Description
Three baseball umpires are debating their job descriptions, if rather ungrammatically. The first umpire states, "Some of them is strikes, and some of them is balls, and I calls them as they is." The second, slightly more enlightened umpire says, "Some of them is strikes, and some of them is balls, and I calls them as I sees them." The third umpire says, "Some of them is strikes, and some of them is balls, but they ain't nuthin' until I calls them." The customer is the third umpire, and the telecommunications services marketer has to concede that the customer decides, in the end, what the service provider is offering.
3
The Marketing Plan for a
Customer-Centered Telecommunications
Enterprise
3.1 The Marketing Planning Process
Three baseball umpires are debating their job descriptions, if rather ungram-
matically. The first umpire states, “Some of them is strikes, and some of them is
balls, and I calls them as they is.” The second, slightly more enlightened umpire
says, “Some of them is strikes, and some of them is balls, and I calls them as I
sees them.” The third umpire says, “Some of them is strikes, and some of them
is balls, but they ain’t nuthin’ until I calls them.” The customer is the third
umpire, and the telecommunications services marketer has to concede that the
customer decides, in the end, what the service provider is offering.
This marks one significant difference between the business plan and the
marketing plan. The business plan, while acknowledging the demands of the
marketplace, focuses primarily on making the service portfolio a reality. The
marketing plan’s function is to place the service portfolio in the mind of the cus-
tomer, working within the attributes and weaknesses of the service portfolio.
Naturally, these two processes are interdependent and iterative. But the business
planner can transform the entire enterprise, and the marketer transforms the
customer’s perceptions, to position the service portfolio favorably against com-
petitors and substitutes.
The marketing plan offers several advantages to the enterprise. The first is
that it is indeed a map, not a brochure. The qualities that make the best market-
ing professionals successful—persuasiveness, big-picture thinking, enthusiasm
27
that can go beyond the facts of the case—are less useful in providing directives
to the rest of the enterprise. Those in the back office who most effectively exe-
cute, rather than visualize, marketing strategies are structured, efficient, and ana-
lytical. The documentation and direction of a marketing plan keep the
enterprise moving in an agreed direction. Furthermore, it forces that quintessen-
tial marketer to focus the marketing vision, ratify it with supporting calcula-
tions, and commit to its success as written.
All the same, the marketing plan does serve to rally the enterprise with
team spirit. Most employees in every corporate and operational function are
thrilled to be included in the marketing team, and each employee’s contribution
can increase revenues, lose customers, or affect the service provider’s reputation.
Indeed, as one marketing executive once said, “Everyone’s in marketing.”
The marketing plan commits all of its participants to measurable results
within the time horizon of the plan. While a marketing plan might include
milestones toward a long-range goal, the marketing plan’s objectives should be
achievable within a single year. A year is enough time to see if the marketing
vision is off-course, and the telecommunications business environment changes
so rapidly that planning many specific accomplishments for a longer horizon is
impractical.
Lastly, the formal marketing plan that gains the approval of senior man-
agement places responsibility for its completion upon all responsible parties.
With a financial analysis of investment and results, management agrees to fund
the programs outlined in the plan. The marketing organization agrees to deliver
customers, which feeds the operational budgeting process. Ideally, the market-
ing planning process includes the participation of staff members representing a
broad range of divisions, who can summarize customer experiences and poten-
tial avenues of customer acquisition to open new markets. Accordingly, the mar-
keting plan serves as a contract, an agreement among all involved parties, to
achieve harmonious goals to meet the short and long-term marketing goals of
the enterprise.
The first step in marketing planning is to review the previous plan, if there
is one. For all the attention on very specific business plans, very few enterprises
bother to evaluate the previous plan’s results in the context of the planning
process. The value of this process goes beyond whether the enterprise performed
to expectations. It evaluates the entire marketing planning process: whether the
assumptions were valid, what divisions did not participate in planning and
might have improved the plan or results if they had, and where better planning
might have seen opportunities on time to exploit them.
In the 1990s, when home Internet access was moving from the early
adopters to an early majority, several of the incumbent U.S. local service provid-
ers saw an opportunity to sell second lines to their residential subscribers.
Though the offering of second lines, prior to widespread DSL deployment, only
28 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
offered narrowband access, customers sought to free up the voice line from over-
use by the Internet addict in the house. At the time, competition in the local
network, especially in the consumer market, was only beginning. Up to that
time, local service consumer market planning had been driven by operations
planning, which in turn had relied on demographic growth estimates, primarily
the plans of residential developers, instead of forecasting demand of actual cus-
tomers. To the incumbents’ credit, aggressively marketing second lines was
indeed a real step towards competitive marketing. But company business
processes did not readily accommodate marketers driving infrastructure
buildout, and capital investment planning did not anticipate the demand for
second lines for Internet access. Delays, formerly unheard of in an industry that
historically managed its technology introductions slowly and deliberately,
occurred with such regularity that state regulatory bodies needed to intervene.
Moreover, the shift from voice to Internet access on lines that were not
enhanced with broadband capabilities changed the nature of traffic when new
lines were in operation. By 1998, a typical on-line session lasted a half hour, ten
times longer than the typical three-minute voice call [1]. The marketing plan-
ning process requires historical and projected data from virtually every division
in the enterprise to feed a reasoned projection of costs and activities that gener-
ate the revenues projected by the plan.
Armed with the revisions to the previous planning process, senior market-
ing executives establish the planning team. The customer-focused marketing
plan requires team members who represent the customer perspective. This is
more difficult than it seems, especially because few service providers have the
luxury of including actual customers on the planning team. There are employee
surrogates for customers who can put aside company loyalty on behalf of
the planning process: large-customer account managers, customer-care middle
managers, and employees who are affiliated with outside user groups. These
employees spend their working hours listening to customer complaints, unmet
needs, and compliments. On an event-by-event basis, their normal work rou-
tine might address each of these items. The marketing planning process is the
place to study them in the aggregate, or even anecdotally. Individual victories
or defeats can harbor insights for future marketing efforts.
3.2 Directing the Marketing Plan to the Customer
Any basic marketing textbook or a cursory search on the Internet will unearth
dozens of marketing plan elements. The customer-centered marketing plan
focuses each of the elements on shaping the customer’s perception.
Because the marketing plan should be used, not shelved, the shorter it is,
the better. Its impact and objectives should be limited to a single fiscal year. To
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 29
the degree possible, lengthy explanations of new services, or subsidiary financial
statements, or administrative matters that do not assign a task to an individual,
should merit only a footnote reference to more information in another place or a
hyperlink in an electronic document.
