Some of the world’s wealthiest nations are grappling with stubborn coronavirus rates, but a brightening outlook and historic stimulus packages will boost economic activity and oil demand this year, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said.
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As a business or marketing professional, when consumer habits change, you must pay attention. Perhaps nothing is changing more rapidly or drastically than how people consume video content.
To leverage this shift, you must first understand two of the most common video consumption methods: video on demand (VOD) and over-the-top (OTT). We cover both in this guide.
Video on demand (VOD) is a technology allowing viewers to watch video content when and where they want and the click of a button or tap on a touchscreen.
VOD is also popular because you can pause, rewind, or fast-forward content—and, unlike DVDs, you can easily start an episode from the moment you stopped it rather than searching through a menu.
In short, it gives viewers complete control of what they consume and how they want to consume it.
One of the most popular VOD services is Netflix, which started as a DVD mailing service and kept ahead of the game by adopting streaming early.
Over-the-top (OTT) is a way of streaming video and film content over the internet at the user’s request.
The primary reason for this unusual name, over-the-top, is because it goes over the tops of traditional media distribution channels and distributes content directly to the consumer via an internet connection.
OTT platforms were made popular by streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, YouTube, and more.
One of the primary differences is the medium through which video content is delivered.
The other big difference is VOD can’t be live content, while OTT can, as VOD by definition can’t have a set schedule involved. However, live content can later become VOD if it’s allowed to stay online for future viewing.
OTT is often VOD, but not always, and vice versa. As you may have guessed, many platforms, like YouTube, are categorized under both VOD and OTT.
If you’re willing to put in the hard work to create a high volume of quality on-demand content, you may be wondering if VOD or OTT is right for you. Bearing in mind there is overlap between the two, here are some pros of each option to help you determine which best suits your needs.
VOD enables you to deliver on-demand content to users, which is incredibly popular among consumers. As a result, you could monetize your brand faster and easier via VOD.
This method is best suited to subscription-based businesses. For example, fitness coaches can use VOD platforms to offer monthly subscriptions for on-demand fitness classes.
VOD also works well for brands wanting to leverage sponsorship deals—more on these monetization methods in a moment.
However, to make money from VOD, you must have a large, high-quality content library, so make sure you have a team able to handle this workload.
OTT’s strength lies in utilizing the internet, resulting in OTT platforms being able to offer both video-on-demand services and live streaming. This is essential for brands that rely on live events in their business model. A good example is Wanderlust TV:
If live events are part of your marketing mix, OTT is the way to go for you and your brand.
As a marketer, you may be wondering how to use VOD and OTT to bring in revenue. There are several ways you can profit from your video content.
To get started with OTT advertising, you need:
You have three options to monetize your OTT platform: video advertising networks, direct advertising, and scholarship deals.
One of the fastest ways to generate revenue from your OTT is to join a video advertising network (VAN). VANs connect you to marketers looking for ad space.
The major drawback to VANs is you lose control of the type of ads appearing on your platform—if something offensive plays, your audience may blame you. However, VANs are convenient as you don’t have to find advertisers on your own, so be sure to fully research any VAN you consider and read the fine print before signing.
Direct advertising allows you to take control of the kinds of ads you display on your OTT platform. To do this, you must develop a custom ad server to manage the ads you display on your platform.
Going the direct advertising route means you’ll have to find advertisers, negotiate with them directly, and set your rates. It’s a lot of work both on the business and development sides. However, you may get better returns as there’s no middleman.
Just as in the days of television, OTT sponsorship deals involve a brand paying for the right to advertise on a particular piece of content.
There are many ways to deliver your sponsored messaging. For instance, you can weave it into your content, show it as banner ads, or display it on launch screens.
An advantage of sponsorship deals is they can simplify your ad rotation because you only have to serve a few sponsoring brands. However, that can prove costly should any choose to end their sponsorship.
Just like OTT advertising, you have three main options for monetizing VOD content: subscription video on demand (SVOD), transactional video on demand (TVOD), and ad-supported video on demand (AVOD).
Subscription video on demand (SVOD) is one of the most popular ways of monetizing a VOD platform.
The SVOD model works by getting users to pay a recurring fee to access your content.
SVOD is often one of the most profitable ways of generating a steady flow of income from your platform as long as you have content people are willing to pay for.
