When you think of video on demand, what probably pops up in your mind is a long list of all the sources where you pay to watch a video. Those could be platforms offering courses like Edx and Coursera, fitness platforms selling on-demand workout routines, so on and so forth.
If there’s something good that came out of COVID-19, it’s this massive growth we’ve seen in the VOD industry. In fact, the VOD industry is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 12% from 2020 levels. With this growth comes some serious competition, making lead generation and conversions a more challenging task. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!
In this blog, we offer 5 interactive lead generation ways to market and grow your VOD business.
But before we go on to list some techniques let’s first give you a quick crash course on interactive content and how it works.
Introducing: Interactive Content
Interactive content is a content marketing strategy that uses tools like quizzes, calculators, chatbots, and assessments to increase customer engagement, provide real-time value, and increase conversion rates significantly.
Interactive content works as an incredible lead magnet as you offer personalized solutions in exchange for lead information. Moreover, it allows for setting up retargeting campaigns based on the results of the users.
So if a user chooses thriller as a genre over comedy in an OTT preference quiz – you can then conduct retargeting ad campaigns and email campaigns according to her preference.
How Effective is Interactive Content?
Interactive content is 2x more engaging than static content.
It also generates up to 5x more views than static content. In fact, 88% of marketers say interactive content differentiates them from their competitors. Not just that, the shareability rate of interactive content is 38% against only 17% in the case of static content!
This makes interactive lead generation techniques a big hit among businesses. With that in mind, let’s dive into the 5 interactive lead generation ways for VOD marketing.
Uscreen tooltip:
If you use Uscreen to run your video streaming business, you can easily implement any of the following 5 techniques into your VOD website using Outgrow, a Uscreen Partner. For step-by-step instructions on setting it up, click here.
Interactive Lead Generation Techniques for VOD
1. Quizzing Your Way Through Lead Generation
Quizzes are highly engaging interactive content types that easily hook your audience because, honestly, there’s just something about taking online quizzes that’s just so fun!
The inherent virality attached to them is the main reason behind BuzzFeed’s success. But how do you mold quizzes to offer real value so they act as a lead magnet?
That’s when recommendation quizzes take the fore. Recommendation quizzes are self-explanatory – in that, they offer recommendations of your product to the prospect based on their answer to your quiz questions.
Let’s take an example. Suppose you offer an on-demand fitness program. A quiz like “Find The Best Fitness Course For You” can help your prospects by asking relevant questions regarding their interests and recommending a course accordingly.
Embedding quizzes like these on your product page or homepage acts as a quick guide for the viewers and reduces bounce rates since they don’t lose track of what they are looking for.
Since these quizzes are supposed to act as a lead magnet, this is how you can create a funnel using a recommendation quiz.
Add a lead generation form to your interactive content. A lead generation form fetches prospect’s relevant information like their emails, names, and other lead details that can help you build your email list, nurture them and finally convert them into paying customers.
Based on their responses, you can also retarget them through your email marketing campaigns with relevant videos and updates.
Moreover, you can also use these recommendation quizzes as part of your ad campaigns. In fact, interactive ads have a 3x conversion rate compared to traditional video ads, and this figure goes up to 7x when these ads are playable. This is exactly what recommendation quizzes do, with every click, the user gets closer to the result just like a game.
Here’s a perfect example:
The landing page for an interactive ad like this will consist of the final recommendations as suggested in the earlier example, with a relevant CTA such as “Start a 7-Day Free Trial”.
2. Calculating the Correct Pricing Plan
Let’s move forward with our earlier example of a fitness instructor.
Now, your prospect is aware of the courses you offer that match their interests. From here, they will take a couple of trial classes and finally decide to purchase your fitness course. Awesome!
But here again, another challenge arises. You offer multiple pricing plans and they don’t know which one to choose from. Whether to pay for the individual course or go with an entire one-month subscription that has added benefits.
That’s a tough spot but a calculator can come to their rescue!
An example calculator is “Which plan should you go for based on your needs/budget?”
This will include questions around the budget of the prospect, their needs, other bonus facilities that the fitness instructor offers, and based on the responses the results will project the best pricing plan for them.
3. Garnering Attention Through Giveaways and Contests
Giveaways are a sure-shot content marketing strategy to get people to engage with your product and talk about you because, hey, who doesn’t like freebies?
In fact, an average of over 34% of new customers is acquired through contests. Better still, 33% of contest participants are open to receiving information about the brand and partners.
And if that’s not enough, 94.46% of the time users share the promotion immediately after they register. While these numbers might feel too good to be true, giveaways and costs are definitely worth giving a shot at for your VOD marketing campaigns.
Take this example – if you provide makeup tutorials, then a giveaway idea could be standing a chance to win a date night make-up tutorial video for free. How amazing is that! Just set up some tasks for your audience as a prerequisite for participation and you’re good to go!
Giveaways are based on the same premise as gift cards and the fact that gift cards are an incredible marketing strategy for VOD marketing is not new to us. So go on, try it out and let us know the results you got!
4. Engaging Customers With Chatbots 24×7
Chatbots are not new but the rapidly transforming technology has increased their capabilities manifolds.
Today, chatbots replace sales representatives by answering rhetorical questions so that you don’t have to. They are available 24×7 which is a major plus point since you don’t want to lose a client when you’re not around. And in a lot of cases, they are your prospect’s first point of contact when they visit your website. So, make sure to engage and retain them then and there.
In fact, a chatbot on your .tv domain is a useful automation tool. It gives the users some preliminary information and videos to work with and once they show interest, you can take it from there or get over a call.
As your chatbot redirects them to a sample video, you can make that video a lead magnet to get more information on the prospect.
5. Optimizing Your Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing has SO MUCH potential, that anyone who isn’t implementing it into their business is definitely missing out on some serious growth.
While tactics like abandoned cart emails are a superb way to boost your sales, these are predominantly for cases where you already have a lead and you are nurturing them and pushing them down the funnel. But for generating leads we need novel techniques.
This novel technique involves using your videos in cold emails. When you create a short impactful video with a relevant message and social proof backed by extensive research on what the recipient really wants to see, you will have your lead’s interest for sure!
Moreover, combining this with a personalized assessment or survey is a great way to give the leads exactly what they want.
This is how you’ll go about it – after attaching a video of you pitching your product, you can attach a survey asking questions on what kind of videos they’d be interested in. So, if you provide online courses, you can attach a survey with the following question – “What course would you be interested in taking trial for?” offering the kinds of courses you specialize in like AI, ML, NLP, etc.Â
Additionally, you can also embed polls easily in your email and get to know if they are interested in say, arts or science.
In fact, you don’t have to limit this to your email marketing campaigns. Most social media platforms today offer capabilities like posting a poll; you can do it on Instagram Stories, Linkedin posts, Twitter posts, you name it.
You can keep conducting polls like this on your profile and create content that the majority of your followers are looking for. And maybe go a step further and share the videos with them on personal messages and the comments section. This kind of personalization and effort will never go unnoticed!
Wrapping it up…
That’s all folks! Those were our 5 interactive lead generation techniques that you can implement into your VOD business today for more growth.
Remember that interactivity is all around you and video+interactivity makes for a deadly combination. So what are you waiting for? Kickstart your lead generation with interactivity today!