The ideal executive summary does not exceed a single page or two made up
mostly of white space. This précis of the rest of the marketing plan is the paper
equivalent of the fabled 15-second elevator ride with the CEO that a person gets
once in a lifetime. If a marketing plan cannot abide by the constraints of a half-
dozen bullet points and very clear commitments, then the planning process that
arrived at that summary was incomplete. After all, if the executive or board of
directors scanning the plan cannot get through the summary, the plan is
unlikely to win funding. Making the executive summary center on the customer
is a fine way to eliminate text that might better be situated on the company’s
business plan.
The situation analysis section provides the backdrop for the strategies and
tactics to follow. Though many of its components do not relate directly to the
customer, they do relate indirectly, and the exercise of introducing the customer
to the thought process is a useful one. For example, the state of regulation is still
an important component of the fixed-line service provider’s situation. The
residual regulation of incumbent service providers and the tariff-dictated resale
rates of unbundled elements affect nearly all of the local wireline service provid-
ers in the United States. From the marketing point of view, all that matters is
the customer. Are there substitutes for the regulated service on offer, and have
recent developments changed the price or utility of substitutes in the view of the
customer?
This section also includes a statement about the present market position of
the service portfolio, including its strengths and weaknesses, in contrast to the
services offered by competitors, and their strengths and weaknesses. A market
position only exists in relation to a competitor; if a close competitor is strong on
low cost and low price, then one’s own offering cannot be strong on price. On
the other hand, if prices are high enough among all competitors in the market-
place, then a customer’s possible substitute for the service in question is simply
not having it at all. Different products in the portfolio might have different
attributes, and might indeed be substitutes for each other. One metric that
belongs in the situation analysis section is market share, the ratio between a
company’s revenues and the revenues garnered by the total market.
The situation analysis also assesses the customer situation, which might
include the important purchase criteria used by various market segments. These
criteria might vary across segments or across services. A slow economy might
suppress spending on new wireless devices, but it might also increase business
bandwidth in lieu of costly travel. Most noteworthy are changes to customer
buying patterns that might signify trends that present threats to existing revenue
30 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
streams or new opportunities. A severe slowdown in a micro-economy that rep-
resents high telecommunications volume, such as the hospitality industry, might
threaten service providers whose customer base is overrepresented by the busi-
ness segment.
Account managers who are close to a vertical market might offer guidance
to increase market presence in the industry segment. An important industry seg-
ment might warrant its own service portfolio, or a dedicated customer care team,
or proprietary software that creates value and differentiation from competitive
offerings. The marketing planning process can create such infrastructure, along
with a budget and a plan of operations within the segment. Demographics, while
no longer the main element of marketing planning, remains of interest in the
marketing plan, which seeks novel segmentation strategies and unique blends of
services and pricing to appeal to a variety of consumer profiles.
The situation analysis is also the opportunity to assess the state of technol-
ogy, including identifying technologies that have matured and reached the end
of the life cycle, and examining underutilized or unexplored technologies
that might provide new service lines, bundling opportunities, or substitutes for
the present portfolio. The planning team can recognize fading technologies by
the migration of users to newer models, by the slowdown in adoption during the
phase when only laggards finally join the late majority, and by deep revenue
slides as the customer’s perceived value falters. The marketing plan can address
emerging technologies that are not yet in the marketplace by establishing incu-
bators, focus groups of innovators, or develop a research plan to study ongoing
use of the new technologies in more advanced markets around the world. By no
means is the technology assessment a technical description. Its purpose is to
evaluate existing and potential markets for technologies available for deploy-
ment within the time horizon of the marketing plan.
After the analysis of the surrounding environment, the market plan should
address the service provider’s strategic approach to the marketplace. In their
book, The Discipline of Market Leaders [2], Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema
identify three marketplace strategies that they call “value disciplines.” The first,
operational excellence, offers services at the least price and at minimal inconven-
ience. The second, product leadership, offers leading edge or superior quality
telecommunications services to its demanding market. The third, customer inti-
macy, seeks to meet the particular needs of its target market segments. For the
most part, these disciplines are mutually exclusive approaches. The service pro-
vider whose focus is low price will not be able to offer the unassailable quality
demanded by the customer of product leadership, nor will the price be the key
criterion for the customer who seeks a customized solution and a high level of
attention. Thus, the service provider must make a commitment to excel in one
approach and invest in the marketing and operational infrastructure to succeed
in a crowded marketplace.
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 31
For the telecommunications services marketer, the fundamental approach
should be part of the corporate philosophy before the marketing planning
process begins. If it is not already clear from the previous business plan and cor-
porate mission statements, marketing management needs to obtain direction
from senior management and plan marketing strategies and tactics accordingly.
Marketing plan strategies are not tasks, but they should generate specific
objectives and the tactics to fulfill the objectives. Thus a strategy might include a
program to create excitement about a new service, and individual tactics would
support the strategy through market research to identify segments of likely
demand for the service, awareness advertising campaigns, signup promotions,
collateral materials, and publicity.
One section of the marketing plan should focus on objectives, the proposed
scorecard for the plan. Each objective can correlate with a specific tactic within
the larger framework of a marketing strategy. Some objectives might cross strate-
gies, such as a commitment to reduce churn by a percentage point in a particular
service line. The objectives contain the scorekeeping, so they are well suited for
presentation in the executive summary of the marketing plan, if only in bullet-
point form. Somewhere deeper in the document, objectives carry other attrib-
utes that give them meaning. For operational parameters such as telemarketing
close rates, these attributes include the metric to meet, and in some cases, the
measuring device used to calculate the metric. All objectives should include a
completion date and a responsible manager. If the objective will require signifi-
cant investment or additional budget for labor, expenses or capital assets, the
marketing plan should present the amount and a breakeven analysis.
The customer-centered marketing plan includes the marketing mix of
product, promotion, pricing, and distribution with the customer perspective
throughout. In practice, for example, the section that describes a new pricing
structure substantiates its proposal with data from focus groups or test markets,
research on market segments that might be especially responsive to proposed
service bundles, or survey results that indicate an unmet need in the market-
place. The customer-centered marketing plan tests each objective against the
customer. If an objective does not address a customer need, its inclusion in the
plan should be reconsidered.
3.3 Differentiation Strategies
A focus on customers does not ignore competitors, because the battle for market
share takes place inside the customer’s mind. Rather, a customer-centered strat-
egy recognizes that competitors endeavor to stand between you and your
customer, and that your goal is to keep your existing customers while intercept-
ing new customers from your competitors. Al Reis and Jack Trout likened
32 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
competition to warfare by borrowing the principles of an 1832 book called On
War that had been written by a retired Prussian general. The resulting treatise,
Marketing Warfare, identified strategies that used proven military strategies to
explain marketing successes [3].
