It’s no surprise that live streaming has become so popular these days. The modern internet user is a lot more likely to engage with visual media in some form or another. As such, it was estimated that last year, there were over 3 billion people watching videos on the internet – that’s more than 1 in every 3 people you encounter on the street.
So it’s quite clear that there are massive opportunities and potential for this method of communication, and whether you’re an entrepreneur, a gamer, or a viewer, there are a lot of reasons why you would want to look into live streams – either as a useful tool in your marketing campaigns or for enjoying your favorite content or games online. The possibilities for live streaming are practically limitless.
Live Streaming For Gamers
Now, if you’re a gamer, you’ve likely already come across a number of different YouTubers who host their own live streams to sometimes millions of active viewers. It’s become incredibly popular to watch others play video games – so much so that whole platforms like Twitch have become dedicated to doing nothing else but offering streaming services to gamers and others.
While this is mainly true for conventional games like first-person shooters and multiplayer games, many online casinos, like those on an SBS guide, have also started to include live streaming as a feature in their platforms to help create a more immersive environment for players.
The idea is that you can play some of your favorite casino games in a setting that more closely resembles an actual casino and is a lot more fun. Games like Blackjack and Roulette, to name but a few, are exceptionally popular in this category because often playing with an actual dealer in a casino is what all the fun is about.
It’s the whole experience of watching an experienced dealer shuffle, or give you that smile before spinning the wheel that just adds that extra touch of excitement to the process. Live streams make you feel a lot more like you’re really playing a game with another person, not just a random number generator and some code and pretty images.
These live streams have become hugely popular in the world of online casinos and while some like sticking to chance-based games like slots, a lot more people have developed a liking for live-dealer games because they’re a lot closer to what it feels like being inside an actual casino – just that you don’t have to pay an exorbitant price for refreshments!
Streaming for Businesses
There are lots of benefits of live streaming when it comes to your business’s online marketing and this is especially true when compared to normal videos. In fact, statistically speaking, roughly three times more people are likely to watch live streams than they are pre-recorded videos, and because of this, social media platforms tend to rank live streams a lot higher than normal pre-recorded videos.
There are a lot of reasons for live streaming’s success in the marketing department. The first reason, and likely the most important, is that it helps to build trust with your audience and market. People love seeing other people in real-time over pre-recorded videos simply because it’s the closest thing many can get to having an in-person encounter with one of your sales reps or consultants. When a person streams live, they can make minor mistakes, tell a joke, and react to live feedback, which makes it a much more human experience.
Most people are a lot more likely to trust something that seems genuine and down-to-earth, depending on the industry you’re in of course, over something that feels staged and scripted. People want to know your business has a face and is not just some intangible website or video that they can only interact with to a limited degree.
The other nice thing about live streams is that they often tend to generate more leads than pre-recorded videos do, largely because people can directly interact with your platform while having a direct conversation with one of your employees or representatives as well as finding out facts that they might not be clear on throughout the process. This is a great way to help people find out more about your brand and guide them through the process of the sales funnel, without seeming too ‘salesy’ or demanding their attention – you’ve already got it, now all you need to do is seal the deal.
Finally, live streams are also a great way to build brand awareness and even generate a profit for themselves. People are a lot more likely to remember an actual two-way conversation or discussion that they had with someone than a video they just watched. So if you don’t want to spend a lot of cash to make high-end corporate videos, having a simple talk directly to customers is much more likely to leave a better impression on your market than the expensive corporate video would anyway.
On top of that, live streams are a great way to upsell products or services without sounding like you’re trying to force the point, as you can easily give customers a good example of why they might actually need an additional service, or how they could directly benefit from a discount for choosing a bundled option, etc. This makes it a much more natural process and will really help those conversions.
Live Streaming for Viewers
From a viewer’s perspective, live streams are one of the most entertaining forms of communication out there, because they add a layer of interaction to the medium of video that you can’t really find anywhere else.
While it can be argued that television did have something close to this back in the 80s already, where people could phone in and talk to a host, it was nothing like the more open and truly democratic version that we have on the internet these days.
Now, basically, anyone can join a live chat on a stream and say whatever they’d like, and as many people can comment as many times as they’d like to during a stream. While more comments do mean that you’re less likely to get a response from a host, it is still nice to know that you can leave your message there for them to get back to you.
Conclusion
We’re really spoiled from choice from an audience’s perspective these days when it comes to watching live streams. On the other hand, businesses have more access to free and paid tools for marketing and live streaming than ever before. The sky’s the limit here and you can really push the envelope if you’d like to with live streams, plus since it’s often practically free, it’s really a priceless tool to include in any company’s digital marketing arsenal.