What is D2C Streaming?: Your Guide to Direct-to-Consumer Streaming

For today’s consumers, watching videos can be fun, educational, or a little bit of both. But when it comes to enterprises, digital video is so much more than that: it’s a must-use marketing channel to engage with your target audience and grow your business.

In this post, we will talk about the ultimate digital video method for a direct-to-consumer business: streaming. Read on to discover how D2C streaming works and how it can help boost your brand’s reach in this digital age.

Table of Contents

• What is D2C Streaming?
• Why Direct-to-Consumer Streaming?
• Free Streaming Platforms vs. Custom Video Websites
• Make Maestro Your D2C Streaming Platform

What is D2C Streaming?

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming is when a business shares video content directly with a consumer audience through the Internet. 

The whole concept of direct-to-consumer is that your business can reach your customers without any third-party platforms or services – it’s sort of like owning your own TV channel that broadcasts brand-friendly content to people around the world, anytime you want.

Why Direct-to-Consumer Streaming?

Why bother with direct-to-consumer streaming, anyway? 

Well, there are many reasons, but they mostly boil down to a single overarching benefit: control.

With D2C streaming, you control what videos to show, how to interact with your viewers, and, ultimately, how to monetize your video content. Let’s look at each one of these reasons a little more closely.

1. Reach Your Audience Directly

Most brands can only dream of a captive audience filled with their ideal customer. Rather than hoping that they come to you, a D2C approach gives you the power to meet them where they are online.

Think about what happens when you use a third-party streaming platform site like YouTube or Twitch:

• You can’t communicate directly with your audience. On third-party sites, there’s no reliable way to correspond with your followers, subscribers, or viewers. Their algorithms dictate who will see your content.
• You don’t own any data. First-party data is crucial for modern marketing, from remarketing campaigns to email nurture flows. Third-party sites restrict your ability to see or use this information.
• You’re competing with other brands. When you stream on a third-party platform, other brands and content creators are always a click away. Compare this to a direct-to-consumer approach, where you own the digital property and manage the entire experience.
• Ultimately, if you employ a direct-to-consumer video strategy using a service like Maestro, you can completely bypass the middleman and own the relationship with your viewers, allowing you to turn more of them into customers.

What’s more, you can be confident that your content will be published and monetized—no third parties can gatekeep your content when you control the experience.

2. Make It Interactive

Another massive benefit of the D2C streaming model is that you control a host of interactive and event gamification elements that may not be as readily available or customizable on third-party sites. 

These include:

• Live chat
• Gamification
• Tips
• Quizzes
• Custom panels
• Clickable overlays

Not only does this make your streamed content more engaging, but it also provides you with a lot of valuable information that you can use to inform your video strategy.

3. Monetize Your Videos

The holy grail of a D2C business model through online video is your ability to generate revenue right in your streams.

Thankfully, you can always go live with some kind of call to action in your stream. If you partner with an online video platform like Maestro, you’ll get several built-in monetization opportunities to accompany your streams, such as:

• Merchandise sales
• Sponsorship activations
• Subscriptions
• Pay-per-view
• Ad revenue
• E-commerce sales

These are all invaluable ways to boost the revenue-generating potential of your video streaming strategy. 

However, beyond direct sales, it’s also possible to use video to drive sign-ups to your brand’s email list or social media accounts, where you can nurture these contacts and turn them into repeat customers.

Free Streaming Platforms vs Custom Video Websites

We’ve already touched on three of the big reasons for having a D2C video streaming strategy. Now, we should dive a little deeper into what you get with a custom video website over a conventional free streaming platform like YouTube or Facebook Live.

While a custom video website isn’t free, it justifies its costs by providing you with much greater control over your business’s video content strategy in some crucial ways.

Digital Real Estate

First of all, with a custom video website, your business gets its own digital real estate on the internet. It’s difficult to succeed with any digital marketing strategy if you don’t have a hub that you can control to drive conversions.

This is why most creators and brands on a site like YouTube encourage their audience to download a lead magnet, sign up for their email list, or find them elsewhere online—because otherwise, they have no way to turn those valuable viewers into paying customers.

Custom Branding

Remember what we said earlier about how a custom video site is sort of like your own permanent TV channel on the internet? Well, it’s also an opportunity to really establish a memorable presence for your brand to help it stand out in a way it couldn’t on a third-party streaming platform.

If you think about all of the competition for your content on a third-party site, it’s a real game-changer that you get to customize everything from the player design to the website layout to create an immersive and consistent brand experience for your audience.

With a custom site, you have options.

Monetization Flexibility

Lastly, on your own custom video site, you get to decide which ways you want to monetize your stream or, perhaps more importantly, whether you want to monetize the content at all. This is a huge advantage in establishing that all-important relationship with your viewer.

On other sites, you don’t always get a say in whether ads appear on or around your content. And when there are ads, you don’t always get to decide what they are. There’s no way your business can afford to let another company control the way you monetize your own content.

Make Maestro Your D2C Streaming Platform

In the end, embracing a D2C streaming strategy can completely transform how your business acquires and engages customers online. If you want the benefits of direct consumer access, custom branding, and flexible monetization, then you should get to know Maestro.

If you’re new to Maestro, our platform offers an end-to-end video CMS for hosting, monetizing, and delivering these interactive streaming experiences. Plus, with our drag-and-drop website builder, you can set up a professional-looking streaming website with a few clicks. Choose your branding, add monetization, and launch your content in just minutes.

It’s Maestro’s mission to provide scalable online solutions for D2C brands. Contact us to learn more about hosting exclusive streams for your audience.