The principle of force states that the competitor with the greater “troop
strength,” all else being equal, will be victorious. Indeed, in the contest for
industry leadership in any year, the way to bet is to pick the leader from the year
before. Size creates force, whether the sales force, or the mind position of the
leading brand, or simple inertia in cases of only average customer satisfaction.
Thus AT&T did not end its generic “Reach Out and Touch Someone” cam-
paign as soon as it lost its long-distance monopoly. A service provider that owns
90% or more of a market can expand the market and be sure to get nearly all of
the new revenue.
Nonetheless, service providers just entering the industry or holding very
small positions in the overall market cannot fight the industry leaders in all
places at once. Level 3 Communications entered the wholesale transmission
services business in 1998. Never expecting to serve the retail market, the com-
pany focused on building an Internet protocol-based network unencumbered by
legacy facilities. Within a few years, Level 3 held a 32% share in the wholesale
dialup services market, the second largest provider after MCI’s UUNet [4]. By
2004, its customer base included nine of the world’s top 10 telecommunications
carriers, nine of the 10 largest European carriers, and five of the top 6 U.S.
Internet service providers. Though Level 3’s infrastructure is among the largest
communications and Internet backbone networks in the world, it has stayed in
the managed networks marketplace, serving the largest Internet service providers
and corporate customers. Its focus of resources on a narrow and underserved
segment enabled it to grow quickly and establish a strong brand within a market
otherwise held by enormous but diversified competitors.
Ries and Trout identify a “strategic square” for marketers, including a
defensive strategy for the market leader, an offensive marketing strategy for a
strong second leader, a flanking strategy for those that do not have the resources
to take over the market, and guerilla marketing for small firms whose only
opportunity to dominate a market is to dominate a small segment.
Applying this concept to the wireless market, at the end of 2003, wireless
market share in the United States was split among the six primary service pro-
viders, with Verizon in the lead with about one-quarter of the market, and
AT&T and Cingular in battle for second place, each with about 15% of the
market. Thus their combination would reposition the service provider from a
second-place tie to a first-place leadership. Sprint, Nextel, and T-Mobile fol-
lowed, and the remainder of the market consisted of small service providers.
These market shares, when displayed in pie chart form in Figure 3.1, demon-
strate the lead that Verizon commanded in the wireless market at the time.
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 33
Thus, Verizon could operate defensively, which gave it an advantage over
its rivals in retaining and even increasing its share. The adage “nobody ever got
fired for buying IBM” demonstrates the power that market leadership affords
for the undecided buyer. Cingular and AT&T were close rivals to Verizon, but
they were not the leader, and each only held about three-fifths the market share
owned by Verizon. Thus, their strategies would not succeed if they applied mar-
keting resources head-on against Verizon (though they could compete more
evenly against each other). AT&T and Cingular needed to apply offensive
strategies against weaknesses in Verizon’s position or frontal assaults against each
other. Yet each of these service providers lost market share to Verizon between
2002 and 2003. This often occurs among second-place contenders who meet
the leader in the marketplace without an offense strategy. AT&T and Cingular
could not beat Verizon with similar plans and services without exploiting weak-
nesses in its line. When the companies combine, a frontal assault strategy could
be effective.
Nextel and T-Mobile both experienced market share growth in the same
period in which market shares for AT&T and Cingular were decreasing. Nextel
accomplished its impressive gain through its proprietary push-to-talk technol-
ogy. T-Mobile focused on the high-end customer segment with its GSM net-
work and pioneering data services. These are flanking strategies against the
industry giants, and both were successful for these smaller service providers. But
both of these innovative technologies are susceptible in the long term to
34 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
Other
19.7%
Verizon
23.9%
T-Mobile
8.0%
Nextel
8.2%
Sprint
10.2%
AT&T
14.5%
Cingular
15.5%
Total:
30%
Figure 3.1 Wireless U.S. market share. (After: [5].)
imitation from other service providers, including the market leader. Both Veri-
zon and Sprint upgraded their networks to offer push-to-talk, though Nextel’s
first-mover advantage gave it an excellent head start and an ability to be the
standard-bearer. Similarly, technology in later generations of wireless technol-
ogy will merge the industry protocols, and T-Mobile will need to develop tech-
nologies or other differentiators to sustain its status in the wireless market. In
support of sustaining its growth, the service provider has leveraged its market
position using partnerships with larger wireless carriers and innovating in Wi-Fi
access in the United States. Sprint’s future market position has been challenged
by local number portability and a nebulous market strategy. According to Strat-
egy Analytics, nearly 40% of Sprint customers expressed an interest in switching
service providers if number portability was available, the highest percentage of
customers favorable to portability for all major wireless service providers. In the
same survey, Verizon would be the most popular destination for churners, vali-
dating a defense strategy for the market leader.
For the service provider that falls in the bottom 20% of the market, the
appropriate strategy is guerilla marketing. Omnipoint, a U.S.-based GSM serv-
ice provider and predecessor to T-Mobile, created a tiny niche among frequent
international travelers. GSM, while in limited availability in the United States,
was the protocol of choice in all of Europe and most of the rest of the world.
Omnipoint developed roaming agreements with other countries, creating per-
minute pricing that was not very different than roaming prices between U.S. cit-
ies. More importantly, Omnipoint’s overseas roaming rates were a fraction of
the prices for non-GSM providers such as AT&T. Frequent overseas travelers
found Omnipoint’s international rates lower than hotels or calling cards, and
the convenience priceless. Beyond the traveler’s ability to make calls from any-
place comfortable, the Omnipoint customer could use any dual band or tri-
band telephone to find a roaming network. Omnipoint targeted its advertising
by presenting collateral materials in places that its prospects congregated, such as
airport executive lounges and hotel lobbies. For a small service provider with a
very limited marketing budget, extremely targeted marketing and high effective-
ness are critical. After Omnipoint’s merger with VoiceStream and then its acqui-
sition by Germany’s T-Mobile, Omnipoint’s pricing structure moved in line
with its nearest competitors. To stem potential churn from its original custom-
ers for whom roaming internationally was the singular reason for subscribing, a
grandfather strategy kept them from switching.
One effective strategy for the industry leader is to attack oneself. Entrepre-
neurs created a large dial-around segment in the early 1990s largely through a
flanking strategy. Targeting low-cost seekers in the undifferentiated long-
distance market attracted 15% of consumer callers [6]. In 1997, MCI joined
with an unbranded alternative called Telecom USA and captured a leadership
position while legitimizing the market with national advertising campaigns.
