The Best of Best: Netflix and Consumer Engagement

When was the last time you watched anything on your TV? No, casting Netflix on TV doesn’t count.

Lauren Gibbon Paul’s article ‘Engagement is Everything’ talks about how brands need to create direct and highly relevant conversation, responding to and even anticipating customers’ ever-evolving needs. Netflix has hands-down aced all the customer engagement tactics in today’s time giving the customers what they need and how they need it. It has brought about a change in the digital sphere, making the best of OTT platforms change their ways, something all the marketers should learn and put in action.

Netflix has pretty much become a household name in most of the countries and the brand equity reached owe much to the platform and its consumers, both. However, the right tactics really helped build this relationship.

Data Driven Content Marketing

Did you ever sit down to watch one episode of that new series on Netflix but ended up ‘binge - watching’ the entire season instead? Welcome to the binge-watching world of Netflix. A term introduced by Netflix itself.

To develop the customer’s binge-watching experience, Netflix is always listening to them and developing their platform with a targeted content marketing. It has definitely made it easier even for the audience by predicting the shows they’d want to watch next.

Netflix is a data driven company. As of July 2018 itself, Netflix had 130 million worldwide streaming subscribers. In order to make a better decision and give all their customers best experience, they gather all the data with the help of their browsing habits. From your customer's search patterns, browsing behaviour, to completion rate and many more, you can record everything and give them enough content of their choice which might also prevent them from cancelling subscriptions.

As a marketer, you should put a lot of focus on the customer engagement so that they don’t have to depend on any other outside source, and you get an accurate algorithm as well. In fact, about 75% of Netflix viewing is driven by the recommendation algorithm.

As read in Paul’s article, she also talks about how more consumers are willing to trade privacy for convenience and other valued engagements. Moreover, providing personal experiences is one way that companies can inject emotion into their engagements.

Social Media Engagement

When it comes to Social Media Engagement, Netflix masters it by trying to spike engagement with its audience every time.

Or at times even with its competitors, generating more audience!

In another research article by Hope Jensen Schau, Albert M. Muñiz Jr., & Eric J. Arnould, ‘How Brand Community Practices Create Value’ they discuss if brands give the consumers the opportunity to construct brand communities and the freedom to modify their products, they will. Netflix is always creating value for and from their customers through engagement. It aims to grow 'customer competence' rather than exploit it.

By creating various sub-communities dedicated to different countries, Netflix is only enhancing the value creation process which in turn also helps strengthen the bond between them and the consumers.

Apart from these sub-communities, there are also the ones created for the Netflix Originals, increasing their engagement more than ever according to the preferences of the consumer, once again.

The smartest part? All of them are constantly interacting with each other as well!

For a marketer, sub-communities creates an emotional connect between the audience and the brand based on their personal beliefs.

Netflix has definitely created a cultural impact and one of the reasons for its success is the way they engage their customers. From improving their experience and engagement using different kinds of data to their social media engagement tactics, all of it has led to a positive experience for both Netflix and the consumers. All brands need to do is, be a good listener.

So, what are you binge-watching next?