Question

You are having discussions with the Chief Marketing Officer of a Tier 3 wireless carrier based in India. The wireless carrier currently has 15 million subscribers and the Chief Marketing Officer would like to increase its subscriber base by 5 million subscribers over the next 2 years. What type of market information would you want to know before making a recommendation? After gathering that information, what are potential recommendations you would advise?

Answer 1

Couple of points before the actual answer:

1.Tier 3 Wireless carrier: It means that the service provider gets its network connectivity from Tier 1 or 2 providers.

2.Discussion is with Chief Marketing Officer and hence it must be focused on what his organization can do improve the overall market share.

Answer:

1.The first data point that we need: What is the estimated subscriber base for the area where the wireless carrier operates as it may be operating only in selected states. From here we can get the approximate market share of the wireless carrier.

2.How has the growth over the recent past been for the wireless carrier?

3.What are the different type of products that the wireless carrier has? And how is it distributed across various factors such as age, income group etc.

4.We need to see if there is a potential for adding 5Mn subscribers in the next 2 years. For example if the market share where it operates is already 60%+ for the Wireless carrier in consideration, it may be impossible to achieve this target.

5.Assuming there is a scope of adding 5Mn subscribers over 2 years, it is an addition in the capacity of 33% and it can be further broken down in to quarterly targets of 625K subscribers (5Mn/8 Quarters).

6. The additional subscribers can come from two avenues: converts from other wireless carriers and net new subscribers.

7.The new subscribers can be of two types: first would be the kind of users who would use the mobile phone for the first time. Second would be the kind who may want a new connection in addition to their existing ones.

a.To attract first time users: Since mobile connections have become very common now, the fraction of new subscribers from this lot would be very less. Nevertheless a marketing campaign highlighting the wireless carrier’s products can be launched in market.

b.For users who want to buy a new additional connection: What is it they are seeking- it can be something that their existing wireless carrier doesn’t provide them. A survey can be undertaken to understand the current needs/wants of the subscribers, and a study to be done highlighting this parity vis a vis products from other wireless carriers. [Action Point]

New products can be launched and marketed based on this study.

8.The converts from other wireless carriers can be assumed to the biggest chunk that would contribute to the given targets.

a.What is the age group wise distribution of mobile connection age wise? Which age group has the highest tendency to convert to a new carrier?

b.What are the major reasons for the conversions? How can our products and marketing campaigns effectively be built around these factors. The feedback goes to the product team.

c.How do we effectively target different subscribers from different age/income groups?

9.They can also look to target the B2B sector, and targeted marketing campaigns can be made around it.

10.What are the current marketing streams being used? What is the effectiveness of each stream here, for each product category? What the effectiveness trend has been over past years for each stream? How can we work to increase the effectiveness of each stream?

11.Last but not the least, the marketing team must work to keep up CSAT high, as attrition in the existing userbase will increase the target. For this, the marketing department must enable quick responses to complaints, messages on social media sites. Negative posts get a lot of publicity and need to be contained.