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 35
Eventually, AT&T weighed in with its own offering, thus attacking its own
leadership position with an unbranded alternative. Leaders can also copy com-
petitive actions before their own market share erodes in favor of the innovations
of others. Verizon was the first wireless service provider to launch push-to-talk
technology in response to the Nextel threat in an attempt to slow Nextel’s
momentum.
For those attempting an offensive marketing strategy, the best attack point
is a weakness inherent in the leader’s strength. After all, given time and invest-
ment, leaders can correct market weaknesses once competitors identify them, as
Verizon did with its implementation of the missing push-to-talk capability. On
the other hand, the industry leader cannot eliminate its strength to meet a com-
petitor’s strategy. Sprint was the first long-distance provider to boast an all-fiber
network, and it took every marketing opportunity it had to boast about it. Even
the advertisements that did not mention the high quality of its network man-
aged to drop a pin with a little pinging sound, just to remind consumers of its
mind position. This approach was a direct assault on its closest competitor,
MCI, whose network was thought to be cheaper but inferior to AT&T’s. But
the magic of this campaign was that even AT&T could not retaliate with its own
fiber optic network, thus lending credibility and conceding defeat to Sprint’s
newer and much more targeted investment. Furthermore, it would have been
futile for AT&T to disparage the notion of high-quality fiber, as its own plans
included a transformation to fiber in the future. The same marketplace battle
continues as the newest entrants to the marketplace boast of their VoIP net-
works and will offer features unavailable or costly to buy in traditional voice
networks.
Flanking marketing strategies target those customers that are overlooked
and underserved. Most new telecommunications markets emerge from technol-
ogy advances, such as camera phones or data access in the wireless market, or
broadband services over phone lines or cable. But marketers can create new serv-
ices and new segments simply through the marketing mix. The prepaid calling-
card services market provides an excellent example of a sector that emerged
when entrepreneurs simply repackaged and distributed resold telecommunica-
tions services. Most vendors of prepaid landline services do not own networks or
support a large labor force. Their business model focuses on low per-minute
international rates and carefully maintained distribution outlets. Prepaid service
providers focus on market segments that are not targeted by industry leaders.
Customers of prepaid long-distance services include students, immigrants, and
consumers without bank accounts, customers that are ignored or actively
avoided by service providers seeking subscribers. A 2002 estimate by research
firm Atlantic-ACM projected growth in U.S. prepaid calling-card services reve-
nue to slow from the compounded annual 25.4% growth rate experienced over
the previous 7 years to a more sustainable but still robust 9.7%, reaching
36 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
$6.4 billion by 2008, a 73% increase in a 5-year period. The industry, with a life
of its own, separate from its long-distance roots, now includes prepaid wireless,
local service, and Internet access.
A bond trader whose dream was to build a worldwide fiber optic network
founded Global Crossing in the 1980s. Its $15 billion 100,000-mile network
reached 85% of the world’s telecommunications markets [7]. The company
strategy was guerilla warfare: serve a tiny but very profitable market segment by
being the carrier’s transatlantic carrier. This strategy attacks the larger interna-
tional networks outside of their main markets, but uses their customers against
them. AT&T’s competitors without their own international networks would be
happy to buy bandwidth on a state-of-the-art network from any reputable serv-
ice provider that wasn’t trying to steal its retail customers. Subcontractors like
Tyco built the undersea cable for Global Crossing, while Global Crossing stuck
to its skills in funding the efforts. In 1999, the company acquired a cable instal-
lation and maintenance division from Cable & Wireless PLC. As a guerilla mar-
keter, Global Crossing might have succeeded as the carrier’s carrier it promised
to be, with enormous bandwidth capacity at low, fiber-driven prices. But the
company’s acquisitions overreached its marketing strategy and its size. First, it
tried and failed to acquire incumbent local service provider US West, losing the
battle to another professed wholesaler Qwest, who inherited not only the victory
but also the strategic conflict of interest. Global Crossing more successfully
acquired a different incumbent local service provider, Frontier Corporation. A
series of difficulties led Global Crossing to bankruptcy and redemption. Overca-
pacity in the market for bandwidth reduced prices for all service providers.
Technology companies were losing the stock market valuations that had enabled
them to acquire the venerable service providers such as Frontier Corporation.
But Global Crossing alone was responsible for the disconnect from its guerilla
positioning that might have saved it from bankruptcy and even the creative
accounting that led to scandal. It acted like a full-service industry leader. The
company contributed more than $3 million to candidates in the 2000 U.S. elec-
tions, acting like the entrenched regulated service providers. The company made
millions of dollars of charitable contributions, a noble undertaking but one not
normally associated with guerilla marketing tactics. The executives took salaries,
stock options, loans and bonuses that rivaled those in the largest U.S. corpora-
tions. Guerilla marketers need to stay lean, to enter and exit markets flexibly, as
the climate warrants. Global Crossing left its strategy behind as if it had become
the market leader.
It is never surprising to see an entrepreneur whose company is acquired
leave the corporate world soon thereafter. The skills that define the guerilla mar-
keter simply do not translate well to the corporate world, and the entrepreneur is
often happy to leave the stiff, structured world of corporate life. Guerilla mar-
keting works when the service provider is committed to the vision of remaining
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 37
an outsider, finding a market that stays well away from the rest of the industry,
and standing firm against the temptations of the executive suite.
References
[1] Machlin, Robert, “The Internet: Redefining the WAN,” Telecommunications Americas
Edition, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1998, pp. 48–49.
[2] Treacy, Michael, and Fred D.Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your
Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, Reading, MA: Addison Wesley
Longman, 1995.
[3] Ries, Al, and Jack Trout, Marketing Warfare, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.
[4] Long, Josh, “Level 3: Plenty of Room for Growth in Narrowband,” PHONE+, Vol. 17,
No. 4, 2003.
[5] Technology Business Research, “Network Business Quarterly (NBQ) U.S. Mobile Opera-
tors 3Q03 Benchmark and Metrics,” press release, 2003.
[6] Henderson, Khali, “New Tricks of the 10-10-XXX Trade,” PHONE+, Vol. 14, No. 10,
2000.
[7] Palazzo, Anthony, “ ‘Monster’ Telecom Network Draining Oceans of Capital (The Rise
& Fall of Global Crossing),” Los Angeles Business Journal, Vol. 24, No. 7, 2002, pp.
22–23.
