Meerkat, Periscope, and the other copycat live streaming apps that will launch in the coming months pose an interesting opportunity, and also represent a very real threat, for B2B marketers.
What is live streaming?
The act of live streaming manifests itself exactly as it sounds - someone with a camera streams the camera's unedited feed in real time out onto the web. It's live TV, but in an online setting. Live streaming has been around for decades, but it is experiencing resurgence in 2015 in the form of new mobile apps.
What are Meerkat and Periscope?
Meerkat and Periscope are two brand new mobile apps that allow anyone to publish a feed to a live stream of their device's camera. Meerkat saw the initial hype, with celebrity investors and a launch at the preeminent interactive and technology conference, SXSWi. Periscope launched later, but was acquired by Twitter back in January (but they just announced this in March). The initial advantage of first-to-market by Meerkat is essentially nullified by the Periscope acquisition; from a media perspective, a Twitter acquisition is big news, and from a technology perspective, the acquisition by a social network means much tighter integration with the network itself, bigger investment in innovation, etc.
These new live streaming apps are gaining publicity and traction due to two key factors. First, never before have such a high percentage of the population had such powerful computers and cameras on their person at all times - one quarter of the world's population have smart phones. Second, the proliferation of social media and constant connectivity to the web have changed the way that people interact with friends, family, and strangers day-to-day, minute-to-minute, second-to-second - 71% of online adults are on Facebook, and 52% regularly use multiple social networking sites.
What is the opportunity for B2B marketers?
As marketers, we understand how quickly the digital space changes, and while these particular apps may not be relevant channels for our marketing mix, the live streaming trend does represent a huge opportunity for brands and businesses across the globe.
For B2B marketers, how can you use Meerkat, Periscope, or any other live streaming app that gains mainstream adoption (this is the big caveat that we'll come back to later) to augment your social marketing and communications strategy?
- Product Demonstrations: Think of this as a streamlined webinar or product demonstration. You can quickly show off new products and features from your corporate social accounts, or the social accounts of your brand representatives.
- Conferences, Expos, & Events: Why wait until weeks later to create an event wrap-up video to then share out across your blog and other social channels? Now you can stream moments from the event in real time, like the keynote presentation, relevant interactions at the event, or prospect engagement at your booth or demo area. Pull in potential leads and prospects that aren't even at the event through live streaming.
- Executive Interviews: When it comes to B2B industries, let's face it, there could be a little more brand humanizing. Live streaming interviews with the executive and leadership teams are a great way to put a human face on the brand instead of a logo. People still buy from people, and live streaming gives you a powerful avenue.
- Influencer Outreach: Hopefully you have a well researched and evolving map of your customers' influencers across the industries you serve. Add live streaming to the list of ways that you can build a relationship with this key influencers, be it through interviews, candid moments at industry events, or by allowing an influencer to create other live stream content on behalf of your brand.
What is the threat for B2B marketers?
These all sound like great opportunities to leverage a new and powerful social technology for the purposes of brand building, but what are the potential threats? In short, there are two key threats that make Meerkat, Periscope, and other live streaming social channels worth reassessing before you dive in.
First, brands that want to leverage live streaming for brand awareness and trust building must have social policies and governance in place. This is not "just use common sense," because, as we've seen time and time again in social marketing, common sense just ain't so common. Please consult with a social marketing expert in your industry when putting together your governance and policies around how your brand can communicate across social channels.
And for the second threat, remember when I said we'd come back to the "gaining mainstream adoption" caveat from earlier? Channels are only important if your buyers and influencers are already there. New and shiny objects in social marketing always pose a threat to B2B marketing & communications teams with limited time, money, and resources. Coca-Cola and Taco Bell can invest crazy amounts into brand building marketing tactics with near zero risk - that's the nature of many B2C verticals, and their customers expect fun, and out-there experiences.
Not so for resource-constrained and more conservative B2B verticals. Time is money, and marketing activities are only effective if they are building trust and driving leads. If there is nobody using these new live streaming apps, then marketing teams who invest time and money working them into their marketing strategy are wasting valuable resources that could be put to work elsewhere. While we at Socialight Media believe that live streaming is not a fad, and truly represents a shift in the way that users, buyers, and businesses will interact on the social web going forward, we must still wait and see where the adoption curve heads in the coming months.
Beware the new shiny object!
Will you be incorporating Meerkat or Periscope into your digital marketing mix any time soon?