Are you racing to deliver a fitness streaming solution to your members in an effort to service your customers at home? Then you’ve probably already experienced the daunting task of figuring out what platforms exist, which one fits your need and how much does this all cost. We have been through one of the deepest dives across all VOD and streaming platforms that serve close to 80% of the fitness brands and instructors. There are a lot of options but no one group delivers everything you may think you want in the long run, so you have some decisions to make.
For these decisions it is imperative that you have a plan in place, or you will be doing like many others do and end up switching platforms down the road to solve the problems you didn’t think about. This is why we are recommending that everybody take a quick break, think about this like a product, set some goals, layout a vision for this need in the short term and long term as this will speed up the procurement process and ultimately save you time and money.
An important distinction for this article is to treat this like a product or brand extension so that means the platform would need to be branded with your logo unless you want to send your customer to other fitness brands. Long before COVID-19 the adoption of an omni-channel strategy was underway in the fitness industry and those who adopt this model will be successful over the long-term. For more information on planning you can read our article on the 7 steps to developing and launching a viable fitness streaming solution as a guiding road-map.
Now assuming you know what your plan is, and you have allocated your resources. You are going to have 3 different categories of platforms to evaluate when it comes to solutions you can brand.
· End-to-End Solutions that can be white labeled with your brand
· Platforms with API’s that you can build a custom front-end solution
· Other streaming products packaged within a vendors branded products
We did not include social media, consumer video platforms or other peer to peer solutions because in a lot of cases they should be treated like top of funnel and then some of these solutions are hacks which is great for now but once you turn to developing a monetizable solution you can scale with varying types of content and business models it will become limiting to your growth. So we believe customers need to look at commercial applications.
As a part of this and since a lot of people are new to the fitness streaming opportunity we put together the top 7 questions to think about;
1) What type of content do you want to serve to your customers – Video on demand, live streaming, audio content, learning programs, etc…
2) What type of business model do you want to serve members and non-members with – subscription, transaction, advertising or a hybrid…
3) What screens do you want your content accessible through – your mobile app, the browser, on the TV through OTT apps, etc…
4) Do you want to integrate the fitness streaming solution with your other software – systems like your CRM, Club Management, Etc…
5) Do you plan to create your own content and need to manage that or do you need to find an existing catalog – with content to license for use…
6) How fast do you need to have a solution live in the market – Do you need something in a matter of days or can you wait for 4-8 weeks.
7) Do you want a seamless solution between your brick and mortar business and the fitness streaming solution – or are you okay with two apps, etc…
There are many more questions to ask but this should give you something to start with and it can save you days of time thinking about this upfront. Also, keep in mind the go to social solutions will not answer these questions and you should think about those solutions as complimentary.
As stated, we have fully evaluated close to 80% of the platform providers in a detailed analysis comparing over 50 attributes/offerings. Each company offers a great solution for a specific void in the market but when it comes to finding one that matches your plan we have found a proper plan will automatically narrow down your options to 2-3 vendors to select from making the procurement process faster and more efficient.
For a list of commercial platform vendors please visit our press release here and we will be updating the list in the days to come on our website at www.endorphinz.net. For assistance with the plan, procurement process and introductions we are available at hello@Endorphinz.net or (833)-227-4469.
