Top 20 Benefits of Live Streaming for Businesses
You know how popular live streaming is, these days. People go live on their social channels to showcase their products, conduct a webinar, or teach a skill.
There are so many streamers now, and they’ve got so many reasons to stream their content.
If we see this in numbers, imagine a person watching 3 full day streams continuously. Now if you multiply this watch time with the entire population on this earth, that’s how much live stream audience are consuming content. And that’s huge 🤯!
But why did live streaming become so popular, and why do businesses take this option seriously?
Let’s review its benefits one at a time.
Table of Contents
What is Live Streaming?
Live streaming is the technology of broadcasting video or audio content to a wide range of audience in real-time, over the internet.
Now, that’s a quick definition of live streaming as a technology. Let us elaborate on this more for you:
Individuals or businesses that want to take the value they have – products, services, announcements, classes, shows, events or whatever, had only 2 options before live streaming:
- They can take their content to only a small group, when there are limitations in technology.
- They need to present their products/ service out, in person, which costs them a fortune.
Indeed, this was never a wise option for individuals or small businesses as the budget was not friendly.
Thankfully, for the first time on June 24, 1993, a band called Severe Tire Damage performed live, and their performance was streamed over a network called Mbone. That was the first time people came to know they could take their content to the world through streaming.
Later, an American-based company and internet streaming media delivery software provider named RealNetworks, came up with the first media player named RealPlayer, and broadcasted a live baseball match. This was the next step in the advancements of live streaming.
Since then, live streaming has improved a lot and now we are here with machine learning algorithms, AI integrations like Plex and AR & VR taking over the streaming experiences.
Likewise, technology is spreading everywhere. As we progress, live streaming, which was once limited to certain players, can now be integrated to any device, making it accessible for every individual across the globe.
If you have a YouTube or Facebook account, you can just pause reading this blog and go live to tell how amazing your read is so far, and how excited you are for the upcoming sections.
Cool, right?
Top 20 Benefits Of Live Streaming For Businesses
What has changed? Why is live streaming more popular than before and why is it becoming a sensational option for businesses to sell their products/services?
If you’d ask us, we’d say everything about it has become much better than before.
One simple example is, people had to sit in front of a TV or a desktop and stare at the stream for long hours to catch up the experience of the event fully.
But now, they can simply play the stream on their mobile, watch a match or an event, while having their coffee, traveling on a bus, or taking a walk.
Convenience took a big turn, in a good way!
Likewise, we’ve got a lot of other reasons why creators, businesses and audiences love live streams.
1. Quality Equivalent To In-person Experience
Live streaming lets you present as if you have a fan or follower or a loyal customer at the front seat. You can deliver a stream at the highest quality, as if people are at the venue.
On the technical front, this is made possible with a good CDN (content delivery network). So what does a CDN do?
When you stream a content, your video data may clog your servers and your viewers may only see a loading screen for hours.
But CDN acts as a middleman server that stores your stream data and sends only a few seconds of data to the viewers. This is why your viewers will not face any lag in your streams.
2. Engage Audience Directly
People are not going to keep quiet when they are excited about your content. Just like the roar and applause in a live stadium, you can enable features like likes, live comments, claps, hearts and all other options for viewers to express how they feel then and there, when you stream your content.
How amazing would it be to make people feel a personal connection to your content? This is one reason people choose as an option to take the content to the world.
Where there’s no option to accommodate a million people at once, live streaming lets you achieve it effortlessly.
3. No Venue Limitations
No you need not negotiate to the venue manager for the rent and date availability. Live concerts and events are amazing, there’s no comparison. But, it’s just not convenient and budget-friendly for all kinds of events.
Suppose you only want a small group to attend the event and they are all across different parts of the world, the convenience of arrangements is not easy for you, and you may have to spend all of your yearly budget for events on just one event.
On the other hand, people you invite have to travel all the way from the other part of the world, which might be time consuming and tiring for your attendees.
4. Easy To Manage Audience
Your hall is full and your event has started. Now, the experience also includes how well the audience is guided, how organized things happen especially when audience participation happens in the event.
Sometimes, you may face heckles from the audience, who are not quite impressed with your content.
But what if you’ve got a good number of organizers to handle them all smoothly and professionally. This likely will be the experience of viewers after a live stream, all under control, at ease and clean.
5. Huge Sales Conversions
People are not going to knock your doors and pour in all their money to get your products/ services, until and unless they really know your brand well.
