Expanding your OTT service to multiple locations can help you to reach a wider and more diverse audience, thereby increasing your revenue potential.
To make this a thriving practice, you must adopt a strategy combining technical expertise, strategic planning, and a deep understanding of local markets and regulations. It would require you to adapt to technological changes and consumer behaviors and keep an eye on the evolving regulatory environment.
How can you accomplish all of this?
This blog post provides a comprehensive guide to deploying OTT services across multiple states and countries, taking into account local nuances. It covers:
- Drafting a fail-proof localization strategy
- Infrastructure and Technical Considerations
- Customer Support and Communication
- Data Analytics and Performance Measurement
Drafting a fail-proof localization strategy
To run a successful OTT service across multiple locations, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of different market segments.
This requires thorough market research and implementing a proper tracking mechanism that provides detailed insights into user behavior in the targeted regions.
The implementation of this strategy involves multiple layers. Let’s explore each of them:
Customizing user interfaces for different markets
User expectations for visuals and user interface templates can vary across different locations. This includes the prevalent language in the region, the design interface, and other experiential factors that can significantly impact the experience for users.
For instance, viewers in some regions may be comfortable with English, while others may prefer to interact or stream content only in their local language. Similarly, viewers in certain areas may be more accustomed to accessing a bold design interface, while others may prefer something more subtle.
It's essential to consider these nuances while designing a user interface to ensure it is accessible and user-friendly for all users, regardless of location.
In this respect,
- Ensure your OTT platform’s landing pages and streaming interfaces are in a language the region selects.
- Make sure the design speaks in a way that resonates with users.
- Focus on boosting the quality of experience of your users.
Explore: How does Flow Sports improve user experience?
Good to know: Merchant’s deep integration allows instant access to over 170 countries with 18 major languages supported. It’s a few easy steps to customizing user interfaces for different markets.
Adapting marketing and promotional campaigns to local preferences
It is essential to note that the main population groups in different countries can differ, and you need to customize your marketing and promotional campaigns according to regional preferences.
In certain regions, more people may be more sensitive to pricing when buying a product or service. Therefore, it is crucial to provide them with more affordable options with basic features, as opposed to regions in which people are willing to spend more money on advanced features.
Moreover, the peak season for subscriptions may differ from one region to another. It is essential to identify such periods when more viewers are likely to subscribe to a service, such as during the holiday season.
Create culturally relevant messaging that resonates with local audiences to ensure your promotional campaigns are successful. Additionally, you can use tactics like coupons to drive subscription purchases and retain audiences on the verge of churning.
Infrastructure and Technical Considerations
OTT success requires attention to payments, monetization, currency, and taxation. Here’s what you can do:
Provide local payment methods
Different payment methods are prevalent across various regions, so you must ensure the preferred and familiar choice is available during checkout. This is critical to getting users to trust you and pay for the service.
For instance, individuals in some countries may prefer credit cards, while others may find popular wallets more convenient.
It's crucial to provide users with what they want; otherwise, you may lose otherwise convinced and willing-to-pay customers. Additionally, if you're using SVOD as your monetization model, you must ensure a smooth setup for recurring billing using that payment method.
Good to know: Cleeng Merchant has ready-made payment integrations to support simplified recurring billing. The Merchant API supports 186 payment options, letting customers pay how they want, using methods they know and trust. Merchant is engineered to support 1-click registration and payments, enabling OTT providers to process millions of secure transactions with a seamless customer experience every time. It supports payment gateway integrations with leading payment processors like Adyen or PayPal.
Require a specific payment processing method of your choice? You can integrate Merchant with a payments connector!
Cover local tax management and billing
Compliance with local taxation requirements is essential to avoid fines, penalties, and reputational damage. To ensure compliance, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the laws and regulations related to taxable services in each region. Keep yourself updated with the evolving tax policies and new interpretations, codes, and court rulings to avoid confusion and stay ahead of the game, even if you are an experienced tax consultant.
Good to know: Cleeng Merchant adapts automatically to the customer’s local tax codes, ensuring the correct application of taxes at the point of purchase with a unified subscription billing system. The dedicated payments team handles the financial and legal complexity of payment processes.
Moreover, with Cleeng as the Merchant of Record (MoR), you can enjoy respite to eliminate compliance hassles, fees, and penalties. That’s not all - through the strategic partnership with Avalara, you can implement an optimized checkout, consolidate multiple reports and finances, handle chargebacks with banks, and maximize credit card settings for optimal acceptance rates.
Read More: OUTtv’s approach to easy reporting & tax management
Explore Multi-Currency Pricing options (for International OTT Broadcasters)
Implementing multi-currency pricing is a great way to boost sales of OTT services in multiple regions.
Multi-currency pricing (MCP) is a payment service that enables you to set and manage pricing in various foreign currencies while still receiving settlement and reporting in your home currency. This can help attract customers from different countries by offering them a convenient and seamless payment experience in their local currency.
Implementing multi-currency pricing helps to
- Set differential pricing across countries easily.
- Maintain control of your psychological pricing strategies across regions.
- Avoid final price fluctuation per country due to different tax and/or exchange rates.