38 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
doc_364681069.pdf
Three baseball umpires are debating their job descriptions, if rather ungrammatically. The first umpire states, "Some of them is strikes, and some of them is balls, and I calls them as they is." The second, slightly more enlightened umpire says, "Some of them is strikes, and some of them is balls, and I calls them as I sees them." The third umpire says, "Some of them is strikes, and some of them is balls, but they ain't nuthin' until I calls them." The customer is the third umpire, and the telecommunications services marketer has to concede that the customer decides, in the end, what the service provider is offering.
3
The Marketing Plan for a
Customer-Centered Telecommunications
Enterprise
3.1 The Marketing Planning Process
Three baseball umpires are debating their job descriptions, if rather ungram-
matically. The first umpire states, “Some of them is strikes, and some of them is
balls, and I calls them as they is.” The second, slightly more enlightened umpire
says, “Some of them is strikes, and some of them is balls, and I calls them as I
sees them.” The third umpire says, “Some of them is strikes, and some of them
is balls, but they ain’t nuthin’ until I calls them.” The customer is the third
umpire, and the telecommunications services marketer has to concede that the
customer decides, in the end, what the service provider is offering.
This marks one significant difference between the business plan and the
marketing plan. The business plan, while acknowledging the demands of the
marketplace, focuses primarily on making the service portfolio a reality. The
marketing plan’s function is to place the service portfolio in the mind of the cus-
tomer, working within the attributes and weaknesses of the service portfolio.
Naturally, these two processes are interdependent and iterative. But the business
planner can transform the entire enterprise, and the marketer transforms the
customer’s perceptions, to position the service portfolio favorably against com-
petitors and substitutes.
The marketing plan offers several advantages to the enterprise. The first is
that it is indeed a map, not a brochure. The qualities that make the best market-
ing professionals successful—persuasiveness, big-picture thinking, enthusiasm
27
that can go beyond the facts of the case—are less useful in providing directives
to the rest of the enterprise. Those in the back office who most effectively exe-
cute, rather than visualize, marketing strategies are structured, efficient, and ana-
lytical. The documentation and direction of a marketing plan keep the
enterprise moving in an agreed direction. Furthermore, it forces that quintessen-
tial marketer to focus the marketing vision, ratify it with supporting calcula-
tions, and commit to its success as written.
All the same, the marketing plan does serve to rally the enterprise with
team spirit. Most employees in every corporate and operational function are
thrilled to be included in the marketing team, and each employee’s contribution
can increase revenues, lose customers, or affect the service provider’s reputation.
Indeed, as one marketing executive once said, “Everyone’s in marketing.”
The marketing plan commits all of its participants to measurable results
within the time horizon of the plan. While a marketing plan might include
milestones toward a long-range goal, the marketing plan’s objectives should be
achievable within a single year. A year is enough time to see if the marketing
vision is off-course, and the telecommunications business environment changes
so rapidly that planning many specific accomplishments for a longer horizon is
impractical.
Lastly, the formal marketing plan that gains the approval of senior man-
agement places responsibility for its completion upon all responsible parties.
With a financial analysis of investment and results, management agrees to fund
the programs outlined in the plan. The marketing organization agrees to deliver
customers, which feeds the operational budgeting process. Ideally, the market-
ing planning process includes the participation of staff members representing a
broad range of divisions, who can summarize customer experiences and poten-
tial avenues of customer acquisition to open new markets. Accordingly, the mar-
keting plan serves as a contract, an agreement among all involved parties, to
achieve harmonious goals to meet the short and long-term marketing goals of
the enterprise.
The first step in marketing planning is to review the previous plan, if there
is one. For all the attention on very specific business plans, very few enterprises
bother to evaluate the previous plan’s results in the context of the planning
process. The value of this process goes beyond whether the enterprise performed
to expectations. It evaluates the entire marketing planning process: whether the
assumptions were valid, what divisions did not participate in planning and
might have improved the plan or results if they had, and where better planning
might have seen opportunities on time to exploit them.
In the 1990s, when home Internet access was moving from the early
adopters to an early majority, several of the incumbent U.S. local service provid-
ers saw an opportunity to sell second lines to their residential subscribers.
Though the offering of second lines, prior to widespread DSL deployment, only
28 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
offered narrowband access, customers sought to free up the voice line from over-
use by the Internet addict in the house. At the time, competition in the local
network, especially in the consumer market, was only beginning. Up to that
time, local service consumer market planning had been driven by operations
planning, which in turn had relied on demographic growth estimates, primarily
the plans of residential developers, instead of forecasting demand of actual cus-
tomers. To the incumbents’ credit, aggressively marketing second lines was
indeed a real step towards competitive marketing. But company business
processes did not readily accommodate marketers driving infrastructure
buildout, and capital investment planning did not anticipate the demand for
second lines for Internet access. Delays, formerly unheard of in an industry that
historically managed its technology introductions slowly and deliberately,
occurred with such regularity that state regulatory bodies needed to intervene.
Moreover, the shift from voice to Internet access on lines that were not
enhanced with broadband capabilities changed the nature of traffic when new
lines were in operation. By 1998, a typical on-line session lasted a half hour, ten
times longer than the typical three-minute voice call [1]. The marketing plan-
ning process requires historical and projected data from virtually every division
in the enterprise to feed a reasoned projection of costs and activities that gener-
ate the revenues projected by the plan.
Armed with the revisions to the previous planning process, senior market-
ing executives establish the planning team. The customer-focused marketing
plan requires team members who represent the customer perspective. This is
more difficult than it seems, especially because few service providers have the
luxury of including actual customers on the planning team. There are employee
surrogates for customers who can put aside company loyalty on behalf of
the planning process: large-customer account managers, customer-care middle
managers, and employees who are affiliated with outside user groups. These
employees spend their working hours listening to customer complaints, unmet
needs, and compliments. On an event-by-event basis, their normal work rou-
tine might address each of these items. The marketing planning process is the
place to study them in the aggregate, or even anecdotally. Individual victories
or defeats can harbor insights for future marketing efforts.
3.2 Directing the Marketing Plan to the Customer
Any basic marketing textbook or a cursory search on the Internet will unearth
dozens of marketing plan elements. The customer-centered marketing plan
focuses each of the elements on shaping the customer’s perception.
Because the marketing plan should be used, not shelved, the shorter it is,
the better. Its impact and objectives should be limited to a single fiscal year. To
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 29
the degree possible, lengthy explanations of new services, or subsidiary financial
statements, or administrative matters that do not assign a task to an individual,
should merit only a footnote reference to more information in another place or a
hyperlink in an electronic document.
