Quick Jump Menu to this Month’s Articles November, 4th 2003 Overview Banding Together at 700 MHz Marketing Fundamentals 101 MovieBeam
by Ken Pyle
November 4, 2003 Issue
Bill Stark, who is President of Excelsio Communications, discussed the importance of marketing in the successful rollout of wireless services. He explained that, even though Excelsio is an Engineering firm, Excelsio often counsels their clients by providing assistance with marketing their wireless services. The points he made are important to any telco that is providing new services, regardless of what the services are.
Many of the challenges of marketing and selling wireless are the same as what is faced when offering video and other broadband services. He emphasized the need for making the complex simple and for selling the benefits and not the technology. He explained that radio and other forms of broadcast media can be effective at spreading a message, but it can also be very challenging as the footprint of the broadcaster is normally much wider than that covered by the operator.
Stark emphasized the need to continue to be aggressive after the launch of service. This is often difficult to do, because so much effort goes into the launch. The challenge is to keep up the aggressiveness by having a program of regular outreach activities.
He recommended leveraging the strengths that comes with being the local operator by working closely community groups, such as Churches. He suggested welcome kits, bill inserts, newsletters, as ways to get the word out about the new service. He also pointed out that well-trained employees are the best sales people a telco has. Giving employees the use the new service for free or providing them with some sort of financial incentive for customer referrals are two methods he suggested for turning them into effective sales people.
So, his presentation was nothing revolutionary, but it was a good reminder of the importance of fundamentals when it comes to marketing and selling new telco services. His presentation will be part of the CD-ROM that Viodi produced for NTCA and I highly encourage you to order a copy of this CD and take a listen to Bill’s presentation.
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