But this is no longer a fairytale in business, as streams give you the opportunity to give viewers a branded experience, and build brand loyalty.
Results: you see conversions happen organically. No hard sweat, literally.
6. Use Any Content Type
Don’t ever think live streaming is only for videos and audios. Yes, most of the streamers use the technology for these media, but that’s not the limit. You can distribute your text, multimedia, blog posts, podcasts and images, all of them via streams.
There are different ways to take your content to your potential customers/ audience. There’s no limits. Some interesting live streaming solution providers are breaking the barriers in the presentation methodologies. A master’s in business analytics provides insights to enhance streaming strategies.
7. Reuse Content
With live streaming as a marketing option, hey, you can reuse almost all of your content. You can make the stream recording available for viewers on-demand, create reels or posts for social media campaigns, draft blogs, extract audio as podcasts and all other innovative ways to distribute the content.
This is a great way for driving the audience to your content who were not able to make it to the live stream. It’s just one content repurposed in different ways, and reaching audiences in different forms. whichever attracts, converts the viewer as a customer eventually.
8. Ease and Convenience
Live streaming may sound like it’s a technically complex technology. But the reality is, this is one of the easiest-to-handle features to take your content to the audience.
You’ll just need a video & audio recorder, like a camera or just your mobile phone, and a trustworthy streaming solution.
You’ll simply need to record your content and upload it to the platform. That’s it. That’s all you need to do to take your content to millions of audiences across this globe. Easy, right?
9. Understand Your Audience Better
How would you know if your user really liked your show, if they enjoyed it, which part of it was top-notch, and which one was boring?
Is there a scale or measure? Or do you think it is possible to get feedback from every person who was sitting in the audience? No way!
But with live streams, it is possible to understand how many people were interested in watching your stream, how many actively engaged, if they liked a part of your show, or they disliked any. Plus, you will also get to answer their questions, and conduct polls to understand their preferences.
This is not a feasible option when it comes to live events. This is one of the biggest benefits of a live stream over a live event – to measure the engagement metrics during a stream.
10. Increase Brand Awareness
Streaming is in fact the easiest way to increase your brand visibility across the globe. Since you have the option to promote your product/ service to your customers in one shot, you’ll have a huge potential to take your brand to a wide range of audience.
This is especially even more effective when you choose to build your own live streaming platform. Since you will have total control over the content and features, a live streaming app will give you all the power to deliver a branded live streaming experience to your users.
11. Streaming On Mobile
People carry their mobile phones everywhere. Which means, you can reach them out with your stream everywhere.
Since people can simply click a live stream notification and join a stream, this can become your go-to option to take your content to a huge audience when compared to other marketing channels.
12. Humanizes Your Brand
Live streaming brings out the human-side of your brand easily. When you go live, people see a real person representing your brand. The more sense of connection they feel with this person, the more authentic and real they feel your brand is.
Instead of a 100 images or text posts of your products/ services, one human speaking the language of the audience, in a tone that is both convincing and friendly can have an adverse effect on how your audience sees your brand.
The more connected they feel, the more likely they are to buy your product/ service.
13. Distraction-Free Streaming
Open a video platform and start watching a video. In the next 3 minutes, you will see an ad or a popup, if you do not commit to their premium subscription. That’s too much of a disturbance when all you need is taking your event or content to your audience and making them feel the complete essence of it.
On the other hand, you could use live streams as a distraction-free channel to communicate with your customers for long hours. This gives them a more connected experience, rather than getting carried away by uninvited content or ads, in the middle of an experience.
14. Monetize Your Streams
Who wouldn’t want to convert their content into money. You can use your streaming channel as your money-generating machine, through subscriptions or on-demand content. Wise idea, right?
You can go with 3 different monetization options:
- Ad-Based Video on Demand (AVOD) – you’ll earn through the ads people watch on your platform.
- Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) – People can subscribe to your channel for a monthly recurring fee.
- Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD) – Viewers can rent each content for a small fee.
This is in fact one of the easiest ways media and entertainment use to keep money flowing into their business.
15. Enhances Social Media Presence
People use at least 2 social media apps on their apps for entertainment.
This significantly increases user engagement when you compare it to posting pre-recorded content.
When you stream your content on social media, it significantly helps your content reach your audience easily. This actually performs well on any platform when compared to any text based or image posts.