The ideal executive summary does not exceed a single page or two made up
mostly of white space. This précis of the rest of the marketing plan is the paper
equivalent of the fabled 15-second elevator ride with the CEO that a person gets
once in a lifetime. If a marketing plan cannot abide by the constraints of a half-
dozen bullet points and very clear commitments, then the planning process that
arrived at that summary was incomplete. After all, if the executive or board of
directors scanning the plan cannot get through the summary, the plan is
unlikely to win funding. Making the executive summary center on the customer
is a fine way to eliminate text that might better be situated on the company’s
business plan.
The situation analysis section provides the backdrop for the strategies and
tactics to follow. Though many of its components do not relate directly to the
customer, they do relate indirectly, and the exercise of introducing the customer
to the thought process is a useful one. For example, the state of regulation is still
an important component of the fixed-line service provider’s situation. The
residual regulation of incumbent service providers and the tariff-dictated resale
rates of unbundled elements affect nearly all of the local wireline service provid-
ers in the United States. From the marketing point of view, all that matters is
the customer. Are there substitutes for the regulated service on offer, and have
recent developments changed the price or utility of substitutes in the view of the
customer?
This section also includes a statement about the present market position of
the service portfolio, including its strengths and weaknesses, in contrast to the
services offered by competitors, and their strengths and weaknesses. A market
position only exists in relation to a competitor; if a close competitor is strong on
low cost and low price, then one’s own offering cannot be strong on price. On
the other hand, if prices are high enough among all competitors in the market-
place, then a customer’s possible substitute for the service in question is simply
not having it at all. Different products in the portfolio might have different
attributes, and might indeed be substitutes for each other. One metric that
belongs in the situation analysis section is market share, the ratio between a
company’s revenues and the revenues garnered by the total market.
The situation analysis also assesses the customer situation, which might
include the important purchase criteria used by various market segments. These
criteria might vary across segments or across services. A slow economy might
suppress spending on new wireless devices, but it might also increase business
bandwidth in lieu of costly travel. Most noteworthy are changes to customer
buying patterns that might signify trends that present threats to existing revenue
30 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
streams or new opportunities. A severe slowdown in a micro-economy that rep-
resents high telecommunications volume, such as the hospitality industry, might
threaten service providers whose customer base is overrepresented by the busi-
ness segment.
Account managers who are close to a vertical market might offer guidance
to increase market presence in the industry segment. An important industry seg-
ment might warrant its own service portfolio, or a dedicated customer care team,
or proprietary software that creates value and differentiation from competitive
offerings. The marketing planning process can create such infrastructure, along
with a budget and a plan of operations within the segment. Demographics, while
no longer the main element of marketing planning, remains of interest in the
marketing plan, which seeks novel segmentation strategies and unique blends of
services and pricing to appeal to a variety of consumer profiles.
The situation analysis is also the opportunity to assess the state of technol-
ogy, including identifying technologies that have matured and reached the end
of the life cycle, and examining underutilized or unexplored technologies
that might provide new service lines, bundling opportunities, or substitutes for
the present portfolio. The planning team can recognize fading technologies by
the migration of users to newer models, by the slowdown in adoption during the
phase when only laggards finally join the late majority, and by deep revenue
slides as the customer’s perceived value falters. The marketing plan can address
emerging technologies that are not yet in the marketplace by establishing incu-
bators, focus groups of innovators, or develop a research plan to study ongoing
use of the new technologies in more advanced markets around the world. By no
means is the technology assessment a technical description. Its purpose is to
evaluate existing and potential markets for technologies available for deploy-
ment within the time horizon of the marketing plan.
After the analysis of the surrounding environment, the market plan should
address the service provider’s strategic approach to the marketplace. In their
book, The Discipline of Market Leaders [2], Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema
identify three marketplace strategies that they call “value disciplines.” The first,
operational excellence, offers services at the least price and at minimal inconven-
ience. The second, product leadership, offers leading edge or superior quality
telecommunications services to its demanding market. The third, customer inti-
macy, seeks to meet the particular needs of its target market segments. For the
most part, these disciplines are mutually exclusive approaches. The service pro-
vider whose focus is low price will not be able to offer the unassailable quality
demanded by the customer of product leadership, nor will the price be the key
criterion for the customer who seeks a customized solution and a high level of
attention. Thus, the service provider must make a commitment to excel in one
approach and invest in the marketing and operational infrastructure to succeed
in a crowded marketplace.
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 31
For the telecommunications services marketer, the fundamental approach
should be part of the corporate philosophy before the marketing planning
process begins. If it is not already clear from the previous business plan and cor-
porate mission statements, marketing management needs to obtain direction
from senior management and plan marketing strategies and tactics accordingly.
Marketing plan strategies are not tasks, but they should generate specific
objectives and the tactics to fulfill the objectives. Thus a strategy might include a
program to create excitement about a new service, and individual tactics would
support the strategy through market research to identify segments of likely
demand for the service, awareness advertising campaigns, signup promotions,
collateral materials, and publicity.
One section of the marketing plan should focus on objectives, the proposed
scorecard for the plan. Each objective can correlate with a specific tactic within
the larger framework of a marketing strategy. Some objectives might cross strate-
gies, such as a commitment to reduce churn by a percentage point in a particular
service line. The objectives contain the scorekeeping, so they are well suited for
presentation in the executive summary of the marketing plan, if only in bullet-
point form. Somewhere deeper in the document, objectives carry other attrib-
utes that give them meaning. For operational parameters such as telemarketing
close rates, these attributes include the metric to meet, and in some cases, the
measuring device used to calculate the metric. All objectives should include a
completion date and a responsible manager. If the objective will require signifi-
cant investment or additional budget for labor, expenses or capital assets, the
marketing plan should present the amount and a breakeven analysis.
The customer-centered marketing plan includes the marketing mix of
product, promotion, pricing, and distribution with the customer perspective
throughout. In practice, for example, the section that describes a new pricing
structure substantiates its proposal with data from focus groups or test markets,
research on market segments that might be especially responsive to proposed
service bundles, or survey results that indicate an unmet need in the market-
place. The customer-centered marketing plan tests each objective against the
customer. If an objective does not address a customer need, its inclusion in the
plan should be reconsidered.
3.3 Differentiation Strategies
A focus on customers does not ignore competitors, because the battle for market
share takes place inside the customer’s mind. Rather, a customer-centered strat-
egy recognizes that competitors endeavor to stand between you and your
customer, and that your goal is to keep your existing customers while intercept-
ing new customers from your competitors. Al Reis and Jack Trout likened
32 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
competition to warfare by borrowing the principles of an 1832 book called On
War that had been written by a retired Prussian general. The resulting treatise,
Marketing Warfare, identified strategies that used proven military strategies to
explain marketing successes [3].