Luckily, research shows the estimated revenue and usage of SVOD are expected to continue growing for the foreseeable future.
With SVOD, you can create different access levels at various price points, making your VOD content available to a wider audience.
Transactional video on demand (TVOD) is a monetization method allowing users to access content on a pay-per-view basis.
You have two main ways to offer TVOD to your customers, namely:
According to Statista, revenue in the TVOD market is growing and expected to reach $12,150 million by 2025.
With a dollar amount like that, TVOD may be an attractive option.
Another excellent way to monetize your VOD platform is the ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) model.
Unlike SVOD and TVOD, where users pay to view your content, the AVOD model generates revenue solely from advertisers. Your users don’t pay a dime. Because of this, such platforms tend to attract large audiences.
How does this work?
Advertisers pay to place ads in your video streams. Instead of paying to watch your content, viewers see a few ads as they stream your video content. A popular example of this is the free version of YouTube.
The AVOD model gives you two options:
Of course, the more viewers you have, the more likely you are to find advertisers.
Ready to launch your VOD services?
Not so fast.
You need a VOD hosting platform first. With so many of them available, choosing one can be a daunting task. Besides, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you may sign up for a platform that won’t meet your needs.
Here are a few platforms to consider.
One of the biggest players in the VOD hosting platform space is Uscreen. The platform is one of the most affordable, enabling even small businesses to use their services. For $49 per month, you get access to marketing tools, video hosting services, pricing control, and more.
Dacast is a streaming solution offering both VOD and OTT functionality. Best suited for enterprise businesses and professional use, they provide hosting for high-quality video broadcasts and live streaming. A few of their notable features include video monetization, robust security, and API integrations. Plans start as low as $39 per month.
IBM Cloud Video offers an expansive feature set, making it easy to tailor everything to your needs. However, because it has tons of features, it can be challenging to navigate. That makes it best suited for businesses with expert broadcasters on their team. IBM Cloud Video runs at higher price points than the last two options, with their starter plan coming in at $99/month.
Of course, these aren’t the only three out there. In addition to some of the big-name platforms we’ve mentioned, others you can consider include:
Because the industry is growing fast, you can expect new players to come on the scene.
With the right content, audience, and monetization strategies, VOD and OTT content have the potential to grow your revenue significantly.
Are you interested in creating a VOD/OTT strategy but don’t know where to start? If so, can help. Our agency also offers services like email marketing, SEO, content marketing, and paid advertising.
Have you ever used VOD or OTT to generate revenue? If so, what was your experience?
Marketing your business can feel like an uphill battle, but it all comes down to making your target audience care about what you’re selling.
What’s the best way to do that? Shifting their perspective so they understand not just what you do, but what problem you solve. Help them recognize they need what you offer to create a demand for your products or services.
This process is called demand generation.
If you do it well, demand generation can create awareness with your desired audiences, deliver more qualified leads to your sales team, and help link your marketing efforts to revenue.
Demand generation is creating interest in your products or services to build a healthy pipeline of qualified leads for your sales team.
It’s a broad term covering all your marketing and sales initiatives at every stage of the sales funnel. When you can provide valuable information to the right audience at the right time, you can develop awareness and demand for what you sell.
The best demand generation strategies consider every step in the buyer’s journey, from the first time someone interacts with your company, to the moment they become a customer. Demand generation initiatives should align your marketing and sales teams to help grow your business.
Demand generation is vital as it helps position you differently with potential customers. Rather than focusing on selling your solution, demand generation creates awareness of a need.
If you help audiences understand they have a need and how that need affects their businesses, they are more likely to be receptive to sales messaging that will come later.
If you want to grow your business, you’ll need to develop a robust pipeline of new customers. Demand generation places the focus on being attentive to their needs and creating awareness and interest before selling. If you can optimize every point of contact you have with your target audiences, you can increase the quality of the leads you’re bringing in through the funnel.
Demand generation also helps create interest and awareness so that you become a trusted source of information. It helps you create more thoughtful and cohesive marketing outreach to improve people’s experience when interacting with your company.
Demand generation and lead generation aren’t quite the same, so let’s look at each one to get an idea of where they overlap and where they differ.
