You were told at your last corporate marketing strategy meeting that one of your top 3rd and 4th quarter goals is VoIP/digital telephone acquisition. Now, you have numbers to meet in a relatively new market space for cable TV marketers. You know you need to gain these subscribers and fast, but who are your best prospects?
There are effective ways to target the right prospects. Subscribers who already have high-speed internet service, subscribers with more than one telephone line, and households with larger disposable incomes that readily use new technologies are good examples of strong prospects for VoIP/digital telephone.
There are actually numerous ways to reach highly targeted VoIP/digital telephone prospects utilizing external data in conjunction with your own billing data.
1. Reach households who are confirmed to be using the internet. By combining your own homes passed file with external data that identifies which households in your footprint are definitely using the internet, you can create a powerful targeted marketing file. In some cases, your data provider may even provide the ISP of the online service the prospect is using.
2. Find households with multiple telephone lines. Very simply, targeting households that have more than one telephone line gets you over the initial hurdle of proving the value of a second telephone line. This is an indicator of dial-up internet and/or an additional telephone line. Data like this is a slam dunk for VoIP/digital telephone sales.
3. Reach personal computer owners. Use external data to identify households that own a personal computer. These households are likely to be using the internet on a regular basis.
4. Target home-based businesses. These are typically small businesses who like the savings of bundled services and like the ease of consolidated billing. Convey your message to include ease of use, billing and time savings.
5. Locate middle to upper-middle class households with teenagers. Teenagers are typically heavy internet and telephone users both for educational and recreational use. And households with larger disposable incomes are more likely to splurge on services, such as additional telephone lines.
6. Reach males 25-35 where income is over $60,000. This group is typically technologically savvy, with a higher disposable income to support the technology that they use. They are willing to pay for the technology services they want. In addition, they also like the ease of consolidated billing.
7. Find households who use both cellular and land line telephones. Typically, this group relies on their cellular phones for the majority of communication, but keep a land line as a “just in case” method of communication.
VoIP/digital telephone is a new technology that is still young in its product lifecycle. Making a strong move now to acquire VoIP/digital telephone subscribers will ensure that you will be ready for the next step in VoIP/digital telephone.
The above examples are just some of the ways for you to narrow your prospect base to control marketing expenditures. Talk with your data provider about utilizing innovative and creative data methods to meet and exceed your VoIP/digital telephone goals.
