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In the hypercompetitive telecom industry that is constantly changing, companies are fighting for the attention of each prospective customer. While traditional marketing campaigns, tariff wars, and affordable deals still drive impressive results, many companies in the telecommunications sector have started investing heavily in their digital presence.

However, advertising your plans and promotions is not enough to grab users’ attention and build relationships with them in the long-run. To turn your target audience into an engaged fan base and loyal customers.

Here are a few tips on how to build a customer-centric digital marketing strategy for a telecom brand.

Provide Multichannel Customer Support

Exceptional customer support is critical for any telecom company. Today’s customers are tech-savvy and their expectations are constantly growing. Microsoft backs me up on that, claiming that 54% of customers globally have higher customer support expectations than they did last year.

They now use multiple online channels to communicate with brands. Therefore, they do not want to waste time listening to your “hold” music and waiting for your customer support representatives to answer. To raise customers’ satisfaction, you need to meet their needs, irrespective of the channel they use.

Start with your website.

When wanting to inform themselves about your plans and services, most customers will land on your website. This is where they should find all the details about your plans. Above all, you should let your visitors ask questions and get immediate answers without having to leave your website.

Having a detailed FAQ page is immensely important, given that 40% of consumers prefer self-service over human contact? This is exactly what Vodafone, an Australian telecommunications company, does. Namely, they provide detailed explanations about the mobile phone plans they offer and provide clear CTA buttons to guide customers towards converting. If a customer has any additional questions, there is an FAQ section at the bottom of the page, where they include customers’ most common questions and straightforward answers to them.

Including live chat on your website is also important. Do not force your customers to leave your site to connect with your customer service representatives via email. This will only discourage them from purchasing from you. Instead, let them seek help directly on your website. This is where live chat shines. It is fast, intuitive, and more personalized, providing users with better experiences.

Leverage Artificial Intelligence

When communicating with brands online, customers expect them to provide fast, relevant answers in real-time. But, what happens when your customer service representatives clock off? Well, this is exactly where chatbots step in.

Their major benefit lies in the fact that you can use them on your website, social networking channels, and apps. They will provide holistic user experiences, irrespective of the channel a customer uses.

A chatbot can help telecom companies in multiple ways and here are some of them:

• Connecting customers with the right department. For example, a chatbot will know whether the question requires a technical consultation, a service failure, a general question about pricing plan and, based on that, find a person at your company that can help them solve that problem.
• Responding to repetitive questions, such as ones related to pricing plans, tariff adjustments, some general setup procedures, and so forth.
• Providing assistance with simple matters. Chatbots can provide guidance and tips for customers on how to solve some most common questions.
• Engaging users. Chatting is easier and more pleasant than calling customer support. Chatbots engage customers through pleasant and relaxed interactions.

Collect Customers’ Feedback

In an ultra-competitive telecommunications landscape, it is important to show that you care about customers’ experiences. Precisely because of that, you should ask them for feedback and, above all, act on it.

Why is this important? Well, statistics say that 96% of dissatisfied customers will not complain to you. However, they will not buy from you either. Namely, the majority of those customers will never come back to you. Instead, they will share their negative experiences with your telecom brand both online and offline. Once negative word-of-mouth starts spreading like wildfire, you will not be able to put it out easily.

Fortunately, there are many ways to collect customer feedback.

Listen to them on social networks.

For telecom brands working with tens of thousands of customers, staying on top of your brand mentions manually is not possible. This is where social media monitoring tools like Social Mention, Mention, or Hootsuite can help you. With their help, you can track your most significant keywords and hashtags and receive notifications in real-time when someone uses them. This is one of the simplest ways to measure brand sentiment and understand what your social media followers think about you.

Take advantage of email marketing.

For instance, when a customer registers on your telecom company’s website and browses through your plans, you could send them a responder email consisting of a simple question. For example, you could ask them about the features they would like to add to your plans, what offers and deals they expect to see on your website, what their major problem with your services they have experienced so far, etc. The question should always be to-the-point and easy to understand. If you ask multiple questions, group them based on their relevance.

Act on customers’ feedback.

If customers complain that your customer support is poor, that your internet connections are slow, or that your pricing plans are too expensive for average customers, put yourself in their shoes and try to boost their experiences by addressing the problem fast. This is the only way to prove that you are listening to them and that their opinions really matter.

Use Social Proof to Build Trust

In psychology, social proof is a theory that individuals often conform to the opinions and activities of the masses. This approach plays a fundamental role in the online landscape, where customers trust online reviews and recommendations as much as their friends and families’ ones. For a telecommunications company, social proof is an amazing way to build trust with their target audiences and set themselves apart from their competitors.

There are many social proof tactics to apply.

Show real-time customer data

There are many social proof tools that will inform your customers about your recent leads and purchases. These notifications are often shown in a tiny popup at the bottom of the page and can be customized according to your brand’s specific needs and personality. Knowing how many people are already using your telecom services, customers will trust you more and be more likely to convert faster.

Encourage customer reviews

Register on all major business review platforms and get your customers to review and rate your services. You could also encourage them to review your telecom brand on your social media channels. To encourage customers to review your services, you can always consider rewarding them.

Show customer testimonials

Customer testimonials are more personal than reviews. You could show them on your website, specific landing pages promoting your plans, or on your social networks. To make them trustworthy, always include customers’ photos. Apart from traditional, textual testimonials, consider creating video ones that are more engaging and interactive.

Write case studies

Case studies explain what problems your customers faced and how you helped them solve them. Say that one of your corporate clients had struggled with employees using multiple telecom providers and covering the costs of their business-related calls before switching all accounts to your company. Your goal is to use actionable statistics and data to show how you helped them reduce costs and improve employee productivity.

Use user-generated content

Most telecom companies invest heavily in effective, emotional, and engaging visual content. However, apart from branded photos and videos, you should also encourage the creation of user-generated content and share it with your audiences. For example, you could encourage customers that purchase from you to create amazing unboxing videos and share it on their social media channels, along with your hashtag. Stackla says that almost 80% of customers purchase products because of UGC.

Create Valuable and Engaging Content across All Channels

Digital marketing should never boil down to bragging yourself about how great you are. Instead, you need to create and promote highly engaging and valuable content that will help you build and nurture strong relationships with your audiences.

For example, those could be comprehensive guides on how to choose the right mobile service provider, devices, or internet packages. Or, you could create an infographic explaining different telecom services. Interactive content types will help you gamify user experiences. For example, you could create a quiz that would ask a user about their specific needs and preferences and, based on them, recommend the right products and plans to them.

The same goes for your social networks. Promoting your plans and deals is important, but your social media marketing strategy should go far beyond that. Share valuable online content, both from your website and from relevant sites in the industry, to educate audiences and position yourself as an industry leader. Social media management tools automate the process of curating and sharing content, improve your online constancy, and save you lots of time.

Content marketing is indeed the backbone of your digital marketing campaign, so use it strategically to gain a competitive advantage.

Over to You

The telecom landscape is highly competitive. To gain a competitive advantage you need to invest heavily in a customer-oriented digital marketing strategy. Only this way will you be able to convert more customers, build relationships with them, and inspire their loyalty.

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