Do you want more live stream engagement from your target audience? It’s getting more complex. The competition for viewer engagement is significant.
For example, in a 2020 study, the top three distractions for US employees working from home include social media, smartphones, and binge-watching content. These distractions make it difficult to maintain high levels of live stream engagement.
Whether you are focused on a product launch or other types of virtual events, video streaming technology can help. When you have the right content ideas, delivering engaging content gets much easier. Use these live streaming tips and examples below to create your rough plan to lift streaming engagement over time.
What Is A Live Stream?
A live stream is an online video broadcast where an individual or group of people appear on video to engage with their audience. As a rule of thumb, the live stream experience often includes screen sharing and individuals appearing on camera.
Typically, there are two ways that companies use a live stream to earn revenue. Some companies earn revenue by selling advertising space or sponsorships, especially in entertainment. Most live stream companies use it as part of their content strategy to attract prospects and fill their sales funnel.
Why Now Is The Time To Add Video Streaming To Your Marketing Strategy
Streaming sessions have fast become one of the best ways to attract prospects to your sales funnel. By 2027, the live stream market is projected to grow to $250 billion. The most successful early adopters of livestream video have been in the entertainment niche. Millions of people watch gamers play their favorite video games on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook.
The stream experience is not limited to gamers, though. Live stream sessions are increasingly being used to sell products (i.e., live shopping), promote products, and supercharge influencer marketing campaigns.
The growth of Live Stream Video Sessions is Booming, as Shown in the Following Statistics:
Investing in live streaming now means you have the opportunity to win in the marketplace as an early adopter.
This finding reveals that live streaming video experiences can become a profit center! Take note of media and entertainment brands looking for ways to grow their subscriber base!
There’s a reason why so many YouTubers and other online content creators encourage their viewers to like and comment on their videos. These techniques are proven to grow their audience.
That doesn’t mean you have to improvise every moment of the session. By all means, script out your content ideas so that you have a rough plan to follow.
Live stream content must be part of your marketing strategy if your target audience includes younger consumers.
This pattern is especially common in industries like apparel, fashion, and beauty, where a video demonstration adds value. It can be difficult to imagine if a piece of clothing or makeup is right for you. Seeing a popular influencer try out these products can make a big difference in conversions.
To grow engagement in your online events, live streaming deserves a place in your strategy. The good news is that you probably already have plenty of content ideas if your company has already published successful social media posts, blog posts, and other forms of content.
Four Companies Winning With Live Streaming
If you’re excited about the potential of adding live stream engagement to your company, your might be wondering: who else is succeeding with live streaming? Several businesses have are successfully using the power of live video to sell products, generate leads and grow their audiences.
The following examples show different types of online events where live streaming played a role
Bloomingdale’s Uses Livestreaming To Sell Products
The major US retailer invited Sandra Choi, creative director at Jimmy Choo, to present a 45-minute live stream session in 2021. To encourage immediate sales, the retailer offered a free personalized product for buying. All told, the company has run dozens of live streaming events to engage customers.
Burberry Partners With Twitch For A Live Stream
Promoting a product for immediate purchase is just one way to use a live stream. Luxury fashion brand Burberry streamed a fashion show in 2020 in partnership with Twitch. This event builds on the brand’s commitment to online events – it ran its first online event in 2010.
SAP Connects With B2B Customers With LinkedIn Live
SAP, a multi-billion dollar technology company based in Germany, has successfully used live video to grow its audience. The tech business has run its online show – SAP BTP Better Together: Customer Conversations – for over a year. Season 1 of the live stream show featured interviews with customers like Ferrara, the Gates Corporation, Evernex and others.
Eaton Answers Customer Questions Live
Eaton, a multi-national power management company, is successfully using LinkedIn Live to create live content. The business has created an “Ask the Experts” video series on various topics like career growth and diversity and inclusion. Eaton’s success shows that you don’t need to have celebrities or influences to make your live stream events interesting. Your employees have amazing expertise that is just waiting to be unlocked!
Outside of fashion and retail, live streaming experiences take different forms. For example, many B2B companies use webinars and other online events to connect with their prospects.
There is one challenge associated with focusing more resources on live stream events. Unlike prerecorded videos and webinars, live stream events require more effort. At a minimum, it is helpful to have at least two people – the presenter and the support person – involved in every live stream. Putting in the effort to create an excellent streaming experience, you will find it easier to maintain audience engagement.
Live Stream Engagement: 11 Ways To Get More Viewers
Now you’ve seen how companies are achieving wins with live streaming, it’s time to build your live streaming session. These tips can be used to enhance an existing live stream program or help you launch your first live stream session successfully.
- Set Your Marketing Goal For The Livestream
Planning and executing a successful live stream video experience will take time and resources. Before you commit to those resources, choose a key metric and goal to evaluate the success of your event. For example, you might track the number of orders for the promoted product or the number of leads generated.
