CrowdFiber

Learn from Your Customers - Video

Ellery Durgin — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 09:00:42 GMT

One of the most enjoyable parts of building and selling any product in the marketplace is seeing your customers use it and learning from their insights and creativity. Some of the videos they have produced describe their campaigns, CrowdFiber, and the challenges of constructing Fiber to the Home are better than what we could do ourselves. Take a look at couple of our customers' work:

This video describes a FTTH CrowdFiber campaign in Walla Walla, Washington by PocketiNet.

This video describes the CrowdFiber process for FTTH from Midwest Energy in Southeast Michigan.

This video by Midwest Energy helps consumers understand the process of fiber construction and shows some of the data CrowdFiber collects.

Have one you'd like to feature? Please send it to us.

5 Marketing Moves That Should Sound the Alarm

Ellery Durgin — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 08:52:00 GMT

Consider these telecom geomarketing no-nos!

You probably spend a lot of time reading about marketing best practices, but after awhile the advice starts to blur together. What you need is the equivalent of an alarm that prevents you from doing any marketing moves that are hazardous to your organization's health. By avoiding these multichannel marketing mistakes, you save time, money and a lot of frustration.

Ignoring Your Audience

Your marketing needs to speak to your target audience if you want them to pay attention to your messaging. Using images of people that don't match their demographic, talking down to them or assuming they know what you know can quickly lose their interest. Stock images are great, but let's face it, not every family is happy, blonde, and in a spotless house. Review your imagery with a critical eye. Will it be relevant to the people viewing it?

Blindly Spending

You probably don't have an endless marketing budget. Determine what an effective campaign looks like and regularly review your efforts to adjust as needed. Track key performance indicators and test different combinations of audience targeting. If the campaign fails, you have a lot of great data points on what to avoid in the future. The ones that succeed end up getting analyzed to determine why it worked so well. You end up fine-tuning your marketing campaign and making the most of your budget.

In a CrowdFiber campaign, these goals may include the overall number of backers or subscribers acquired. Or it may be reaching a zone goal by a certain date to drive construction. You may be most focused on increasing average revenue per user (ARPU). Identify these goals in advance, so that your budget can be analyzed for its effectiveness.

Wacked-Out Resolution

Your images can't use a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to its size. It might look great on your website, but when a promotional image goes out it could be cut off or otherwise distorted. For print, aim for 300 dpi or greater using a file type that carries the most data like .ai, .eps, or .pdf. On web and social channels, be mindful of transparency against a background. A .png is best for these images. Don't let your message get lost. Make sure your marketing material is appropriate for each of your channels. A free tool that helps you get it right is Canva.com.

Going Nuts with Speeds and Fees

Your product might be the best in its category, making it the logical choice for your audience. However, the buyer's journey doesn't rely solely on the analytical side of the brain. You also need to appeal to the emotions of the buyer and make that strong connection. For example, you can talk about the ways your customers can spend more time with their family, thanks to the time-saving benefits of your products, rather than just speeds and fees. Avoid using too much "industry speak". Megabits, Gigabits, 4G, Wifi, Hotspot, IP, Max, Extra... these terms can get easily mixed up by customers, so make your telecom product names simple and straightforward. Use the same conventions to describe each product and provide an example of who the product is a good fit for so that customers can choose by their use case, not just the specs.

*Bonus points if you describe who the product is NOT good for. Help your customer know what won't work for them, so that they are led to a choice that they will bring satisfaction.

Now that you know to avoid these marketing mistakes, what are your next steps? Regular, relevant content is king for driving real engagement with your audience. Post updates, link to educational articles, coordinate your email and direct mail with your social campaigns. You create value and an ongoing relationship with potential customers, long after they make a purchase decision. This strategy increases conversion and decreases churn, allowing you to build a foundation for long-term business growth.

Postcard Marketing 101

Ellery Durgin — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 07:21:00 GMT

Using postcards to market services is nothing new. This form of direct mail advertising has long served as one of the best ways to precisely target the customers you want. For telecom service providers trying to drum up business in smaller markets and rural areas where connectivity concerns can make web marketing channels more limited, it becomes an even more critical component of a successful campaign. To be successful, though, you’ll have to stay ahead of the curve while combining creativity and personalization to yield results.

The Effect Of Personalization

These stats from Small Business Trends show the efficacy of direct mail, with 80-90% of direct mail being opened and an average ROI of 18-20 percent. Direct mail takes on an even greater role, however, when combined with strategies to make it more personal. Take a look at this list of direct mail case studies, for instance, courtesy of the United States Postal Service. They concluded that customized mail had a higher average response rate for the telecom company used in their example than non-personalized methods of direct mailing–an increase of 2.1 percent.

Then there’s AT&T’s success with a hyper-specific, outside-the-box direct mailing approach. Their technique, dubbed “video in print,” was crafted to appeal directly to the important influencers they wanted to capture. The campaign went out to fewer than 75 high-value targets, but nine percent (9%) directly converted to sales. Even though this campaign had the backing of AT&T’s hefty amounts of capital, the example holds lessons for those with smaller budgets–direct marketing can achieve sales results when executed correctly.

These mailing strategies worked because they were well aware of their target audiences and made their materials personal to each one. This approach helps bypass the knee-jerk reaction a home or business owner might have by showing them that you’ve done your homework and aren’t just shotgunning marketing materials at random.

Getting Results from Direct Mail

When crafting a mailing campaign that relies on postcards, the key to grabbing your potential customers is in the design. You might already have a graphic artist who can make your cards look slick, but the design has to contain more than mere visual appeal. It must also appeal to the psyche of your target. We already mentioned how personalized information factors into the game–do your research and planning so that you can include details that are relevant to the customers in the geographic area you’re targeting.

Postcards, particularly oversized ones, can pack in a lot of information. In spite of that, resist the urge to make your design crowded. Use short headlines, direct language, timely references and calls to action that will entice your potential clients to take the next step (contacting you for more information or singing your praises to their friends and neighbors).

Remember, you’re not trying to close a sale with direct mail; rather, your goal should be as follows:

DON’T be boring with your postcards – think about your customer coming home from work and checking their mailbox.
DO Grab interest so that reader feels self-motivated to reach out to you or tell others about your service.
DON’T make them look like obvious advertisements

Remember, ad-like or boring direct mail content is the one-two kiss of death for any direct mailing campaign.

How CrowdFiber Fits Into Your Plan For Success

CrowdFiber can help elevate your direct mail marketing to the next level. The geomarketing platform provides the tools to quickly add and send mail of various sizes from with only a few clicks at an affordable rate. No printing, mail merge, stuffing or stamping. You can track all the mail you’ve sent to see delivery dates to each prospect or subscriber. Our list and address segmentation tools allow you to craft direct mail messaging micro-tailored to the community, neighborhood, hobby, interest level, business type, or other demographic.

In addition to one-click direct mail fulfillment, CrowdFiber provides an avenue for your customers to send mail to their neighbors. By empowering your customers in this way, your marketing efforts will multiply, as zone goals drive first adopters to become advocates for your service. Look for the next deep dive into customer referrals.

In the meantime, get mailing and share with us your geomarketing questions and successes!