- Reduce customer service inquiries/chargebacks.
Live and on-demand video users will appreciate knowing purchase costs at the time of sale, while broadcasters benefit from an expanded customer base.
Good to know: You can easily enable multi-currency pricing via the Cleeng API. You can define where to sell tickets, season passes, or subscriptions per specific country.
Consider different monetization approaches for specific markets
Developing effective pricing strategies is a powerful way to ensure success in the OTT industry. It involves tailoring your pricing to match each market's economic conditions and consumer expectations.
Local income levels, purchasing power, and competitors' pricing strategies can vary significantly between markets, so it's important to consider these factors when developing your pricing strategy.
Some regions prefer a free, ad-supported model, while others are more likely to pay for premium, subscription-based services. Ultimately, it's your responsibility to understand what your target audience wants and to provide a pricing model that meets their needs.
To implement this,
- You may explore dynamic pricing.
- Evaluating whether a freemium (free with optional paid upgrades) or a premium-only model suits each market is a good approach.
- What’s also essential is tailoring your monetization strategies to align with local cultural sensitivities.
Some markets may be more receptive to certain types of advertising, sponsorships, or product placements, while others may prefer a cleaner, subscription-based model. Consider offering bundled packages that include your OTT service and other relevant products or services.
- Another helpful idea is collaborating with local partners for cross-promotion and bundling opportunities to enhance users' value proposition.
Ensure you cover all local regulations
Complying with local laws, regulations, content standards, and guidelines is of utmost importance in protecting user privacy and avoiding legal issues. Adhering to local data protection laws, such as GDPR (in the EU) and CCPA (in California), is crucial.
To ensure compliance,
- Conduct a thorough, region-wise analysis to familiarize yourself with the various regulations.
- Based on the compliance requirements, identify and document the types of data collected, processed, and stored by your OTT service.
- Next, ensure appropriate handling and protection measures are in place.
- In some regions, you may have to obtain explicit consent from users before collecting personal information and providing easy-to-understand explanations of your data collection, sharing, and practices.
Good to know: Merchant supports General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance and tax compliance software integration. With it, you can focus on business without worrying about fees and penalties.
Customer Support and Communication
Providing excellent customer support and communication is key to delivering a positive user experience, addressing user concerns, and maintaining a high-quality streaming experience.
Streaming customers often have questions about billing, subscriptions, and payment methods. Such support enhances user satisfaction and understanding, leading to appreciation, engagement, and opportunities to cross-sell or upsell.
Additionally, it is important to recognize that today's users are empowered and expect exceptional service quality and responsive assistance.
They may cancel their subscriptions and switch to other streaming providers if they don't receive it. Focusing on customer service ensures good experiences and mitigates the risk of losing customers.
Improving customer support and communication includes,
- Providing prompt support in local languages.
- Making sure your customer support representatives are fluent in the languages spoken in your target markets.
- Ensuring they efficiently address user queries in multiple languages to accommodate the diverse user base in different regions.
- Training your support team to communicate to match each market's cultural nuances and preferences. This includes adapting email communications, notifications, and customer service interactions to resonate with the local audience.
- Ensuring support is available around the clock to accommodate users in different time zones, as users from various locations may have different preferences for when they seek assistance.
Good to know: Hi5 is an AI-powered, specialized OTT customer service tool capable of supporting viewers in 29 languages. It provides access to embeddable self-care assets, real-time customer analytics, impressive service level agreements, and email and chat support channels in multiple languages to control a service.
The support team specializes in authentication and e-commerce. This ensures end customers have one point of contact for all inquiries, both billing and non-billing related.
Moreover, it supports real-time customer analytics for every stage of the subscription lifecycle. This includes transaction history, contact reasons, and refund requests to support and simplify your subscription management. The best part - it does all of this without overshooting your support budget.
Data Analytics and Performance Measurement
Finally, any strategy is insufficient without diving into subscriber analytics to understand user behavior and how it maps against your different efforts.
Leveraging analytics is key regardless of the initiatives you plan to expand your service across regions. After all, studying user feedback is an excellent place to discover insights to fine-tune your strategies for continuous optimization. To put this into action,
- Make sure you track the essential OTT performance metrics without breaching privacy laws.
- Study the metrics you collect closely to identify any red flags or patterns that deserve attention.
- Implement the necessary changes in your strategies and tactics to improve results.
- Using a tool that simplifies making sense of large amounts of data is an excellent and practical performance measurement approach.
Explore: RED+ uses OTT analytics to fuel 504% annual MRR growth
Conclusion
Running an OTT service in multiple locations is a lucrative option for broadcasters looking to broaden their customer base and expand revenues.
Achieving these successfully requires a multi-pronged approach. This spans designing excellent customer experiences and adapting marketing and promotions to local preferences. It also demands building these on appropriate infrastructural machinery to monetize and comply with regional requirements. Finally, ensuring excellent customer support and focusing on evolving user preferences are ways to keep the offering relevant.
Would you like to grow your streaming revenues and boost ROI? Explore Cleeng’s specialized OTT solutions to launch in multiple markets easily and efficiently.
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