Working in marketing in telecoms can be very challenging – it’s not simply just that all telecoms brands are competing for the same customers, it’s that those customers can get more or less the same thing from a long list of providers. And, not only can those customers can also get the same iPhones, Xiaomi or Samsung phones, they can also get a new 5G service from almost all of them too. And the price wars never stop. In other words, in a such a competitive market with little product differentiation, you have to have a strategy to stand out from the crowd if you want to be the best.
But how do you stand out in a crowded telecoms market?
You could discount your package prices or add some fancy extras, but you know that your competitors will follow with a steeper price cut or more extras before the virtual ink is dry on your promotional banners.
Instead, you might just try and grab the attention of all those people searching for mobile providers on Google or on price comparison sites. But affiliate and paid search costs are high in the telecoms space, and constantly rising. Perhaps you might invest heavily in TV campaigns with celebrities, or sponsor music festivals and concerts with household names. But that is going to cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
So what do you do?
The answer is surprisingly simple.
The one thing that really can distinguish you from your competitors, is that people enjoy having you as their provider. In other words, provided your tariffs are fair, your billing transparent, your customer service people genuinely helpful and your call waiting times are really short, then these can all be competitive advantages. And, as people can only really experience these benefits once they are your customers, the only people who can credibly talk about them are… your existing customers.
Once you have customers who have experienced good service, then they have every reason to recommend you to their friends, family, and colleagues. That is provided you ask them to, and provide them with the right means and right incentives to do so. This, in a nutshell, is to get your customers to become brand advocates or brand ambassadors for your telecoms brand.
And when you consider that our Reward Revolution research found that 95% of people had referred a brand in the past year and our Referral Codebreakers research found that eight out of ten customers expect to be able to refer their favorite brands, the power of referral marketing is evident.
However, even though the answer is easy, it is not easy to do. This is because simple schemes developed in-house, with limited rewards and referral possibilities, will only attract a tiny percentage of customers and won’t encourage them to refer more than once at best. And what’s more, it’s not just about referral software. To be successful, ideally, you will be able to draw on the advice of experts who have run hundreds of leading referral programs across the telecoms industry and in other verticals.
And that’s such a shame, because, when done properly, referral marketing can be one of the most powerful means of customer acquisition, delivering better customers at a fraction of the cost of any other marketing channel. If it weren’t the case, then these leading telecoms brands certainly wouldn’t be doing it.
But now with enterprise-level referral marketing technologies, you, at last, have a robust and secure means of incentivising and enabling all your customers, employees and business partners to refer their friends and family. What is more, they can refer directly from their browser or mobile phones within seconds. And with advanced referral incentives like tiered rewards, gamification, triggers, click to claim and cash rewards, you can get more of them to take part and get them to refer again and again. The value of a referred-in customer is highlighted in that you can typically expect a 25% higher lifetime value than with customers from any other sources – as our clients usually see.
Perhaps now you can understand why leading telcos like Vodafone, T-Mobile and Three’s 48 are prioritising referral marketing, here you can see more examples of referral programs in globally recognizable telecoms brands. And, if you’d like to chat with us directly, don’t hesitate to drop us a line.