The Top Ten marketing Mistakes made by today's operators
by Guy Talmi,
Senior Marketing Director at Pontis
The
notoriously competitive
and rapidly evolving market for
telecommunications consumers is
bringing marketers within this
sector new and ever escalating
challenges, but also tremendous
opportunities for increased revenue
and more cost-effective marketing
campaigns.
Managing an ever growing digital
product and service portfolio, that
often spans thousands of items,
combined with the current shift
towards delivering converged
offerings of broadband, mobile and
entertainment services, now means
that mobile, cable, VoIP and IPTV
operators are facing a very complex
environment. Operators are fighting
ever harder to drive new revenues
from existing customers with the
ever present need to find
cost-effective ways to reach and
convert new customers to their
service offering.
In the saturated mobile space,
operators struggle with high
customer churn and continuous price
erosion as new low-rate operators
and MVNO’s enter the market.
Customer acquisition costs are high
and retention is a top priority in a
market characterised by low levels
of product differentiation where
customers will simply shop around
for the best deal.
Combine this competitive landscape
with the added complexity of the
products on offer - more products
are being introduced to market at an
ever increasing rate through a
variety of different channels to
users with varying subscription
types and devices – and the scale of
the challenge for marketers within
this sector is evident.
'One-size-fits-all' Marketing
However, the traditional
mass-marketing "one-size-fits-all"
approach is no longer tenable in
this environment. Services and
bundles of products are offered with
limited flexibility in terms of
customisation or personalisation
and, as such, many of the marketing
messages delivered to consumers are
both badly timed and far from
relevant. They therefore fail to
persuade the user to adopt a new
service or purchase a new content
item. This fact was graphically born
out by a recent survey commissioned
by Pontis with GfK NOP amongst 752
mobile phone users which revealed
that 70 per cent of mobile phone users
considered the marketing offers they
receive from operators to be
irrelevant and 64% were downright
irritated by them.
So where are the operators going
wrong?
In my view the top ten mistakes that
are commonly made by the operators
are as follows: -
1.
Who is the product
designed for?
Product offerings from operators are
too generic and often driven by
emerging technology, rather than
being designed to address the actual
needs and expectations of real
customers. Operators typically
create a large portfolio of products
but then fail to build an effective
mechanism (conceptual and actual) to
get them to the right customers at
the right time.
2.
The unfortunate
failure of free trial offers
Product Launch campaigns offering
free usage to all customers do
attract lots of interest. However,
operators often fail to follow up
with customers that respond, in a
timely fashion. Failing to secure
ongoing usage with these respondents
is a real missed revenue
opportunity.
3.
Introductory offers
“only for new customers”
Mass media marketing, offering truly
attractive packages or free items to
attract new subscribers, does
alienate the existing customers.
Stating that current users are
ineligible for the offer in the
small print does not solve this
problem!
4.
Missing the target
Operators often send marketing
offers to customers in a non
targeted way that is therefore,
irrelevant to the user. At worst
these campaigns can even be
perceived by users as spam. Not a
term you want to be associated with
your brand!
5.
Too little, too late
to turn the churn
Operators are not reacting in time
to retain the relationship with
about-to-churn customers. Typically
communication only starts at a late
stage when the customers actually
say that they are leaving. At this
stage, customer retention can be
very costly.
6.
Failure to test
campaigns
Operators often launch mass
promotions and campaigns without
actually testing the creative
approach, perceived value and
response levels, thus frequently
fail to meet the desired KPIs.
Testing on a sample group and fine
tuning the offer based on the
results – can dramatically improve
campaign results.
7.
Shotgun or sniper?
Operators are still not using the
right media to communicate and
promote their services to
customers. They are often using
expensive mass media such as TV ads
where direct communications (SMS,
portal banner etc.) would be much
more effective with a lot less cost.
8.
Value the customer
Operators still seem to think that
“one offer fits all” and are simply
not using effective value-based
segmentation when planning and
launching campaigns. As a result,
response rates and customer take-up
is very low.
9.
Jumping on the latest
bandwagon
Operators are not planning for, or
in some cases even reacting to, high
profile external events – concerts,
shows, sports, etc. There are
numerous marketing activities and
new service offerings that could be
successfully delivered around these
opportunities.
10.
Success breeds success
– if you can recognise it
Operators fail to analyse past
campaigns and offers to fully
understand the customer responses
and the actual revenue results
produced. By analysing the real ROI
of campaign types and the
effectiveness of tools and
techniques used, better results can
be achieved in the future. Too often
the campaign analysis stops at a
response rate and cost per response,
rather than understanding real
revenue versus cost.
Too many, the list of mistakes above
will seem as basic as a class in ‘marketing 101’ and they would be correct.
However, the fact is that operators have been so long entrenched in a
traditional consumer mass-marketing model that is no longer relevant to their
customers and is both costly and ineffective.
