It’s Friday 13th, and you know what that means: if you aren’t a party breaker, you won’t walk underneath a ladder and you will stay out of the way of any black cats. Since your potential clients are already in the mood, you may as well hop on the bandwagon and use this day to grab the attention of a wide audience and promote your brand, sales, and products or services. If you’re looking for ideas, these 13 marketing strategies will do the trick.

 

1. Remove the fear, embrace Friday the 13th
Hiding under the bed simply won’t cut it. Friday the 13th is a great day to craft unique and creative marketing campaign and scoop up as many extra sales. You don’t believe us? Marketwatch reports that Friday the 13th is traditionally a good day for the stock market, with stocks ticking upwards of 55.63%.

2. Make Friday the 13th an actual lucky day for your customers.
Consumers (always!) have a burning desire to jump on the exclusivity bandwagon and get their hands on something special before they miss out. Take advantage of that. It will help you to create a boost in engagement, increase the relationship with your target audience and reinforce brand presence. That said, it’s a good thing to come up with a variety of unique marketing ideas that will help you stand out from the crowd.

3. Engage your audience on social media in a fun and unusual way. People pay extra attention during special days — think: visuals, blogs, promos or anything else which can come to your mind. You want these things to go as viral as possible and Friday the 13th-themed content will help you to spread the word immensely. Don’t just post… connect with your customers and follow the golden rule for any marketing campaign — don’t hard sell. Your audience knows you’re after sales, so use this special date focus on things that your audience needs and would find valuable enough.

 

4. Create SLASHING prices slogan and run sale or promo featuring the number 13. Give your customers one reason for freaking out on Friday the 13th — your killer sales. How about giving 13% off their purchase? Or even choose 13 products to put on sale? Communicate it so that it resonates with Friday the 13th and gets your customers excited. Discounts and deals can be any business’ secret weapon. Why? Because people love saving money, and they love brands that make that possible.

5. Make a countdown to Friday the 13th and — launch a new product or service. Teaser campaigns add an air of mystery to the product or service launch. And can you think of a better day for something like that? Make a countdown to Friday the 13th and build hype for your consumers anticipating the launch. This will maximize word-of-mouth credence for your brand and your products.

 

6. Have a donation day.
Make this day happy for someone and get creative with your offerings. Why not donate 13% of your total sales on Friday the 13th? Or $0.13 on every purchase made to a charity or a cause that fit your product/service. Create a large, and clickable donation button, and keep the form short and sweet.

7. Create a Friday the 13th playlist and share it with your audience. Some people celebrate Friday the 13th by watching Jason Voorhees, the man behind the mask, while others hiding in their room just waiting for it to end. Why not entertain them with your playlist filled with songs from the movies, games, and tracks that fit the Friday-the-13th vibe. Be creative, let your followers in and create a unique bond that could improve engagement with your business.

 

8. There’s nothing spooky or unlucky about black cats so embrace a black cat photo contest.
Can you think of a single cat owner who doesn’t have piles of photos of their furry friend? Yup, people love taking pictures of their cats (and we can’t blame them!) but the only thing they love more is sharing those pictures with others. Oh, perfect timing! Create some super simple rules and invite your followers to enter your black cat photo contest. This can be a great way to get in front of new people that perhaps would not have heard of you — while engaging the existing ones.

9. Use horror icons and prepare a killer email campaign to make your audience laugh. Friday the 13th is a fantastic opportunity to boost business and increase sales, and email marketing should be a key tool in your arsenal. Forget funny memes that are all over the internet anyway. Create an eye-catching newsletter featuring horror icons such as Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger and say things that match who you are.

 

10. Engage your staff in fun activity and post pics on social media.
If you’re already engaging with your followers and fans, bring some Friday the 13th mood into the mix (and if you’re not actively engaging — there’s no better time to start, right?). Connect with your audience on a more personal level and involve your entire staff in your social media marketing. Take a picture of that guy in the office who hates everything about Friday the 13th. Decorate your office and share photos of your entire team or place a ladder and photograph other people’s reactions. Not only will you have a great time but with one snap from a camera phone, your business could be all over social media — all that while giving people an insightful look into your brand and its culture.