They’re similar in that they share the ultimate goal of growing your business and increasing sales, and they both work to attract new customers to your business. However, the approach and immediate goals are quite different.
Lead generation, also known as lead gen, focuses on gaining a person’s information in exchange for content. The goal is to gain that contact information to facilitate contact and engagement for sales and marketing purposes.
Lead generation assumes your audience already knows they have a problem and are seeking a solution via products or services on the market. They’re in a place where they are ready to assess your business to see if you might be able to help them solve an existing problem.
Lead generation focuses on getting contact information from prospective customers, so it likely involves gated content or other ways to make this transaction happen.
Demand generation, occasionally referred to as demand gen, is more about awareness and interest and how you can position your company as an important source of information.
Letting you etting in front of your target audiences to create awareness for a need and generate interest in your business. The hopeful result is that as your target audience grows more interested in your company, the more receptive they’ll be once you interact with them.
Get people excited about what you do, and they’re more likely to look to you once they realize they have a need. Creating a demand for your product or service means educating people on the challenges they’re facing and helping them understand why it’s worthwhile to invest resources in a solution.
Demand generation casts a broader net with ungated content used to raise awareness of your brand and solutions. The goal is increased visibility and interest in what you do.
What are signs that demand generation might help your company move forward in growth plans? You may recognize a need for more and better leads or higher customer retention. You may realize better systems in your sales and marketing process could create a better experience for your customers.
Once you have created your B2B strategies recognize how valuable demand generation can be. How can you implement it? Here are 10 strategies you can use to make it work for you.
Creating buyer personas is an important start when targeting audiences with your marketing. These fictional profiles of your ideal customers can help you focus on who you need to reach and what they need to hear from you. A complete buyer persona should have details such as a fictitious name, job role, age, gender, and typical objections and concerns.
These can help you target your ads more effectively and ensure the content you create addresses what your audience wants to read.
Without this focus, it’s easy to get distracted by the message you want to put out, which may or may not resonate. Buyer personas also help your marketing teams work cohesively by creating clear targets for your ads and content.
For each profile, consider who this person is, what influences their purchasing decisions, what challenges they face, and what questions they tend to have before they reach a decision. Being able to reach prospects with ads and content that feel personalized to their experiences and challenges can go a long way towards winning over new customers.
People are busy, and there’s a lot of content out there competing for attention. As much as we’d like to believe people are interested in our content, few people wake up hoping to find a new article or whitepaper to read. However, the right content can significantly shift purchasing decisions.
How can you create pieces that resonate with your prospects and makes them want more? Invest in content of the highest quality. Inbound marketing can be an important part of demand generation, so don’t falter when putting resources into content marketing.
Is content creation an overnight strategy? Not at all. It’s a long-term investment that requires a lot of effort.
If you’re already creating content and don’t feel like you’re gaining much traction, consider what you’re publishing and how it differs from other content in your industry. If it’s similar to what others are publishing, it may not be enough to help you stand out. Consider the following ideas:
Should you save your best content for your lead generation efforts? Ask for contact information and other insights in exchange for it? Not at the demand generation stage. Remember that when we talk about demand generation, we’re talking about awareness and visibility. This means creating content for prospects at all stages of the buyer’s journey and consistently showing up as a trusted resource at each stage.
Don’t worry that you’re giving away your best content for free. Demonstrating your insight and authority on relevant topics is a valuable way to show customers that you understand their needs. Create resources they can’t resist reading and sharing, and you could be the first person they think of when they’re ready to move forward with a purchase.
Look for ways to extend your reach through established platform features you may already be using.
For example, Facebook advertising is a popular channel for companies to build visibility with relevant audiences. With in-depth targeting features allowing you to reach specific audiences and measure results via analytics, this can be an essential element in your marketing.
Facebook has a built-in feature allowing you to create lookalike audiences, which are custom audiences similar to people who are already interested in what you sell. You just need to create these audiences in the app, and you can benefit from the expanded reach they’ll give you.
Plus, these aren’t random users. They closely match people you’ve already connected with. You can also try larger audiences or smaller custom audiences based on interests and create your lookalikes from there.
Increasing visibility often means looking for ways to expand or duplicate your efforts to reach more people. Lookalike audiences are a great way to try this in your advertising.
