When launching an OTT platform, the first thing you need to do is to choose an OTT solutions partner that best suits your needs and budget. Content streaming technology providers should offer some basic features, like secure video hosting, options for content monetization methods, control over the content, customizable streaming platform features, and smooth content delivery. There are quite a few secure video players that offer the whole range of over-the-top video streaming tech solutions: Dacast, Vplayed, Ustream, Brightcove, to name a few.

"Know your audience"- don't you agree? Like any other business, your soon-to-launch content streaming service should target a specific buying persona based on age, territory, gender, occupation, and other criteria. Identifying your ideal customer profile is crucial for an efficient marketing approach, the right OTT platform design and features, wise platform pricing decisions and content acquisition strategies. Ideally, your business, a streaming platform, should solve your audience's problems and satisfy its needs to make customers choose your OTT platform over competition and stay loyal to it as long as possible.

At this step it is time to choose and acquire content rights. Television content rights are usually acquired for a specific period of time, territory, and content monetization method. A combination of all the above and content specifications, like its quality, year of production, and format will form a price that usually ranges from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Once the target audience is identified and market research is done, you should build a content acquisition strategy. Identify an average length of content that best suits your audience's content consumption habits and select the top few genres that will be of interest to your viewers.

It won't be easy to build a large subscription base for your new OTT platform if nobody knows about it – this is where your marketing and PR strategy kicks in! Again, the strategy should be built according to your buying persona: where to advertise (TikTok, Google, Facebook, Wechat, VK, Instagram), when to advertise, how to advertise, and what creative assets to use are the key questions to answer here. News and article coverage is also highly recommended for B2C and B2B purposes of your business – customers will get to know your offer, and potential and current partners will be introduced to your business.

Congratulations! Your new entertainment platform have been launched by this step. The only thing left to do now is to regularly monitor and listen to signals from your existing customers. Numbers and figures analysis will tell a lot about your audience's actual viewing habits, genre, and format preferences, with which you will be able to fill in the gaps in marketing and content strategies and adjust accordingly.