Customers today are highly informed and know a lot about your industry, products and services. Push Marketing is no longer enough to engage them. You may not get the desired leads and conversions anymore. But useful information about the products and relevant offers may pull them towards your brand, and consequently lead to sale! This method of providing the right information, to the right customer at the right time, to generate leads is called Precision Marketing.
It is clear that carpet-bombing will not work for marketing anymore, nor will a one-size- fits-all approach, ergo precision marketing. This is true more so in a market like telecom where customers are empowered and have low levels of loyalty and stickiness due to many choices.
The Need – With different telecom markets consolidating, operators are feeling the heat of strong competition from regular and non-conventional competitors. Their revenues and profits are being eroded. In such a scenario, telcos are better off adopting the three- pronged strategy of increasing ARPU (average revenue per user), reducing churn and increasing the share of wallet across customers. This strategy is also effective since upselling and cross selling to the existing subscriber base is much less expensive than adding new subscribers.
To upsell effectively, Telcos need to offer services and products tailor-made to suit the customer’s requirements. This is not possible with traditional advertising and telemarketing approach since they adopt the one-size- fits-all method. This is where Precision Marketing come in.
Precision Marketing and BTL – Precision Marketing adds a new dimension to BTL marketing. With targeted initiatives aimed at specific segments of existing customers, it can increase brand loyalty, stickiness and reduce churn. Special deals and incentives, with a call to action, to specific customers or groups, will elicit far greater responses than passive display ads.
Technology in Precision Marketing – Technology can overturn the traditional marketing decision-making model and the implementation processes on their heads. The success of precision marketing campaigns depends largely on understanding the customers and their preferences. Big data mining techniques, analytics and other tools provide customer-specific information to help roll out marketing campaigns with a sharp focus.
Location-based mobile services combined with Big Data Analytics help to gather deep insights into consumer behavior. The emergence of Bluetooth Smart technology that emits low-energy, wireless signals from smartphones is a significant development in accessing contextual data. Contextual data helps Telcos come up with offers and initiatives that would be relevant and interesting to a specific user or a group.
In the case of Best Western Hotels, one of the largest hotel chains in the world, Precision Marketing campaigns demonstrated great results. With initiatives such as rewards programs, direct mail marketing campaign and subtle advertising, the hotel chain was able to register a 39% increase in the number of bookings and a 34% increase in the length of stays besides a 500% increase in customers signing up for its loyalty card In the telecom sector, many Telcos have formed business units to spearhead Precision Marketing initiatives, such as Verizon’s Precision Market Insights and Telefonica Dynamic Insights, besides AT&T. Telcos have also started monetizing big data by providing relevant data and insights to businesses from other segments.
For any Precision Marketing campaign to succeed, marketers must have full knowledge of the needs and behavior of each subscriber. The marketing approach has to be customer-centric rather than product-centric. Putting your customer’s requirement first is the only way forward to ensure customer retention and revitalization.