However, is Facebook for every business? Likely not. It’s often best-suited for B2C brands where customers can purchase right from the app or make quick decisions on something they can easily purchase from your site.
Using display ads effectively can be another way to get your brand in front of new audiences. Further, managed placements allow advertisers to specify where they want their ads to appear, allowing them to target relevant audiences.
If you can control where your ads appear, you can focus your efforts on individuals who are likely to be interested in what you offer.
Display advertising is less about conversions and more about getting your name and brand out in front of prospects. They can allow you to access prospects and raise awareness of your brand and message. Managed placements can also help you focus your investment with effective targeting and outreach.
Remarketing can be a powerful way to build awareness, help prospects remember you after your initial interactions, and boost conversion rates.
There are a lot of distractions that can pull a prospect away after they visit your website. If you notice that many users seem to visit once and not return, it would be valuable to understand why and explore ways to regain their attention.
This is where remarketing comes in, allowing you to increase repeat visitors and even extend the amount of time visitors spend on your website.
Effective marketing often means that a prospect needs to see your brand and encounter your messaging multiple times before you become memorable. Remarketing helps you build on new traffic you’ve managed to attract and bring these individuals back to your website to learn more.
Demand generation is all about delivering the right message. If your message doesn’t fit the audience you’ve targeted, they are unlikely to convert.
With this in mind, consider how it might affect your target audiences to see content that doesn’t suit where they are in their path to becoming your customer.
Someone who has never heard of your company isn’t quite ready to see in-depth content that answers questions customers typically have closer to purchase. Instead, they need introductory content to help them recognize a challenge in their organization and a first look at how you solve those types of problems.
For a prospect further along in the buying process will have identified their need, learned what you do, and explored what you offer. They’ll want more detail and have more specific questions that pertain to their unique situation.
You can use contact segmentation to manage this in your customer relationship management (CRM) system, which means organizing your customer contacts into groups based on what stage they’re in. Once your contacts are defined, you can target campaigns to each group to deliver content they are likely to find valuable.
When your outreach resonates with the recipient, they’ll be more likely to welcome further contact rather than remove themselves from your mailing lists or otherwise cut contact. Another benefit of contact segmentation is that you’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns better and adjust as needed to best suit your audience.
Once you have someone’s email address, how quickly do you reach out with marketing emails? Are you sending emails to your entire mailing list? If so, you risk putting off whole groups of prospects by making them feel overwhelmed, or worse, like your company doesn’t understand them.
Instead, email marketing should carry out the idea that you need to deliver the correct information to the right people with impeccable timing. The shotgun approach of spamming people with multiple emails is likely to earn you a long list of “unsubscribe” responses.
Consider your email marketing to be a powerful way to communicate with customers at scale. However, to do so effectively, you need to make them feel unique and understood.
This means sending emails that directly address different groups, speaking to their concerns, and answering their questions. These groups may be broken out by stage in the buying process and even by industry.
Effective email campaigns require testing, so get ready to not only target groups of similar prospects but also to test your email marketing. Try A/B testing on your subject lines, copy, visual elements, and CTAs. Test different variations and optimize your campaigns using the best performing elements.
When you first raise awareness of your brand, you’ll need to win over people who can be brand ambassadors. One of the best ways you can win over new prospects is to offer a free tool, an app, or another resource your target audience can’t ignore.
Does giving away valuable resources go against your sales goals? Not when it comes to demand generation. Remember that in this process, you want to boost visibility and get your brand noticed. Expanding your reach may mean giving away something valuable in exchange for the impact it will have in your initial campaigns.
This is especially important for new brands trying to win attention in crowded markets. Allowing prospects to experience your brand and connect with your company in a personal way can pave a smooth road down the line to larger purchases.
Testing different strategies for demand generation can bring you some successes and some losses. In many cases, you’ll track leads coming into your company and consider each a win, but what if they never convert to a customer?
Increasing the number of leads coming into your company can’t be your only focus if they don’t go on to become happy customers. As you evaluate the quality of the leads you generate, you’ll begin to realize that some leads make it further through the customer journey, while others move through stages to become a customer.
What’s the difference? When you begin to analyze the different actions your leads take when engaging your company, you’ll start to notice patterns of behavior that are more likely to lead to conversion.
