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 Case study: Marketing Strategy for Wireless Broadband Provider[THE CLIENT]'s parent is a large telecoms group which owns a number of regional BWA licences in Europe. It established a local subsidiary, [THE CLIENT], as the vehicle through which it would offer wireless broadband services to the consumer market and retained BWCS to act as the interim marketing department for [THE CLIENT] in the first six months of operation. BWCS created the marketing plan for [THE CLIENT], set up channels to market, worked with [THE CLIENT]'s CPE suppliers, hired its advertising agency, designed its customer processes and worked with [THE CLIENT]'s engineering team to pinpoint the most promising areas for service rollout.When [THE CLIENT]'s parent first conceived of entering the European broadband market, there were still many areas which were not served by the incumbent national telecoms operator. However, it became clear that by the time [THE CLIENT] was ready to launch services, the incumbent's broadband service would be nearly ubiquitous. A head to head battle with the incumbent and resellers of the incumbent's broadband service was therefore inevitable. However, many internet users had still not switched to broadband at this stage, and it was clear that the main opportunity for [THE CLIENT] was to capture as many consumers as possible switching from dial-up to broadband over the coming few months and years. BWCS specified and managed a programme of consumer research carried out by a specialist field agency to understand in detail the mindset of the target consumer groups who had not yet taken broadband - who were they, what kinds of lives did they lead, what were the big and small reasons why they had not yet taken broadband, who held the purse strings, who would actually use the service, what did they think of the incumbent and the other providers, and what did they make of [THE CLIENT]'s credentials? The resulting research gave probably the most detailed view of a segment of the local internet user base ever seen. BWCS was able to understand a great deal beyond the first objections that consumers make (for example, "it's too expensive", "it's just not the right time for us"). The resulting picture of the narrowband user base showed a group of people who found the whole concept of broadband confusing and intimidating, the sign-up and provisioning process completely opaque, and who often relied on other family members or friends for technical advice about computers. Using this information, BWCS was able to fine-tune [THE CLIENT]'s marketing messages, emphasising simplicity and quick order fulfilment. The aspects of wireless which seemed most obvious at first - such as nomadic use - were not emphasised, as our target group did not value or particularly understand this concept. The result was that [THE CLIENT] has been able to gain the lion's share of net additions in the areas in which it offers service. |
