brand to start from – an example is the new US-based non-fiction SVOD CuriosityStream.

D2C Marketing Strategy

Identify in detail who your targetaudience is

02 D2D marketing strategy

Niche marketing means thinking out of the box. The key is to understand your niche, what your niche target audience does and where that audience gathers interacts, and market to those behavioural patterns. For example, one tiny PSB created a religious broadcasting OTT business that gained significant traction when it marketed directly to church congregations (of the denomination it was targeting) scattered all around the world.

Build a community. Deepen loyalty by rewarding repeat customers, whether monetary or through other incentives such as access to exclusive content. Recognise and respond to feedback (both good and bad), and realise that a loyal customer (or a disappointed customer that returns to the fold) will generate valuable word-of-mouth benefit to your business. And community engagement doesn’t just happen through your OTT service solely, but also through social media interaction and even old-fashioned face-to-face contact/events, depending on who you are targeting. A D2C play targeting horror enthusiasts, for example, should consider interaction with and events for those attending conventions for horror fans.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay per Click (PPC). Buying customers online is an obvious route, but valuable nonetheless if you target carefully and adjust your tactics as you learn from initial campaigns.

Learn and adjust. One of the key reasons for going D2C is direct access to user data. Use that data to understand how initial viewers interact with the content and the experience you give them, what patterns repeat customers and – more importantly – lapsing customers exhibit, and learn lessons from those patterns and adjust your offer accordingly (for example by better search and recommendation algorithms). Keeping an existing customer happy is far more cost effective than winning new ones, and those that end subscriptions can be targeted with promotions specific to their needs – for example, if a specific viewer’s habits revolved around watching one or two marquee series, after which they lapse, then any new series of those shows is an obvious opportunity to re-engage with that individual.

In summary, marketing and building audiences for a new OTT business is not an afterthought once you have sorted out the content and the platform, but rather should be the very first item you consider, as it informs the type of content you need to deliver and how you deliver it. OTT marketing is clearly a specialist job for those with deep experience in, and knowledge of, finding and building audiences – but if done correctly it will be the engine behind the success of your OTT venture.

For further information:Telephone: +44 (0)1962 823 434 Email: sales@arqiva.com Web: www.arqiva.com

Understandyour niche

Deepen loyalty

Keeping an existing customer happy is farmore cost effective than winning new ones