11. Highlight specific products/services in Friday 13th themed collection.
All the big brands are already doing this (Back in 2015, Nike launched Friday The 13th-inspired sneakers called LeBron 13 or Baygon’s playful print campaign with Jason Voorhees that encourages consumers to face their worst fears.) By grouping related products or services into Friday 13th themed collections, you can create a process of discovery for your customers while showing that you have put in the time and effort into providing an enjoyable shopping experience for them.

12. Embrace the day and all the weird superstitious meanings and write a special blog featuring the number 13.
Yes, you should definitely ride that wave. Use anything related to fear, luck, superstition, etc. and write a blog that will convey the message your business sends throughout the year

 

. For example, 13 Reasons why organic is better for your skin, 13 common outbound marketing superstitions, how much of a role does luck play in business, etc.

 

Your landing page call to action doesn’t have to be boring and all business-like. You can totally have fun with them. And Friday 13th themed landing pages are great for that because you can convert all those superstitious feelings into successful sales. A nice and creatively designed landing page template for announcing your special offers or discounts makes a good foundation for building lasting relationships with your customers all year long.

 

Even though many people think Friday the 13th is cursed, you can see that there are numerous ways you can (and should) use on this day to market your brand, products or services. It’s a great opportunity for an agile brand to outshine the competition and catch some extra exposure — while having so much fun!

Nothing has shown the importance of video streaming more than the current Covid-19 pandemic, during which billions of people around the world remained at home, glued to their screens.

 

With global industry sales for OTT reaching US$ 332.5 by 2025, and big names like Netflix, HBO, Disney, and Amazon investing heavily in the industry, Over-The-Top (OTT) media is fast becoming an essential category for app developers and advertisers. 

This ecosystem continues to grow, as does the competition for viewers. After 10 years of near-total dominance, Netflix now has an increased number of competitors. OTT is no longer a niche but a mass market.

 

It is one of the biggest global trends, and it keeps growing in every market.

 

A new report from Juniper Research predicts there will be nearly two billion active subscriptions to video-on-demand services by 2025, a 65% increase from the end of 2020. 

But it is not possible to talk about the growth of OTT around the world without talking about the advances that allowed this phenomenon. A few factors are driving this trend: broadband coverage that grows and makes the service more affordable; the reduced cost of computers, tablets, and phones, especially in developing markets; increased access to new technology to stream content seamlessly; the ability to get video on big, connected TVs; new apps and streaming services; and the increasingly abundant, diverse, high-quality content.

While, of course, it's still too early to say what post-pandemic life will be like, the opportunities provided by the app offerings through OTT are enormous – and they're just beginning to be explored. For brands, apps offer an environment to customize the experience and utility they provide to customers. And with all the data generated by OTT about content preferences, we'll see great targeting opportunities, especially for niche products.
Let's look at other key trends that I predict will be impacting the OTT market in 2022.

#1: MAJOR OTT GROWTH MARKETS IN 2022 WILL BE DOMINATED BY MOBILE-FIRST BROADBAND
According to OMDIA's Global Trends report, much of the future growth of online video subscriptions will come from countries dominated by mobile broadband connections. Although initial success has been based on fixed broadband connections to laptops and connected TV sets, many more future viewers will be using smartphones and tablets. This is because growth in mature fixed broadband markets is now saturated. Therefore, developing countries where fixed broadband is not ubiquitous are where the most significant growth will happen. 

Another driver of a mobile-first market is the 5G technology becoming more prevalent and accessible. As 5G networks promise to bring faster speeds and a more reliable connection, viewers will no longer have to deal with the everyday frustrations of sluggish load times and midstream stops and stutters. 5G will pull the cloud computing infrastructures vital to delivering OTT services closer to end-users, allowing real-time processing and minimal latency.

The 5G's promise of high-capacity, low-latency connectivity will be a content delivery game-changer. It will support everything we're already doing with streaming while making it faster, higher quality, and more mobile.

 

#2: SUPER AGGREGATION - EVERYBODY IS DOING IT 
In an era when there are so many "TV" services available to consumers and consumers want to spend more time "watching" and less time "searching," super aggregation has become a critical solution to fulfill consumers' needs. These integrated viewing experiences make it easier for consumers to find what they want and keep them from switching between different platforms.

