One of the questions I get asked most by our Partners, new and old is how to market DSL products to their target audience in the market. There are many marketing techniques you can use to achieve this and as we gear up to hit high revenue and growth targets for 2008 I thought it may be useful to share some of our experiences.
Know your audience
It sounds obvious but you would be surprised how many broadband sellers don’t start here. Know your customers and match their requirements. How large are they? What type of companies are they? What do they need broadband for? If your customers are retailers replacing ISDN lines with IP to run financial transactions over, they may only have low throughput requirements but quality, redundancy and technical support might be really important.
Create your packages
Armed with your customer’s requirements, create product packages to meet them. Be careful how you market speeds and contention ratios to set customer expectation. Remember speeds vary with the distance from the exchange.
Promote
You already have a thriving business, with customers who trust you. You have identified a need for broadband and you have created packages to match this need. Tell your customers about it. A common mistake is to put a bit of blurb about your new products on your web site and hope that is enough to generate leads. It isn’t usually. Think about your usual communication channels. Many partners tell me they communicate via post with invoices regularly so DM (Direct Marketing) is often used. It costs a lot of money to design a flyer, have it printed and to post it out with the invoices and think about the junk mail you get at home. Who reads it? The accounts clerk takes out the invoice and bins (hopefully recycles) the rest. Like a lot of junk mail, the DM communication has not been sent to the decision maker and doesn’t generate any leads. Where is the return on that investment? Do your customers already have broadband with someone else? Do you send emails or e-newsletters to them using this method? If so a targeted email communication could do the job. Get a list together of the email addresses of relevant decision makers; create an email outlining the product, the benefits and most importantly the call to action. Create a compelling event or an offer that breaks the inertia of the customer and makes them act immediately. What do you want the customer to do if he is interested? Call up? Visit the web site? Make it easy for them, add a link to your web site providing more information and get a buy online system so customers can purchase directly.
Report
Lastly don’t forget to report, this is how you learn what works and build on it. If you spent £2000 on a DM campaign and it generated 1 lead, which resulted in one set up fee, one monthly recurring revenue stream and 10% margin, was it worth it? Probably not, however if you managed to generate 200 leads via a newsletter or web campaign and close 100 of them on a budget of £250, that is a rosier picture. Support your sales teams; provide them with literature and direct channels to market.
If you want to learn more about marketing your products please email marketing@griffin.com.
Source: Comms Dealer January.
Cherie Everett
