How Does OTT Marketing Work?

OTT marketing is a branch of content marketing. The core concept behind content marketing is that if you create content worth reading, watching, or listening to, people will come back for more. The content itself can become a source of income, but the real money comes from your content promoting a larger cause. If you have a business, content marketing can help drive traffic to your website and promote sales. Here's how it works.

Sponsor Your Own Content

Content marketing creates synergy between your content and your company. If you have a business, you can invest money and human resources into making quality content that others will find interesting. Eventually your content will return that investment to your business and then some. Essentially, your business sponsors your content.

Many times when someone wants to launch an OTT channel or start a program, they have no business around it. The idea is that the content will be the business. However, the flaw in this plan is that it can take a while for content to find an audience and become profitable. If you can't make it through those lean times, your content will eventually shrivel up.

Build an Audience

Building an audience is key regardless of how you fund your content creation efforts. The most effective way to build an audience quickly is to get your content on as many platforms as possible. Covering more platforms and formats means more people will find you and follow your production. Social media can boost your content, but nothing works better than being everywhere.

For many creators, the extra work required to publish on multiple platforms is a dealbreaker. You have to re-encode your video into multiple formats, upload several times, and add metadata and descriptions. That work multiplies with each platform. Is there a shortcut? Use a content delivery network. You upload your content once and then it gets redistributed to all of your targeted platforms.

Turn Your Channel Into a Sales Funnel

Once you have your content positioned on multiple platforms and you have built an audience, you'll start pulling customers towards your business. A YouTube channel that discusses issues relevant to your business, for example, could be a great way to lure people into your office. Plug your company website or even offer discounts to your loyal followers.

After your channel starts to contribute to your bottom line, rather than drain it, it's time to start looking for other opportunities to turn a profit. Your established content can be useful for other businesses too.

Monetize and Maximize

You can monetize your content by selling space to advertisers. This is the endgame of any OTT marketing strategy. Pre-roll ads, cutaways, live reads, and product placement are just a few of the ways you can give advertisers a cut of your content. They won't show up until you've built that audience, though.

To speed up the process, post your content everywhere using the Lightcast Media Cloud, a cloud-based content delivery network. Request a callback from Lightcast or send us an email to learn more about how we can help you monetize your content and help it grow faster.