The principle of force states that the competitor with the greater “troop
strength,” all else being equal, will be victorious. Indeed, in the contest for
industry leadership in any year, the way to bet is to pick the leader from the year
before. Size creates force, whether the sales force, or the mind position of the
leading brand, or simple inertia in cases of only average customer satisfaction.
Thus AT&T did not end its generic “Reach Out and Touch Someone” cam-
paign as soon as it lost its long-distance monopoly. A service provider that owns
90% or more of a market can expand the market and be sure to get nearly all of
the new revenue.
Nonetheless, service providers just entering the industry or holding very
small positions in the overall market cannot fight the industry leaders in all
places at once. Level 3 Communications entered the wholesale transmission
services business in 1998. Never expecting to serve the retail market, the com-
pany focused on building an Internet protocol-based network unencumbered by
legacy facilities. Within a few years, Level 3 held a 32% share in the wholesale
dialup services market, the second largest provider after MCI’s UUNet [4]. By
2004, its customer base included nine of the world’s top 10 telecommunications
carriers, nine of the 10 largest European carriers, and five of the top 6 U.S.
Internet service providers. Though Level 3’s infrastructure is among the largest
communications and Internet backbone networks in the world, it has stayed in
the managed networks marketplace, serving the largest Internet service providers
and corporate customers. Its focus of resources on a narrow and underserved
segment enabled it to grow quickly and establish a strong brand within a market
otherwise held by enormous but diversified competitors.
Ries and Trout identify a “strategic square” for marketers, including a
defensive strategy for the market leader, an offensive marketing strategy for a
strong second leader, a flanking strategy for those that do not have the resources
to take over the market, and guerilla marketing for small firms whose only
opportunity to dominate a market is to dominate a small segment.
Applying this concept to the wireless market, at the end of 2003, wireless
market share in the United States was split among the six primary service pro-
viders, with Verizon in the lead with about one-quarter of the market, and
AT&T and Cingular in battle for second place, each with about 15% of the
market. Thus their combination would reposition the service provider from a
second-place tie to a first-place leadership. Sprint, Nextel, and T-Mobile fol-
lowed, and the remainder of the market consisted of small service providers.
These market shares, when displayed in pie chart form in Figure 3.1, demon-
strate the lead that Verizon commanded in the wireless market at the time.
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 33
Thus, Verizon could operate defensively, which gave it an advantage over
its rivals in retaining and even increasing its share. The adage “nobody ever got
fired for buying IBM” demonstrates the power that market leadership affords
for the undecided buyer. Cingular and AT&T were close rivals to Verizon, but
they were not the leader, and each only held about three-fifths the market share
owned by Verizon. Thus, their strategies would not succeed if they applied mar-
keting resources head-on against Verizon (though they could compete more
evenly against each other). AT&T and Cingular needed to apply offensive
strategies against weaknesses in Verizon’s position or frontal assaults against each
other. Yet each of these service providers lost market share to Verizon between
2002 and 2003. This often occurs among second-place contenders who meet
the leader in the marketplace without an offense strategy. AT&T and Cingular
could not beat Verizon with similar plans and services without exploiting weak-
nesses in its line. When the companies combine, a frontal assault strategy could
be effective.
Nextel and T-Mobile both experienced market share growth in the same
period in which market shares for AT&T and Cingular were decreasing. Nextel
accomplished its impressive gain through its proprietary push-to-talk technol-
ogy. T-Mobile focused on the high-end customer segment with its GSM net-
work and pioneering data services. These are flanking strategies against the
industry giants, and both were successful for these smaller service providers. But
both of these innovative technologies are susceptible in the long term to
34 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
Other
19.7%
Verizon
23.9%
T-Mobile
8.0%
Nextel
8.2%
Sprint
10.2%
AT&T
14.5%
Cingular
15.5%
Total:
30%
Figure 3.1 Wireless U.S. market share. (After: [5].)
imitation from other service providers, including the market leader. Both Veri-
zon and Sprint upgraded their networks to offer push-to-talk, though Nextel’s
first-mover advantage gave it an excellent head start and an ability to be the
standard-bearer. Similarly, technology in later generations of wireless technol-
ogy will merge the industry protocols, and T-Mobile will need to develop tech-
nologies or other differentiators to sustain its status in the wireless market. In
support of sustaining its growth, the service provider has leveraged its market
position using partnerships with larger wireless carriers and innovating in Wi-Fi
access in the United States. Sprint’s future market position has been challenged
by local number portability and a nebulous market strategy. According to Strat-
egy Analytics, nearly 40% of Sprint customers expressed an interest in switching
service providers if number portability was available, the highest percentage of
customers favorable to portability for all major wireless service providers. In the
same survey, Verizon would be the most popular destination for churners, vali-
dating a defense strategy for the market leader.
For the service provider that falls in the bottom 20% of the market, the
appropriate strategy is guerilla marketing. Omnipoint, a U.S.-based GSM serv-
ice provider and predecessor to T-Mobile, created a tiny niche among frequent
international travelers. GSM, while in limited availability in the United States,
was the protocol of choice in all of Europe and most of the rest of the world.
Omnipoint developed roaming agreements with other countries, creating per-
minute pricing that was not very different than roaming prices between U.S. cit-
ies. More importantly, Omnipoint’s overseas roaming rates were a fraction of
the prices for non-GSM providers such as AT&T. Frequent overseas travelers
found Omnipoint’s international rates lower than hotels or calling cards, and
the convenience priceless. Beyond the traveler’s ability to make calls from any-
place comfortable, the Omnipoint customer could use any dual band or tri-
band telephone to find a roaming network. Omnipoint targeted its advertising
by presenting collateral materials in places that its prospects congregated, such as
airport executive lounges and hotel lobbies. For a small service provider with a
very limited marketing budget, extremely targeted marketing and high effective-
ness are critical. After Omnipoint’s merger with VoiceStream and then its acqui-
sition by Germany’s T-Mobile, Omnipoint’s pricing structure moved in line
with its nearest competitors. To stem potential churn from its original custom-
ers for whom roaming internationally was the singular reason for subscribing, a
grandfather strategy kept them from switching.
One effective strategy for the industry leader is to attack oneself. Entrepre-
neurs created a large dial-around segment in the early 1990s largely through a
flanking strategy. Targeting low-cost seekers in the undifferentiated long-
distance market attracted 15% of consumer callers [6]. In 1997, MCI joined
with an unbranded alternative called Telecom USA and captured a leadership
position while legitimizing the market with national advertising campaigns.
