Over the past 12 months, many were forced to adapt to a contactless digital world. Interactions with both customers and employees all went virtual overnight. Initially, businesses resistant to change or thought of digital transformation as just another buzzword quickly found themselves woefully unprepared. But it's too late for excuses, and there is now a simple choice of going digital or risk becoming invisible or irrelevant.
As audiences increasingly expect digital experiences as standard, businesses launch live streaming offerings in everything from live events and sports to gaming. Streaming enables brands to cut out the middleman and unlocks opportunities to get to know their customers authentically. For live streaming to succeed, viewer management is key to a smooth experience, and the ability to scale quickly is also crucial.
Unfortunately, it's not as easy as publishing your stream and sitting back as a highly engaged audience arrives. Here are five tips to help you improve your chances of streaming success by creating superior digital experiences that make you stand out from the crowd.
Quickly Bring Live Streaming Experiences to Fans and Superfans
The digital world of live streaming moves at lightning speed, but it's important to remember that it will never move this slowly again. Keeping up with the pace can be challenging but having a backend system built on the cloud plays a critical role in helping broadcasters quickly evolve, and adapt to roll out new offerings.
Nearly a decade ago, IBM’s Bridget van Kranlingen warned that the last best experience that anyone has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere. Users now expect to seamlessly drift from device to device and pick up exactly where they left off and enjoy the same experiences they receive from Netflix.
Delivering these digital experiences anywhere and everywhere is just the beginning. Broadcasters also need to consider adopting scalable and flexible backend systems that enable the speedy monetization of large pools of users logging on to the stream in a concise period.
Elevate the User Experience from Start to Finish
Rather than taking a cookie-cutter approach and replicating what everyone else is doing, broadcasters should revisit every step their customers take on their journey with them. There could be opportunities to offer unique models that allow providers to monetize people ahead of an event by offering discounts or special promotions for registering sooner.
By providing seamless Livestream experiences from start to finish, you can remove friction points and simplify registering for an event, making a payment, and finally streaming the live event. It's important to remember that every subscriber is a unique individual looking for a personalized experience.
AI is already setting a new standard for digital experiences. Spotify recently revealed that it would elevate the user experience through hyper-personalization. The music streaming platform launched its Nobody Listens Like You campaign. The Only You personalized feature creates six playlists based on the listener's unique habits. Every broadcaster is now challenged with elevating the user experiences for its users. The time to prepare for your next move is now.
Identify a Suitable Revenue Model
Fans worldwide will want to access content from their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and smart televisions. There are several ways to monetize the streaming of events, and knowing who your audience is will help you identify the most suitable revenue model. For example, Ad-based video on demand (AVOD) will enable audiences to view your stream for free in exchange for watching ads.
Transactional PPV video on demand (TVOD) is a popular option for one-off events. If you can identify the ideal price point, an affair, a brief with an audience of a few hundred viewers can generate thousands of dollars. As the subscription economy continues to go from strength to strength, subscription video on demand (SVOD) is a popular option for fans interested in picking up a multi-pass for season-long events.
Choosing a suitable revenue model will depend entirely on the type of event and the expectations of its audience.
Incentivize Viewers to Keep Them Coming Back Season after Season
Regardless of the type of event or revenue model, you should always watch what happens post-event. How will you entice existing customers and their friends to keep coming back season after season? The success of the digital experiences you create will be determined by how you delight your audiences and make them feel like valued customers.
Providing rewards and promotions for viewers can entice more to hop on and tune into your live stream. By introducing loyalty points, brands can also gamify the experience to make them feel a valued member of your community. Broadcasters must also focus on keeping track of billing for these promotions, especially on legacy systems that risk causing billing errors that could undo all your hard work.
Shed your Legacy Billing Systems
The streaming landscape can be confusing with recurring revenue and many different revenue models and promotions. The unsung hero for every broadcaster is the revenue management solutions they employ. The system must serve global audiences and multiple currencies to deliver the audience the seamless experience they expect.
Legacy billing systems may not be able to handle these multiple revenue models. A cloudified and agile billing system can help reduce billing errors while allowing easy management of complex monetization models. A new system built for a digital age will help lower operating costs while leading to more effective change management and automation.
For those looking for the ROI of upgrading their billing system, the advantages of vastly increased speed and significantly lower costs will be impossible to ignore. With Evergent’s new CCB 3.0 platform, we set out to vastly improve live streaming success by enhancing monetization flexibility and adding additional account search functionality.
The platform also streamlines the management of product configurations, promotions, and packages. By increasing efficiency and speed for customers deploying offerings globally, we find broadcasters are overcoming growth obstacles and accelerating revenue to thrive in a contactless digital world.
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