Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The much-awaited launch of Netflix in India has been met with a mixed response. While a lot of netizens have welcomed it, many critics have their doubts about its potential for success with Indian customers.
In a country where a large majority is happy with affordable yet mediocre content available on cable TV, it will be a challenge to lure these customers to the original and quality content that Netflix is famous for offering.
Key concerns and opportunities
The dependence of Netflix on high speed broadband connections will impede its penetration. Piracy is another issue it will need to tackle head-on. Yet, it cannot be denied that there surely exists a significant niche of progressive, affluent internet users to be tapped. Understanding the needs of this niche group, then, is crucial for Netflix’s success in India. The average Indian netizen is known for actively voicing opinions on social media platforms. These platforms rich in large amounts of customer data, which if mined and interpreted correctly, can provide valuable insights for businesses – particularly those operating in the consumer internet space. Engaging with one’s customers (existing and potential) on social media kills multiple birds with one stone – like improving brand value, strengthening customer relations, validation of strategic decisions with customer feedback, understanding customers’ sentiments, hidden aspirations and pain-points, and generation of sales leads.
Capturing the viewers’ engagement
A number of tools and methods are available for making sense out of social media data. Tracking simple metrics – like number of followers, shares, comments and likes – is useful but can only scratch the surface, since it is a passive strategy. An active strategy involves real-time engagement with audiences, and is therefore much more useful. This involves monitoring trending topics and modifying posts accordingly, studying the time-dependent variance in user outreach to optimize the timing of posts, investing in text-mining tools to analyze and summarize large volumes of user comments, appointing social media managers to instantly respond to users, conduct campaigns, generate awareness and forward potential leads to the sales team. Social media is also a powerful sandbox to test hypotheses by analyzing the response and sentiment of customers.
Role of analytics
Netflix is known for heavily using analytics on user data to optimize their content offerings. The same capabilities can be used to promote its newly launched services in India. It can run a campaign around discounts for referrals, to achieve exponential user-base growth. It can monitor users’ posts to identify which shows are talked about the most, and can also conduct a campaign around letting users add their favorite shows to a crowd-sourced wish-list. It can gauge the success of content experiments by analyzing sentiments in comments. It can also monitor forums on piracy websites to identify content which is highly in demand but not available on mainstream channels. It can also use feedback to introduce features specific to India – for example, enabling users to download episodes to view later when internet connection is not available, for example – during a train journey. It should also monitor social media accounts of competitors like HotStar to gain more insights into user preferences.
India’s internet community is growing fast to become the world’s largest. It is therefore vital for companies to use social media platforms to derive value for their businesses. At GlobCon, we specialize in providing social media solutions. Our strengths include customer engagement, brand enhancement, lead generation and analytics. Let us understand how we can create value for you!
The post Netflix launch in India & use of analytics appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.