START IPTV/OTT PROJECT: RESEARCH AND LEARN ABOUT YOUR IDEAL SUBSCRIBER
After we have learned the importance of defining your vision and goals before starting an IPTV/OTT project and why you need to define your sales differentiators and learn about your competition we will wrap up this initial planning phase by writing about your ideal subscriber.
To learn what else you need to cover in your IPTV/OTT service planning process download our whitepaper 'How to Prepare Marketing Strategy that will Supercharge Your IPTV/OTT Service'
Your Ideal Customer/Subscriber
Who is the ideal customer for your service? What type of people do you plan to target with your service? The more specific you are, the better.
Describe the typical user by answering the following questions. What are their problems? What would an ideal user of your service look like? Where are they working? What’s their position? What’s their income level? How do they spend their time?
After answering those questions you can start analyzing viewing habits. Do they prefer VOD or LiveTV? Do they use catchupTV and/or nPVR? Which devices are they using to consume content? How long are they watching content on a daily basis?
The great thing about having an IPTV/OTT business is the fact that as soon as you start your service you’ll be able to see if your assumptions about the subscribers were correct. With a proper IPTV/OTT platform that provides analytics reports, you will have plenty of information to do proper analysis and successfully run your service. To learn about the importance of reporting and data analytics in your decision-making process in OTT service management read this blog.
Demographics
Demographics are the measure of common characteristics among your target audience. Try to create a detailed demographic profile of people who need and want what you offer. Following is the type of information you could include:
- Age (Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, Baby-boomers, every subscriber segment might have different wants and needs; for older people may be ease of use, for younger people social or watch together features, etc.)
- Employment status
- Gender
- Occupation
- Income
- Educational level
If you are looking to start your PaaS where your customers will be other businesses then you would need info like:
- Industry
- Employee count
- Type of business
- The geographic scope of business
- Revenue levels
What are their expectations from the service?
Write down what the members of your defined target group (subscribers) expect to get out of your service. Describe all elements they might find important. Remember, this is your planning phase. Depending on the information available you'll be maybe more or maybe less precise in your predictions. However, once you start the service if you are properly prepared you will be getting instant feedback so be ready to compare and adjust your strategies.
What is the motivation for subscribers to use your service?
Explain why would potential subscribers want to use your service. People make most of their purchase decisions to either avoid pain or experience some gain meaning decisions are mostly done based on emotions, so your offering must be appealing (great user experience/UI, attractive content, etc.). If you can tap into these emotions, you can grow your business. How do you get this information? Well, just ask them. If you have current clients do a survey. Look at your industry, and look at other industries for clues. Find out the things that cause your clients headaches; find out why a client left one company and went to a competitor. Solving frustrations allows you to stand out among the many others who claim to do the same thing as you.
Write down some of the main benefits they get out of it and how it would affect them personally, professionally, or both. For instance, are you targeting the right customers? Is the content fitting for them? If it is it will entertain them, educate them, or inform them. If not, then you will have an immediate churn which you want to avoid as much as possible. Keep in mind to keep interacting with your customers regularly, and reward their feedback as you will be able to better refine and create packages leaving you with an opportunity for upselling your service.
Geographics
What is the reach of your service? Locally, regionally, nationwide, international, or even globally? Do you have any technological constraints? Do you have a network reach to all areas? Will you have enough network bandwidth to serve all the customers? What about your content rights? Answers to these questions will give you an idea of what is the market potential of what you can actually do.
Market Trends
Is there anything going on with your ideal target market that could be identified as a trend that will impact your business?
Is the market growing, shifting, evolving, or even shrinking? Are broader demographic or cultural changes affecting market needs or demand for certain products or services? For example, the situation with lockdown because of COVID increased the usage of streaming services in the past couple of years at a much higher rate.
Identifying market trends can help you further refine your focus. Researching trends can be a tremendous help. Keep up to date with the most popular websites, and sources of information, covering these topics.
Market Growth
If you are projecting the market will experience growth, how are you going to leverage your strengths to take advantage of the market growth? If the market is static or shrinking, your task is much more challenging. You will need to take away market share from your competitors or improve the conversion rate of suspects to prospects and then prospects to clients, to experience growth in your business. For instance, your content will make a difference, but so will the user experience (UX) subscribers will have while using your services therefore it has to be a premium UX. Technically, you will want to have a service that works fast. And I do mean fast (for example, channel zapping needs to be without delay just like navigation in a user interface that needs to be smooth). Today, we are all spoiled when it comes to consuming content so if you make me wait for a second longer for anything to happen on the screen you are starting to lose me.
Answering all the questions mentioned here in this article will enable you to define your ideal subscriber. When you define your ideal subscriber and combine it with previous info like competitive difference then you can define your core marketing message that is the basis for your entire marketing strategy.
For more comprehensive information on the topic, you are welcome to download our whitepaper “HOW TO PREPARE MARKETING STRATEGY THAT WILL SUPERCHARGE YOUR IPTV/OTT SERVICE” or simply get in touch with us and we can help you with any stage of your IPTV/OTT/DVB project.
