Ten top marketing mistakes

Abstract

It's hard to do targeted marketing to hundreds of millions of customers. Guy Talmi looks at some of the telcoms operators' most common mistakes, and how they could be avoided The rapidly evolving and notoriously competitive market for telecommunications services is bringing the operators' marketing departments new challenges, as well as offering tremendous opportunities to make their employers more money by creating better campaigns. Operators across the various channels face an increasingly complex business environment. They may have a product and service portfolio that spans thousands of items. They are navigating the current shift towards delivering converged offerings of broadband, mobile and entertainment services. Operators are also fighting to earn more from existing customers, as well as to develop cost-effective ways to find and convert new customers to their services. Mobile operators are struggling with high rates of customer turnover and continuous price erosion, as new low-rate operators and mobile virtual network operators enter their markets. Customer acquisition costs are high, and keeping customers is a top priority in a market characterised by so little product differentiation that customers can shop around for the best deal. Combine this competitive landscape with the complexity of the products on offer, the increasing rate of introduction, proliferating channels to market and a bewildering variety of subscription schemes and the scale of the challenge for mobile marketeers becomes evident.