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The biggest streaming companies on the market are now locked in a full-force battle to both keep their customers loyal and bring in new subscribers. While some companies may be bigger or smaller within the crowd, each is battling for a share of the same audience, with most customers sticking to only one or two services at most. So what are the key tactics to look out for?

Exclusive Content

One of the oldest sales techniques in the world is having something to sell that people simply cannot get anywhere else. When the earliest services like Netflix started, their content was simply the same as traditional TV except available online. Nowadays, streaming companies are able to license shows and programming that is exclusive to their platform, including some of the biggest and most popular shows around.

Beyond this, the largest streaming services are now able to produce their own content, either by sponsoring the production or directly producing them in-house. It has reached the point that the dynamic is often flipped; some traditional TV channels are now licensing stream-only shows instead of the other way around.

Special Offers

Depending on exactly where you live, there’s a good chance that you’ll see a wide range of advertising for a lot of different streaming services. Online companies often thrive on their marketing far more than their brick-and-mortar counterparts, and so they have become adept at using that particular toolset. This isn’t limited to streaming services of course, and they’ve picked up a few pointers from online veterans such as the online casino industry who have been in the same area for at least a decade more.

The two industries already share a lot of the same ideas. One look at the website design of top streaming services and big online casinos will show you how the designs have been refined, and that’s not even mentioning things like the sign-up bonuses and loyalty programs commonly found in both.

Added Features

When the shows or films themselves isn’t enough to give customers that one final push, services will then turn to something that makes their offering a little more special. In some cases, this could be things like exclusive extras like live sports matches, in other cases it could be things like extra roaming allowances to access the content while you’re on the move or allowance for VR technology.

For something more unique, there’s the example of Netflix’s pioneering interactive films made possible via their proprietary video player system. Much like some old books, these films let the viewer make choices at key points in the story that will have an effect on the ongoing events. In some cases these are just slight adjustments that lead to the same ending point, but in others like the iconic Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, the viewer can majorly impact the outcome.

At the time of writing, there’s still no clear ‘winner’ in the streaming world, and if anything the number of services looks set to expand even further. Expect to see even more clever ideas and creative approaches coming out because of it!