If you can find a way to track the interactions prospects have had with your company and compare them to outcomes, you can discover behaviors that increase the chance that a prospect will convert. Once you do this, you can repeat those interactions to win customers.
Lead scoring, or evaluating incoming leads, is a way of measuring the quality of your leads to ensure you can invest in initiatives that attract the best quality leads. Remember that demand generation is raising awareness and generating excitement for your company or brand. It’s not about attracting big audiences who don’t have a genuine interest in your business.
Lead scoring allows you to evaluate your customers’ behavior over time to determine their level of interest in your business. It can take into account various actions showing intent, such as which pages of your website they’ve viewed and if they’ve engaged in behavior indicating they want to see more of what you can do. They might show this by requesting more information or signing up for demonstrations of your products.
If you’re struggling to gain leads, don’t worry about the quality at first. Just keep implementing strategies to increase your reach and bring more people to your business. Once you have increased your leads to the point that you need to start identifying the most valuable ones to nurture, then you’re likely in a position to consider lead scoring.
Need more proof of how demand generation can increase interest in your brand and benefit your company? Check out the following two examples of companies who have benefited from demand generation:
There are a few tools that can be beneficial as you grow your demand generation efforts. Using these tools can help ensure you’re working effectively to reach your goals.
What kinds of tools can help? Look for those that feature marketing, chatbots, email bots, content, or marketing system integration.
Let’s look at what each of these types of tools can do for you and why they are important in demand generation.
When people get busy, repetitive tasks can fall by the wayside, A host of marketing automation tools can increase efficiency and ensure that time-consuming or repetitive tasks are completed without delay.
Companies like Drift offer tools like chatbots and email bots that act as support systems for your sales teams. Chatbots can send reminders to your salespeople when it’s time to follow up with a client or take the next step in outreach.
Your sales team can even receive emails before sales meetings that give them a quick reminder of the client’s company information, where the client is in the funnel, and what interactions have already taken place to ensure a seamless return to the conversation.
Email bots can help marketing teams send effective email outreach at scale, flag important customer issues as they arise, and direct replies to the correct sales contact.
Having the right content for a potential customer means you’ll need salespeople to quickly find resources. A company like BuyerDeck offers a content repository to help your sales team keep all the resources they need organized and accessible.
A critical element in B2B marketing is keeping your customer contact information updated and organized so anyone on your sales team can easily access it. Look for CRM software options like Nutshell, Zoho, or Hubspot to ensure you’re keeping track of your customers and where they are in your funnel.
Don’t forget that to make this all work optimally, you’ll want to integrate your whole marketing system to ensure activities happen seamlessly, and you aren’t repeating work or having to step in to update from one system to another manually. Connecting each component can ensure you can always access a high-level view of customer history and information.
Curious about demand generation and how to implement the strategies we’ve discussed here? You can learn how to position yourself as an authority and reach your customers effectively.
You’ll want to research methods, implement what’s a good fit for your business, and test to measure results. Repeat and scale what works until you’ve expanded your outreach.
There’s a wealth of information if you want to understand what demand generation is and how it might benefit your business. Check out the following resources to learn more:
As businesses shift online, more and more opportunities arise to connect with prospects in new ways. One of those new strategies is demand generation.
Out hope is that after you’re read this post, you have a much clearer idea of what demand generation is and some strategies you can use to improve it.
As companies use these methods, they quickly learn to automate their efforts to expand their reach and make their marketing investments pay off.
Demand generation depends on your company being able to show up when it matters with content that impacts your potential customers. As you do this, customers begin to connect their challenges to the solutions you offer, and you’ll be able to effectively move them along their buying journey.
Marketing to customers in a way that places their needs at the center of every initiative can be a new angle for companies used to more direct selling techniques. Demand generation focuses on your ability to offer value at every stage and interaction so a customer is already relying on you for information and resources by the time they are ready to buy.
If you’d like help separating lead gen from demand gen or implementing any of the strategies here, reach out for support. We can help you create powerful demand generation strategies and identify which strategies will work best for you.
What demand generation strategies are you currently using for your business? Which of these will you try next?
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Article URL: https://jobs.lever.co/ironcladapp/87a32c65-fdc1-4525-9ff4-47a9c4979d6f Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24219886 Points: 1 # Comments: 0
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