Also, the algorithm of social media is designed to show live streams more frequently than any other type of content. This is an added advantage. Your users’ Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube accounts are more likely to notify live videos prominently, attracting more viewers.
16. Customizable Video Player
This advantage is applicable when you stream your content on your own platform. When you integrate a live streaming API into your organization’s app, the API can provide the app a customizable HTML video player.
You can actually customize this player with your brand colors, logo and other functional elements and give your users a more personalized experience.
Plus, you’ll have all the control over its security and responsiveness. All these tiny details can enhance the experience that your users will have in your app.
17. Cost-Effectiveness
Live streaming is not costly when you go with a professional streaming platform. Since the platform itself comes with a CDN, you need not spend a fortune on it. Especially, if your content is going to be longer and might consume heavy bandwidth, the cost of CDN might empty your pockets. Plus, you may also need to hire a developer to set things up for your platform.
On the other hand, streaming services come with these features and you don’t want to spend a dime on it. The only investment you will make is an affordable live streaming platform that will come with all the pre-built features you need to just install the solution, upload your content and go live.
18. Integrations With Daily-use Tools
People use a wide range of tools on a daily basis. Live streaming solution lets you integrate them on your platform so people could use them, besides enjoying your content.
You can include a variety of plugins, extensions and services like mixers, encoders and CRMs to make your streams the best out there.
19. Security And Privacy
The darker side of live streaming is piracy. Hackers can easily steal your content, tamper them or reuse them under their name and sell them off. This is in fact a threat to your business and its integrity.
Any abusive or profane tampering could lead to loss of viewer trust on your platform. This is where live streaming platforms ensure that these streams are protected with utmost security and privacy protocols in a way they cannot be downloaded or screen recorded.
This ensures that you can save your streams, your business and your user base.
The streaming solutions take care of these security threats with measures like password protection, Domain/ IP restrictions and tokenized security.
20. Seamless User Experience
We’ve mentioned over 19 benefits above. But the best of them all is the ability of live streams to offer seamless user experience.
When compared to any other channels, live streaming offers a more personalized experience to users, giving them a sense of authenticity and an opportunity to connect with your product/ service easily.
The Easiest Way To Build Your Own Live Streaming Platform
There are a lot more advantages we could write of live streaming. We’ve covered the topmost of them. If you are here, we could see your interest in implementing live streaming as a strategy in your business.
We’ve got you the best recommendation.
- Build your own live streaming platform
- Build it with MirrorFly
Why do we insist on this? Because, when you stream on just another streaming platform, you’ll stream it for a mix of audience and that might dilute the focus of your business and consume a lot of time to reach the right customers.
Rather, building your own streaming platform, attracting them through social channels and giving them a touch of your brand on your own app, is where potential sign ups happen.
And to build one, MirrorFly is an excellent option. We’ve tested around 13 tools and we found MirrorFly is built for all.
The live streaming solution is 100% customizable, and you can actually white-label it. This itself is a testimony to the kind of experience you can deliver to your viewers. Plus, you will have full access to its source code, so you can customize everything from its features to security, which is not available with any of the other providers we tried out.
Plus, they offer 1000+ real-time communication features like in-app messaging, video calling and voice calling. You can use all of them to drive seamless interaction between your users.
This is how MirrorFly stands out! If you are impressed, contact their experts now, discuss your idea, check the feasibility and launch your own live streaming app in the next 48 hrs!
Frequently Asked Questions:
Live streaming enables people to connect and interact in real time. Compared with other recorded videos and traditional connections, viewers can ask questions, leave comments, and get instant feedback from viewers.
Live streaming supports brands, enterprises, and gamers to get exposure and connection with potential audiences in real time. This helps in sales conversions, webinars, product launches, and monetization options.
Streaming is highly beneficial for creators and enterprises to reach their audience in the most affordable and interactive ways. Compared with other channels, live streaming engages with chat, audio, video, and interactions in real time.
Live streaming connects hosts and viewers in real-time by seeing and hearing voices and faces with consistent brand authority and loyalty.
Live streaming is suitable for all industries where businesses want to share brand authority and impressions, teach about products/services, and engage the audience. Industries that are using live streaming are education, finance, telecommunications, telehealth, sales and marketing, fitness, and more.
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Krishi Shivasangaran is a digital nomad and a veteran of Digital Marketing strategies. She is passionate about learning the newest trends in Live Video Call. And, when she's off-role, she loves to sketch and make people realize the true color of nature.