SVOD or Subscription Video on Demand is one of the three popular revenue generation models for OTT platforms. In this form of video monetization, you typically charge a fixed fee monthly or yearly to give customers access to your video content.
Customers love this sort of system as they have to shell out a small monthly fee and can choose to subscribe only when they want. Due to this reason, the SVOD segment is projected to grow to $71,237 million this year. The revenues, too, are expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.04% until 2025.
While this monetization strategy can help you attract new customers, it may be detrimental for you as most customers prefer a monthly fee rather than an annual one. This means that they can choose to stop using your OTT platform the very next month.
In such a situation, how can you grow your revenues?
Here are some powerful strategies that you can leverage to boost your revenues from SVOD.
3 Ways to Grow Your SVOD Revenue
SVOD is the monetization method of choice for most popular OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and others. So, if you’ve got an OTT platform with an SVOD revenue model, here’s how you can grow your revenue even with your existing customer base.
1. Offer Annual Plans
One of the simplest ways of driving up your SVOD revenues is by pushing your customers to opt for your annual plans over monthly ones. You could also offer 3-months and 6-months subscription plans.
The idea here is to ensure that the customers stick around for a longer time with your OTT platform. This customer retention can help in reducing your customer acquisition costs as you’d not have to go looking out for new customers each month.
What’s more?
You also get the entire subscription amount in one go. This helps you scale up your marketing campaigns quickly and acquire more customers.
But why would the customers opt for a long-term plan?
Simple — discounts.
You can offer them discounts for every long-term subscription package. As a result, they’d be more inclined to opt for those packages. This would especially be the case if the discount is quite steep.
This is the exact strategy leveraged by Disney+ Hotstar in India. They’re offering about a 58% discount on their annual plan over the monthly one. This is one reason why it accounts for nearly 80% of SVOD revenues in India with Netflix, even though they have only 50% of the subscribers.
Image via Disney+ Hotstar
2. Acquire Viral Content
In the end, it’s the content that you provide that attracts people to your OTT platform. To increase your SVOD revenue, you should identify content that has the potential to go viral.
Such content can help you quickly scale up your customer base as people would subscribe to your OTT platform for that very content.
For instance, Scam 1992, the hit Indian series, helped SonyLIV boost its average daily premium subscriptions by 143%. The spike continued for well over two weeks.
3. Provide Different Subscription Packages
One of the other ways through which you can grow your SVOD revenues is by offering different subscription packages. For instance, some potential customers might find your basic package pretty expensive.
To get these leads to subscribe to your OTT platform, you can develop more affordable packages.
Netflix, for instance, offered three plans in India, starting at INR 499/month, which was quite steep compared to other OTT platforms. To boost their subscriber base, they came out with a mobile-only plan that costs just INR 199/month. This has helped them grow their market share in the country.
Image via Netflix
SVOD is a promising method of generating revenue for your OTT platform. To make the most of it, you need to create a reliable OTT platform and put up great content. Want to start your OTT platform?