More and more brands are putting all their content under one name. Hulu (2007) was perhaps the first streaming platform combining content from rival TV networks. But now, this is becoming more commonplace with the likes of Paramount+, Discovery+, and others combining their various OTT streaming platforms into one. And this is not only true for American brands. We also see non-USA national broadcasters uniting to compete against global brands and provide consumers with one place to find and watch their favorite local content, such as NLZiet (Netherlands), Salto (France), and BritBox (England), among others.

Perhaps becoming a super aggregator is most critical to pay-TV operators. As younger consumers' viewing habits move away from traditional pay-TV models, pay-TV operators have seen declines in their TV subscriber base.

 

Pay-TV operators were the original content aggregators, bringing in various TV channels under one subscription, with one integrated menu guide. However, we now see them aggregating their TV channels with their own SVOD service and 3rd party premium SVOD and AVOD apps. They count on the convenience to offer all apps under one roof to slow down and reverse their TV subscription losses.

Nowadays, pay-TV operators have the choice of two leading platforms to support their super aggregator strategy – Android TV and Reference Design Kit (RDK-V).

 

More recently, Irdeto launched a defined set of security requirements and the certification process for RDK, which the company calls the Irdeto Certified Secure Experience (ICSE).

 

The ICSE covers the security and the integrity of the experience for premium app vendors, achieved through a scalable premium app certification strategy. Premium app providers are increasing their security requirements to protect their content from piracy, and they recognize the importance of a flawless customer experience to retain their subscribers.

 

This has been a big gap with RDK in the past and a massive challenge for operators for both pure OTT and hybrid deployments.

#3: CONSUMERS DEMAND PERSONALIZED CONTENT AND EXPERIENCES
Operators must collect and analyze the data at their disposal to achieve scale and profitability and personalize their approach to keep their subscribers engaged on their platform. It starts with providing content in formats and varieties that appeal to the evolving preferences of their audiences.

Media companies must also offer experiences that are platform-specific to maximize the ease of use and increase the likelihood of engagement. Menu layouts will show what is new and trending, what they were watching, suggestions by genres based on the viewers' preferences on how to find their content. Nowadays, users can find personalized recommendations by what the user's connections have liked, by day of the week and time of day, or even the viewer's mood. And within these modules, they need to use data to decide how to present the movie content to each viewer - which actors or which scene to pick for the movie poster that will increase the likelihood of the viewer to remain on their service. 

Finally, insight into consumers' willingness to pay for content will allow media companies to serve them to their desired level using a range of monetization models.

#4: INNOVATIVE MODELS FOR OTT MONETIZATION
For decades advertising has been the backbone of live television. As consumer viewing behavior is rapidly shifting to streaming video platforms, it is only natural for companies to seek new innovative solutions to empower customers. 

OTT content providers currently need to try different models to address customer needs and attract new subscribers. You have the subscription (SVOD), advertising (AVOD), and the transactional video on demand (TVOD) models. All three have essential shortcomings and benefits, but in the long run, a network's content library and audience demographics will determine which models are the best fit. 

The prime example of platforms using AVOD as a content monetization system is YouTube, where advertising tends to last a few seconds, and the user can decide if they want to stop seeing it. The SVOD model offers a low price for everything, usually much cheaper than cable, and the TVOD model is more often used in sports and premium releases. The consumer will pay for exactly what they want to consume and nothing else. 

New technologies are reaching the market to help streaming services overcome the current challenges of adblocking of ad insertion technologies, latency, and device fragmentation. Solutions such as Irdeto's Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) can enable streaming platforms to explore new revenue streams by maximizing their premium OTT ad inventory value and serving targeted and personalized ads during live events and on linear channels. 

Players will continue to experiment with different models, hybrid strategies and try new technologies to maximize their returns. Offering flexible options across all three models is a sensible policy for many services: clients can choose from a range of possibilities, and the services have the potential to generate more money from those monetization models.

The following eight to ten years will see an even more significant growth in streaming services than we've seen thus far, with more content being created for viewers to enjoy. it's never been a better time for content creators and brands to connect with their audiences during the up and coming golden age of OTT

streaming.