Fresh Tracks TV Uses Audience Feedback To Launch New Content Offering
The Overview
Randy Newberg has been a public land advocate and wildlife conservationist for decades. For nearly 20 years he has created hunting and fishing content distributed across TV and digital platforms that inspire and educate millions of people. In 2021 Randy wanted to port his wildly successful Fresh Tracks series from YouTube and Amazon to his own OTT platform. This jump would allow him to own outright the distribution and monetization of his content while greatly reducing the risk of ‘big tech’ platforms censoring or cutting access to his audience. But the path to launch left many questions.
The Challenge
With traditional TV ratings plummeting, YouTube and Facebook’s censorship and algorithms suppressing hunt content and Amazon’s whimsical scheduling and heavy bite into producer’s margins, outdoor content brands need a new path to revenue. Randy wanted to launch his own direct-to-consumer video offering but wasn’t quite sure about some key questions. What type of content did the millions of viewers want to see if an OTT offering was built? How much would they pay per month to watch it? What was the right length? Which ad units were they most amenable to? Most marketers would guess and launch based on their own hunches, but Randy, a veteran CPA and believer in factual data, needed answers.
The Brief
With traditional TV ratings plummeting, YouTube and Facebook’s censorship and algorithms suppressing hunt content and Amazon’s whimsical scheduling and heavy bite into producer’s margins, outdoor content brands need a new path to revenue. Randy wanted to launch his own direct-to-consumer video offering but wasn’t quite sure about some key questions. What type of content did the millions of viewers want to see if an OTT offering was built? How much would they pay per month to watch it? What was the right length? Which ad units were they most amenable to? Most marketers would guess and launch based on their own hunches, but Randy, a veteran CPA and believer in factual data, needed answers.
The Solution
Audience Approach had already been helping Randy build a consumer audience via his partnerships with Bowtech and Leupold through several sweeps promotions in the previous 2 years. With over 100k contacts of his own, it was determined that a viewer sweepstakes poll was needed to get the market research needed to inform a successful launch. Over $7,000 in gear as prizes was secured by his brand partners and offered as the value exchange for entering.
Using a progressive profiling technique, we identified the 10 most important questions that would inform his needs and emailed the offer to all of his contacts. But immediately after submitting an entry, each entrant received a personalized autoresponder email that offered a second chance to win a new set of prizes if they could answer 7 more questions. These were also of interest to Randy’s podcast plans as well as information and research fed back to brand partners.
When an entrant opted to enter the second sweeps offering they started by simply entering their email address and the platform remembered their initial entry data. This revealed new questions based on their previous answers.
Browse Some Email Examples
The Results
Within 2 weeks Randy had more than enough data to make an informed decision on his investment into an OTT solution. There were over 50k entries and the answers from the audience even surprised some of the Fresh Tracks producers. Randy knew exactly which species people wanted to watch, for how long and which ad units they would be willing to consume. It also provided the most important information; how much were people willing to pay per month to watch this content. Even a $2 per month difference in the initial offering would mean hundreds of thousands in revenue or pricing the service out of reach. This critical data was indisputable and informed what was nothing short of a successful new chapter in Randy’s content future.
"I’ve produced series based content as well as direct to consumer and PPV content for MTV, Warner Bros. and other major players who had no idea what the audience really wanted. I’ve also watched outdoor brands take the opinions of 5 or 6 internal marketing minds and launch an entire initiative based on them. Randy deals in data. As an accountant he knows that numbers and data don’t lie. And the more data the better. Going straight to his audience was genius and guaranteed a return on his investment."
Tim Glomb - Founder Audience Sherpa & Audience Approach
The Insights
Randy continued to work with Audience Approach on similar audience research products for several of his conservation partners, including a successful poll survey during Sheep Weeks. His internal marketing team was also trained on our techniques and migrated their email marketing to one of our partner platforms. This increased their ability to personalize email offers from his brand partners to match their wants and needs. Furthermore, tying his OTT database to his email platform allowed for smart triggers and personalized tune in alerts for new content.
The Fresh Tracks team continues to deliver the highest quality content covering public land opportunities across all platforms but with the launch of their OTT offering they have a sustainable revenue stream and own their own adventure into the future of content syndication.