15 Ways Live Streaming Can Improve Your Business
As video continues its inimitable rise in social networks, live streaming has become an important element of marketing strategies. With live streaming quickly becoming a key means for viewers to satisfy their entertainment and information needs, businesses that fail to include live streaming in their marketing strategies will miss several opportunities. Out of all, monetization is one of the primary advantages you can reap with integrating live streaming in your business.
Live streaming your productions and events to a global audience can generate real revenue for your brand. As an effective video marketing tool, live streaming provides live video monetization solutions for businesses of all sizes at every stage of their growth. Reports say that live streaming industry is going to hit a $70.5 billion mark by 2021. Alternately, you can also start a live streaming platform to leverage lucrative business opportunities. However, before learning how to start a live streaming business, you must understand the benefits of live streaming.
Let’s dive into the business benefits of live streaming 15 ways live streaming can successfully improve your business.
1. Genuine real-time connection with the audience
Unlike pre-recorded and edited videos, live streaming gives you the advantage of being real and genuine with your target audience. Live streams bring in a human element to your content that no other form of marketing tool can really nail- particularly with high costs associated with it. The real connection, unpredictability, and the element of excitement create a level of trust in your brand that results in better engagement and stronger connection.
2. The opportunity for creativity is limitless
Live streaming creates a wonderful opportunity for businesses to be enormously creative with their live content. From YouTube-style vlogs, Q & A sessions, interviews, to chitchat, the range of video content a live stream can encompass is big and can make for some effective video content. Not just that, the real-time element let you talk to your audience in the moment as they interact with the content you are broadcasting.
Can you think of another marketing tool that can help you reach a wide range of audiences all at once? Live streaming is one such tool that offers access to a huge global audience who is ready to have their interest peaked by the right type of content. The success story of YouTube over the years displays the number of people who watch video content online on mobiles. Hence, if you know your target market well and the interests of your audience, you can harness the attention of this vast network to benefit your business.
4. Rich and scalable content
Live streaming content may not be as glossy as your typical online video content, but the human element of it makes the content far richer. Additionally, the time, money, and effort you may spend on capturing and editing video content are eliminated, as live streaming doesn’t need high tech hardware or complicated software. Needless to say, live streaming also enables businesses to provide content directly to audience through several mediums.
5. Fosters user engagement
Regardless of the essence of your content, live streams, in general, are a lot more engaging than any other forms of video. It keeps hold of your viewer’s attention for an extended time. Moreover, the possibility of engaging with a huge audience without any geographic limits sounds exciting.
Broadcasting live events with your audience can make them feel more connected to your brand. The key here is not just showing your viewers the event scenes but also letting them be a part of it.
Be it any business event arranged by your brand or any other event you participate in, make your audience a part of it. Check on their comments frequently and reply to them when possible. Ask viewers what they like to see from the event in particular and walk them around virtually to keep them connected and engaged. You can also release the highlight video of last year’s event to keep your audience interested and excited about the new live coming up for the event like in the picture shown below. It is about a highlight video posted by Vogue on Vogue Forces of Fashion 2018.
A significant part of many events is product announcements and related news. Showing these unique moments to your audience will help to build excitement among your potential customers.
Broadcast short live interviews with your clients or employees to increase engagement. Broadcasting interviews not just show the human side of your business but also offer personal opinions and ideas. This also gives your customers the opportunity to meet the people who work for you and who make your products. During interviews, make sure you don’t promote your brand too much. Offer fresh content to your audience and maintain consistency to engage your audience. For instance, in a live broadcast, Airbnb interviewed the cast of the Jungle book at Airbnb tree housing bringing in around 99k views and user engagement.
8. Carry out training sessions
Another great way to interact with your viewers is to broadcast online training sessions. You can live stream training sessions to offer the benefits of face-face training even though they are not present there.
Many businesses stream training sessions as teasers. This is because when you don't reveal everything, people will be more likely to buy several sessions from you. Many companies show the sneak peek of such sessions to sell more of their training videos and webinars.
9. Broadcast Q&A sessions
Live streaming Q&A sessions offer an opportunity to answer all of your viewer's questions in real-time. Organize question and answer sessions to increase engagement as you are showing people that you care about their options and feedbacks. For example, Benefit cosmetics broadcasted an exclusive Q&A session called "Brow hour” with the brow expert Jared Bailey that helped in bagging a lot of video views and user engagement in comments.
Acknowledge the questions that can offer value to your audience. Also, ensure that you mention the name of the users asking the questions to make it personal and increase engagement. Try to answer as many questions as possible and ignore silly comments if any.
10. Offer behind the scenes
Hosting a live session on behind-the-scenes is a great way to show your audience behind the scene of anything that they normally don’t have access to. When hosting behind the scene live sessions, you can go beyond just your business activities. While you can include things related to your business, offering anything typically off-limits will interest many viewers.
11. Show how products are created
If you are into product-based business, broadcast live sessions to show your audience how your products are created. In normal cases, customers only see the final product you offer. They might not know how a specific product is made, the efforts behind, and the process involved in it. Get your customers deeply interested in your products by offering a sneak peek into the development process. Broadcast from beginning to end (if it's practical) of what goes into creating your products.
12. Run a promotion or a contest
Another way of using live streaming to promote your brand is to run a promotion or announce a contest for your customers. Ask questions and allow the audience who gives the right answers to enter the contest.
13. Offer customer service through live sessions
If you have a solution for a glitch or an issue that all of your customers can benefit from, then why not live stream the same? Consider solving the issue and take your audience through the entire process in your live broadcast.
This helps your customers know that you listen to their concerns and are keen about offering solutions for the same. This brings in transparency and offers an instant connection with your current and new customers.
14. Broadcast a project status update
If you are working on a project that takes a long time to be completed, you can use live streaming to give updates on the status of your project to your future customers.
For example, GE went live from the Brazil technology center for the Drone week during the RIO 2016 Olympic Games to show the infrastructure and tech behind the event.
From all of the above information, statistics, and example, you might have understood how easily live streaming establishes trust among your target audience. The real element in live streaming and the fact that the live streams don’t follow a script helps your audience feel they are interacting with you truly. This, in turn, helps in establishing trust between your audience and your brand, almost instantaneously.
Live streaming can help brands to connect with the audience by offering the opportunity to tune in to real-time videos that offer loads of information and value. Building a live streaming platform also holds immense potential in this digital era and that is why it is important to learn how to create a live streaming website. Live streaming often provides a more intimate and meaningful connection than other types of branded content.
Additionally, there are some real numbers to back it up. Using live streaming improves your reach, enhances user engagement, spread awareness about your business, and plays a significant role in adding a strong competitive advantage to your brand. Live streaming is a highly effective and cost-effective tool to attain your business goals effortlessly. If you haven’t started using live streaming, this is the right time to leverage its power.
Read the full article
