Yes, today are going to help you transform 1 existing subscriber into 10 new subscribers!
If you produce and distribute video content online, whether on a Youtube channel or on your own platform (like Netflix), your only goal is to win subscribers (paid or free) to grow and continue to develop your video offer. Whether you want to get more visibility or more revenue to produce (or buy) exclusive content, you must multiply the number of subscribers on your video platform.
A quick reminder: if you are in the process of increasing your number of subscribers, don’t forget that it is always more interesting to do so on your platform rather than on YouTube where you don’t really have real information on your audience.
Let’s analyze some marketing strategies that you can easily implement.
I. DEVELOP THE RECOMMENDATIONS (OF YOUR VIDEO PLATFORM ) FROM YOUR SUBSCRIBERS
Recommending a product or service has many marketing benefits, such as increasing the conversion rate or retention.
Editor’s note: if you are interested in this topic, you will find HERE an article about the power of the recommendation, and how the blockchain will strengthen this effects in a very near future.
The idea here is to ask your existing subscribers for help in recommending your Youtube channel or your video platform to their social circle. Of course you can ask your community to do it “graciously”, but we all know that people are always more motivated when they can be rewarded. So here are some examples of mechanics:
THE SPONSORSHIP FORM.
Example below:
This form includes a unique code per subscriber with sharing buttons. This way you can track who has shared a link (and in some cases how many people have subscribed through that link). You can then reward your most active subscribers.
THE CONTEST:
You can create a contest to reward the 10 (or 100) subscribers who have shared the most links with their social circle. The most active will be able to receive a gift or will be drawn to receive a gift (a 1-year subscription to your SVOD service for example).
Bonus: In this case, don’t hesitate to add a notion of “gamification”, which is a very powerful tool to encourage subscribers to do promotional actions. One solution is to set up a real-time ranking to boost motivation and results. Interested? Talk with us, our sister company FlameFy has created tools which allow you to create this type of mechanics.
II. SHARE REVIEWS FROM EXISTING SUBSCRIBERS
For video streaming business too, social proof is a very powerful conversion tool. Indeed, when a person takes the time to give his opinion about a video, a film or more generally a subscription streaming service, it is because he is convinced of its quality (most of the time we tend to express ourselves only to give negative opinions, so positive feedbacks are generally perceived very favorably).
You have several ways to implement this:
- By sending an email to your subscribers asking them to answer a satisfaction questionnaire (or by sharing a link on your social networks if you don’t have your fans’ email addresses). You can then add a Google form to it, for example, to efficiently process the responses. You can also use third-party solutions that guarantee the reliability of your data, such as the Trustpilot service.
- By creating a quick and quantitative survey to obtain an overall score for your service, on a scale from 1 to 5 for example.
- By doing a qualitative study, for example conducting interviews with some of your subscribers to obtain testimonies or verbatim.
Obviously, the combination of all these methods will be a more effective strategy. For example, on the presentation page of your video streaming service, you can put an overall rating of your service by your subscribers as well as some customer testimonials. It is a tool widely used in e-commerce, why not implement it for your video content offer? This will somehow influence the perception of your service and increase your conversion rates.
Bonus: make a short video featuring users who talk about your service, say why they like it, or quote excerpts from your customer comments. If you have a retargeting strategy on Facebook (using the Facebook pixel), you could, for example, distribute these videos on Facebook to all customers who have visited your site but have not subscribed. Sometimes a simple social proof can convert a person who is still a little hesitant to subscribe to your VOD platform.
III. OFFER THE “GIFT” option TO YOUR SUBSCRIBERS
As part of a SVOD service, one way to duplicate your subscribers is to give them the opportunity to offer a subscription as a gift to their loved ones. If a fan likes your video content, but is already a subscriber, they will wonder how they can support you more. Offering “gift” subscriptions is the best way to get a subscriber to spend money again…. But also to win a new one!
During the last century, the DVD market was largely driven by the fact that people offered DVDs as gifts. In particular, as Christmas is coming, do not hesitate to encourage your subscribers to offer subscriptions to your SVOD platform, for example by offering promotional coupons.
At OKAST we grant you the opportunity to add this “gift” button on your platform. You can also track on a dashboard the different gifts that are given by your subscribers and reward your most generous or prescribing subscribers.
IV. CREATE A SIMILAR AUDIENCE ON FACEBOOK
One of Facebook greatest strengths is the “similar audience”. But what exactly is it?
The similar audience allows you, from an existing customer database, to find people quite similar according to Facebook. To summarize, Facebook creates a robot portrait of your audience, then identifies in its own user database (more than 2.3 billion people by the way) people who are similar to this robot portrait. How does Facebook do it? Based on the habits, behaviours and affinities of your audience. Obviously, the larger and more homogeneous the source database is (and therefore your subscriber file), the more relevant the similar audience offered by Facebook will be.
You can imagine, however, that Facebook does not provide its magic recipe for free, you will only be able to reach this similar audience through paid advertising. And of course, you never get a list of this similar audience with first names, surnames, and email addresses. You will never actually see this list, but your advertising campaigns will be well displayed to this specific target group. Like any technique, it has its strengths and weaknesses, but it can be really powerful, especially if your video contents appeals to a niche audience.
How to implement it? Go to Facebook’s Business Editor, in the Audiences menu. Add an export of your subscriber file with as much information as you can: first name, last name and email address are the basis (ideally a customer base of at least 500 people). Once you have matched the fields in your database with those in Facebook and completed the requested information you will get a window like this one:
At the very bottom, the slider allows you to choose the size of the similar audience. The more you reduce the size (1%) the most similar your new audience will be from your database. It is up to you to decide on which variable you want to priorize (it actually depends a lot on your video content, if it is on niche themes better not to widen the target too much).
CONCLUSION
Many video creators or VOD platform editors focus on finding new traffic sources to get new subscribers. Don’t necessarily look for innovation, because focusing on the base of your existing subscribers is the most effective way to grow. If they love you, then they can easily help you build an audience that looks like them.
If you have a SVOD platform project or if you are a video entrepreneur or youtuber, we can certainly help you building the most amazing video platform! Contact us at hello@okast.tv to know more 🙂
The OKAST Team.