During COVID-19 quarantining, our worlds have gotten significantly smaller. Without trips to the movies, live sports, travel or, let’s face it, anything really, many are turning to TV to fill the time with entertainment, or pure distraction.

With cable subscription rates dropping precipitously over the years—current estimates have subscriptions down nearly seven million households in the last two years alone—the options for viewership have shifted to streaming. And, with new streaming services like Quibi, NBC’s Peacock and HBO Max entering the market what seems like weekly, more and more players are battling for smaller slices of the same pie.

Stay-at-home orders have led to a boom in streaming service successes in recent months. Netflix, the most established name in the streaming game, has seen some of the most substantial gains since the pandemic began. While late in 2019 the company saw a 15% drop in stock prices, they’ve bounced back exponentially in the first part of 2020. Netflix has experienced massive growth, with 15.8 million new subscribers added last quarter and a six-month stock jump of an astronomical 49%.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Upon the merger of Viacom and CBS in 2019, the company took a massive hit, with its stock price dropping 15%. The pandemic further decimated the company’s prospects, with share prices dipping an additional 32% in recent months. The only bright spot in ViacomCBS’s holdings were their streaming platforms, CBS All Access and Showtime OTT, which are positioned to gain an additional 16 million subscribers by year’s end. The company even plans to expand their streaming offerings into one “Super Service,” a universal platform with thousands of hours of additional content, set to launch in 2021.

These success stories beg the question, however: is this growth sustainable?

When the Dust Settles

It’s been reiterated ad nauseum, but if there’s any certainty of the COVID-19 era it’s a total lack of certainty. While this thriving streaming landscape has to be encouraging for company stakeholders, the entire enterprise may be hit with even greater challenges down the road if services fail to adapt.

As I  told the Observer in April: Netflix can’t take for granted that the viewer will remain loyal if content isn’t consistently refreshed. At the same time, once sports and other live-programming return to the viewer’s choice, Netflix  could be pushed to the side due to its library of also-ran content choices.

ViacomCBS is in an even more precarious position with their content strategy, as it focuses heavily on stockpiles of older series with less emphasis placed on new content.

Echoing what I told the Observer in June: the winner in the streaming battle has to do much more than assemble thousands of hours of content. Whoever wins will have the highest concentration of content that truly engages with the audience. Quality is the key.

The uncertainty of the COVID-19 era also makes the reality of the current streaming boom much more tenuous. With no real competition from live programming, streaming services positioning for the future may miss their window to hooking long-term subscribers while the demand is there. ViacomCBS’s plans for a 2021 launch could spell disaster if the landscape is crowded with competition from not only other services, but live sports and more in-person entertainment options.

Today’s consumers have a short attention span and they are growing less and less patient for delays. CBS needs to play big in Q4 against this programming or else they will be perceived as irrelevant in the ad buyer and viewer mindset. There’s no time to waste is All Access wants to take a jump in the key markets and audience segments.

What Should Streaming Services Be Doing to Win the War?

The truth is, the streaming wars could be completely upended as elements of normalcy return to daily life. As live television comes back, sports, and more in-person entertainment options become available again, people that have spent the last few months scrolling through streaming options may be looking for an escape, which could result in slowed new subscriptions and cancelled old subscriptions.

The key is providing new, engaging content that viewers can’t find anywhere else. In order for a streaming service to become a major player, they need not only their own Tiger King, but follow-up cultural touchstones that keep audiences coming back to their service regardless of what else is out there.

This maxim isn’t solely limited to streaming services either. In the battle for eyes and engagement, the content coming from publications, marketers, and social teams are all in competition. The ones that “win the war” will work to keep audiences consistently engaged, and returning to see what’s new and exciting regardless of what state the world’s in.

With production halts in the entertainment industry causing an ever-drying well of content, at some point every streaming service, no matter how established they are, will need to reckon with the fact that their offering can’t fulfill the market’s demand for the new and exciting. And, as more competition begins to battle for viewer attention, it’s imperative that streaming services strike while the iron is hot, bringing in as many new subscribers they can while the demand is still there.

The post What Brands and Marketers Can Learn From the Streaming Wars appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

In the new year, we must be clear about the work that is required to change, and become obsessed with doing what is required to achieve the business outcome that we truly and passionately desire. To take your business to the next level you need to establish a plan and rigorously follow it in order to reach and surpass your goals.

Commit today that this year — 2020 — will be your best year yet in contributing to making your business successful at a new and higher level. When you set this goal early in the year, each and every step you take will be subject to this outcome. 

[Photo by Andrea Davis on Unsplash]

Here are some tips and questions that will help you craft this year’s vision and the path to achieving your business outcome.

1. How well do you understand your customer’s needs?
   You need to understand your customer’s needs, and the relationship between your product offering and those needs, in order to be compelling in the market. If you aren’t relevant this year to those needs, then get working early to gain that relevance.
2. What new products and/or services are needed? 
   As you understand your customer’s needs, you must be brutally objective in making an assessment about your current product portfolio. Are there new products and services that need to be developed in the near-term in order to remain compelling in the market? You should’ve started working on this effort yesterday.
3. What’s needed in order to retain more of your customers? 
   There is a difference between generating transactions and building a loyal customer base. If you’re losing customers, begin by asking a simple question — why? Then figure out what has to be done in order to retain more of them and build a strong revenue base.
4. Are you clear about how your customers form their buying decisions? 
   The market for your products and services continue to change in real-time, so you must anticipate how your customers and prospects make their decisions in 2020. Understanding their buying process is essential to targeting prospects and engaging customers.
5. Who are the players in your competitive set ? 
   It would be nice if you were alone in the battle to grow your business. You aren’t. The more that you understand your competitive set and the work they do to compete with you, the smarter your strategy will be in the year — and years — ahead. You must become a student of the competitive set in order to win your outcome. 
6. How can you reach and engage your target audience efficiently? 
   You aren’t working with a limitless marketing budget. The challenge ahead is to cost effectively and efficiently leverage media. It’s all about the ability to reach a high concentration of prospects for your product, and, most importantly, engage with them to drive the desired outcome. The vision for 2020 is to leverage an optimal mix of media and messages that gets the job done. There is no way to achieve this goal without proper attention and performance monitoring of established KPIs.

The results of your efforts in achieving your vision for 2020 must be measured on a real-time basis. In a highly competitive market, you have no time to waste in terms of getting started and executing. We cannot delay our work — not even by a month or a day. Doing so will open up your efforts to the competitive set and provide them with a huge opportunity to take advantage of your lack of decisive business-building action. You cannot waste time with the misguided hope that you can make up the gap later in the year. 

Commit today to a better vision for 2020.

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