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 35
Eventually, AT&T weighed in with its own offering, thus attacking its own
leadership position with an unbranded alternative. Leaders can also copy com-
petitive actions before their own market share erodes in favor of the innovations
of others. Verizon was the first wireless service provider to launch push-to-talk
technology in response to the Nextel threat in an attempt to slow Nextel’s
momentum.
For those attempting an offensive marketing strategy, the best attack point
is a weakness inherent in the leader’s strength. After all, given time and invest-
ment, leaders can correct market weaknesses once competitors identify them, as
Verizon did with its implementation of the missing push-to-talk capability. On
the other hand, the industry leader cannot eliminate its strength to meet a com-
petitor’s strategy. Sprint was the first long-distance provider to boast an all-fiber
network, and it took every marketing opportunity it had to boast about it. Even
the advertisements that did not mention the high quality of its network man-
aged to drop a pin with a little pinging sound, just to remind consumers of its
mind position. This approach was a direct assault on its closest competitor,
MCI, whose network was thought to be cheaper but inferior to AT&T’s. But
the magic of this campaign was that even AT&T could not retaliate with its own
fiber optic network, thus lending credibility and conceding defeat to Sprint’s
newer and much more targeted investment. Furthermore, it would have been
futile for AT&T to disparage the notion of high-quality fiber, as its own plans
included a transformation to fiber in the future. The same marketplace battle
continues as the newest entrants to the marketplace boast of their VoIP net-
works and will offer features unavailable or costly to buy in traditional voice
networks.
Flanking marketing strategies target those customers that are overlooked
and underserved. Most new telecommunications markets emerge from technol-
ogy advances, such as camera phones or data access in the wireless market, or
broadband services over phone lines or cable. But marketers can create new serv-
ices and new segments simply through the marketing mix. The prepaid calling-
card services market provides an excellent example of a sector that emerged
when entrepreneurs simply repackaged and distributed resold telecommunica-
tions services. Most vendors of prepaid landline services do not own networks or
support a large labor force. Their business model focuses on low per-minute
international rates and carefully maintained distribution outlets. Prepaid service
providers focus on market segments that are not targeted by industry leaders.
Customers of prepaid long-distance services include students, immigrants, and
consumers without bank accounts, customers that are ignored or actively
avoided by service providers seeking subscribers. A 2002 estimate by research
firm Atlantic-ACM projected growth in U.S. prepaid calling-card services reve-
nue to slow from the compounded annual 25.4% growth rate experienced over
the previous 7 years to a more sustainable but still robust 9.7%, reaching
36 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
$6.4 billion by 2008, a 73% increase in a 5-year period. The industry, with a life
of its own, separate from its long-distance roots, now includes prepaid wireless,
local service, and Internet access.
A bond trader whose dream was to build a worldwide fiber optic network
founded Global Crossing in the 1980s. Its $15 billion 100,000-mile network
reached 85% of the world’s telecommunications markets [7]. The company
strategy was guerilla warfare: serve a tiny but very profitable market segment by
being the carrier’s transatlantic carrier. This strategy attacks the larger interna-
tional networks outside of their main markets, but uses their customers against
them. AT&T’s competitors without their own international networks would be
happy to buy bandwidth on a state-of-the-art network from any reputable serv-
ice provider that wasn’t trying to steal its retail customers. Subcontractors like
Tyco built the undersea cable for Global Crossing, while Global Crossing stuck
to its skills in funding the efforts. In 1999, the company acquired a cable instal-
lation and maintenance division from Cable & Wireless PLC. As a guerilla mar-
keter, Global Crossing might have succeeded as the carrier’s carrier it promised
to be, with enormous bandwidth capacity at low, fiber-driven prices. But the
company’s acquisitions overreached its marketing strategy and its size. First, it
tried and failed to acquire incumbent local service provider US West, losing the
battle to another professed wholesaler Qwest, who inherited not only the victory
but also the strategic conflict of interest. Global Crossing more successfully
acquired a different incumbent local service provider, Frontier Corporation. A
series of difficulties led Global Crossing to bankruptcy and redemption. Overca-
pacity in the market for bandwidth reduced prices for all service providers.
Technology companies were losing the stock market valuations that had enabled
them to acquire the venerable service providers such as Frontier Corporation.
But Global Crossing alone was responsible for the disconnect from its guerilla
positioning that might have saved it from bankruptcy and even the creative
accounting that led to scandal. It acted like a full-service industry leader. The
company contributed more than $3 million to candidates in the 2000 U.S. elec-
tions, acting like the entrenched regulated service providers. The company made
millions of dollars of charitable contributions, a noble undertaking but one not
normally associated with guerilla marketing tactics. The executives took salaries,
stock options, loans and bonuses that rivaled those in the largest U.S. corpora-
tions. Guerilla marketers need to stay lean, to enter and exit markets flexibly, as
the climate warrants. Global Crossing left its strategy behind as if it had become
the market leader.
It is never surprising to see an entrepreneur whose company is acquired
leave the corporate world soon thereafter. The skills that define the guerilla mar-
keter simply do not translate well to the corporate world, and the entrepreneur is
often happy to leave the stiff, structured world of corporate life. Guerilla mar-
keting works when the service provider is committed to the vision of remaining
The Marketing Plan for a Customer-Centered Telecommunications Enterprise 37
an outsider, finding a market that stays well away from the rest of the industry,
and standing firm against the temptations of the executive suite.
References
[1] Machlin, Robert, “The Internet: Redefining the WAN,” Telecommunications Americas
Edition, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1998, pp. 48–49.
[2] Treacy, Michael, and Fred D.Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your
Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, Reading, MA: Addison Wesley
Longman, 1995.
[3] Ries, Al, and Jack Trout, Marketing Warfare, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.
[4] Long, Josh, “Level 3: Plenty of Room for Growth in Narrowband,” PHONE+, Vol. 17,
No. 4, 2003.
[5] Technology Business Research, “Network Business Quarterly (NBQ) U.S. Mobile Opera-
tors 3Q03 Benchmark and Metrics,” press release, 2003.
[6] Henderson, Khali, “New Tricks of the 10-10-XXX Trade,” PHONE+, Vol. 14, No. 10,
2000.
[7] Palazzo, Anthony, “ ‘Monster’ Telecom Network Draining Oceans of Capital (The Rise
& Fall of Global Crossing),” Los Angeles Business Journal, Vol. 24, No. 7, 2002, pp.
22–23.
38 Customer-Centered Telecommunications Services Marketing
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