A business follows a subscription business model when it charges their customers a recurring price or fee in return for its products or services. A great example of a subscription business would be none other than the music-streaming giant Spotify.
Spotify grew their premium subscriber base exponentially through the years, and they’ve just recently achieved 150 million premium subscribers. What they’ve accomplished transformed the music world forever. There’s a lot more to why Spotify became successful than just people wanting a music platform. Let’s tackle some key points on how to run a successful subscription business, with Spotify as an example.
Product-Market Fit
Spotify understood that consumers would be more willing to pay for access to a large library of music than to buy the actual song or album. They were able to identify the right product for the right market.
Like in any other business model, it’s always critical that your product satisfies the market’s demand. It’s important to know your customers and their pain points, and then to identify the right product or service to address these. Once you crack this code, there would be little to no reason for your business to fail.
Pricing Strategy
The pricing of your product is very crucial. It doesn’t matter how amazing your product may be. Your customers have to be willing to pay for it. For around ₱129 a month, Spotify subscribers can access a vast library of music. This definitely beats paying ₱500 for an album containing 10 songs.
There are a bunch of pricing methods for you to choose from. It would be a matter of choosing the method that best fits your product or service. It’s important to know that pricing can affect acquiring new customers, the value of existing customers, and the churn rate. Take a good amount of time when choosing the right price for your product or service.
Technology
To be able to cater to millions of subscribers, Spotify invested a lot on their technological infrastructure. Like Spotify, it’s always a good idea to invest in technology that will help automate your business, starting from the frontend with your customers to the backend with your team.
If you’re planning on growing big, you’re going to need scalable, enterprise-grade systems and infrastructure. Not only will it help with your operations, it can also improve the user experience. Creating the best user interface requires the right technology. Getting the most payment methods for subscribers requires partnering with the right payment gateway partners. Knowing and having technology will only help you grow your business.
Customer Relationship
Being in a subscription business means being in a customer service business. Because subscription is all about recurring revenue growth, strong customer relationships is the core of the subscription model because customers have to be “won” every billing cycle. Know your customers and keep them excited and wanting more.
Spotify has personalized features for their subscribers. They’ve got personalized playlists based on the song history of the user. They share with the subscribers their personal analytics by the end of the year that they can share on social media. There’s this sense of community and connection between the subscribers and Spotify, and it’s because of this that subscribers keep coming back for more.
All these can help you run your subscription business to the fullest. If you’ve been looking to get into the subscription business model, you can reach out to our friendly HelixPay team! We’d be glad to help you get started.