- Start With What Works With Your Audience
Coming up with amazing content ideas is tough! To save time, review your analytics software to see which content has resonated with your audience in the past. A customer data platform makes it easier to attribute purchases and lead generation to specific content posts. If you don’t have a CDP in place, use other metrics like pageviews, shares, and engagement time to measure what’s working.
- Seek Out Product Demonstration Opportunities
As you plan your live stream experience, plan a few ways to show your product. For software, a demo with real data can work well. Even colleges and universities can use demonstrations – use a smartphone and show people around your campus. These product demonstrations can form the core of the live stream in a live shopping event. Or you can add a product demo to the end of a different event.
- Invite A Popular Influencer To Join You
There’s a reason why well-known authors and actors are often asked to give keynote talks at conferences – it helps to draw in the crowds. Apply the same principle to your streaming events by inviting an influencer to join you. When you strike the deal with the influencer, invite them to help you promote the event.
- Marketing The Live Stream Event Is Critical
Once you’ve chosen a live stream platform, it’s time to promote your event. You can do this by posting on your social media platforms, running paid ads, and sending email sequences to your list.
Give your audience to register for the event by clicking a link and entering email information. Once someone is registered, send them automatic email reminders to be more likely to attend.
By asking your audience to register, you get a clearer idea of how many viewers to expect. It also helps to include an event hashtag on social media. This can increase follower engagement and generate more excitement for your live stream.
- Select Your Live Stream Platform
There are two ways you can run a video streaming session: use an existing social platform or set up a branded platform that you control.
Social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch make it easy to start a live broadcast. If your brand already has a significant presence on one of those platforms, it makes sense to stream there. However, there is a downside to relying on a third party. Your audience may become easily distracted by notifications, messages, and other interactions.
To minimize interruptions and distractions, set up your own platform using a tool like Restream lets you broadcast on more than 30 social media platforms simultaneously.
A professional platform also comes with features that help you monetize your live stream, increase audience engagement, and run post-broadcast analytics. If you don’t go with Restream, consider other industry-leading platforms like Vimeo, Dacast or Brightcove.
Vimeo OTT offers a seamless integration with Arena Live Chat. This way you can provide your audience with better engagement experiences during your live events.
- Commit To A Livestreaming Schedule
Your live stream performance may have limited results when you first get started. That’s why a one-off approach to running a live stream is less likely to succeed. Instead, successful streaming strategies tend to commit to an ongoing schedule of streaming. Running a multi-year streaming show like Twitch’s Critical Role is one approach. Alternatively, consider setting up a three or part-event series tied to a specific theme like the holiday shopping season.
- Use Incentives, Urgency And Deadlines To Lift Engagement
Urgency is a time-tested principle in sales and marketing. It also applies to growing your live stream engagement. Remember Bloomingdale’s live streaming example from above? The company offered incentives to encourage people to show up at the event and place an order during the event. There are multiple ways to implement this strategy: discounts, limited edition products or offering early access.
- Get Inspiration From Other Live Streams
When you focus too much on your live stream engagement metrics, staying creative and fresh gets more difficult. Certainly, measurement matters (we’ll cover it in the next tip). However, engagement also requires ideas and inspiration!
That’s why we’re giving you the performance to spend an afternoon hanging out on live streaming platforms. Ideally, look for streaming shows and episodes that are appealing to a similar audience. If you don’t find any streams like that, look at how entertainment-oriented streamers keep their viewer count high throughout their videos. For example, look at how often live stream content creators interact with their audience via the live chat during their stream. In addition, look at how streamers presented sponsored content and messages to their audience.
Making time to study those who have mastered the art of live stream engagement is one of the best ways to shorten your learning curve.
- Level Up Your Audio and Video Equipment
Upgrading the quality of your gear is a smart way to make your live stream come through loud and clear. Tools like the Shure MV88+ Video Kit connect directly to your smartphone for enhanced audio and video quality. It comes with a microphone, tripod, and headphones. You can also stand out with a multi-camera setup by purchasing software like OBS Studio, Wirecast, or VidBlasterX.
- Measure And Optimize Your Live Stream
The final way to improve your engagement and conversion numbers over time is to measure each streaming event. Start with the easy to measure metrics like viewer count, activity levels in your live chat and traffic on your website. If your live stream event includes coupons or other trackable calls to action, measure those factors as well. With each live stream you run, taking 15-30 minutes to analyze what worked and what didn’t will gradually lift your engagement numbers over time.
The One App That Lifts Live Stream Engagement Every Time
Your live stream events should be a two-way street. You present and your audience raises questions and gives you feedback. That’s why adding Live Chat to your website is so important. Arena Live Chat only takes a few minutes to install and set up.
