Best Ways For Telcos To Generate More Revenues

by Buana Sari Digital Marketer

On the competitive battleground for new customers, revenue generation is a top priority for today’s telecom operators. So, in a fast-plateauing market like telecom, the question arises as to how to start generating more revenues and new sources of income?

Telcos worldwide are facing a downturn showing a significant fall in revenues. Primary revenue streams like SMS are shrinking while consumption of data is not meeting up to the resulting loss. Complicating the situation, there has been a huge decline in the telecom ARPU. The voice revenue is expected to decline to USD 208 billion by 2024 from USD 381 billion in 2019, as consumers continue to go for cheaper and flexible OTT services. (Source - Juniper Research) Difficulty in optimizing costs and innovating have made the matter worse. Further, retaining existing customers and upselling them has become tougher.

The telecom industry finds itself in a unique position with the smartphone penetration at an all-time high. Good news for telcos is that mobile advertising has emerged as the fastest growing revenue segment. In spite of mobile advertising becoming the chief source of revenue, telecom companies are not witnessing the type of growth in earnings they should be. Many of them are even reluctant to embrace mobile advertising.

Diversifying into under-explored areas of mobile advertising, embracing digital transformation, using innovative mobile advertising technologies, and implementing deep customer analytics are some of the tactics of paramount importance in the evolving market scenario.

However, big telcos have perceived revenue opportunities in every seemingly disruptive force, especially mobile advertising. They are tracing new high margin revenue streams. To understand what telcos can and should do to maximize revenue, let’s look at what the resilient operators are doing globally. The key insights derived includes:

1. Monetize Subscriber Data

There is a shift in the telco revenue trends. The data monetization activities have taken center stage leading to more earning. The way telecom players are leveraging their database has witnessed a sea change.

Telcos possess a huge pool of customer data, sometimes estimated to be more than any industry. The massive customer database includes location, behavioral patterns, buying patterns, internet usage, travel patterns, roaming usage, and much more.

Though many telcos have already been using this large array of data to obtain deep insights, boost sales, enhance customer engagement, improve customer experience, fine-tune marketing strategies and optimize performances; experts say that there’s a lot to be done with the revenue opportunities provided by the data. Over and over again, telco leaders have said, “data monetization pays off if done right.”

Top telcos are hugely investing in marketing tools like moLotus to utilize their subscriber data to create and deliver personalized, customized, interactive, automated rich media campaigns. The campaigns messages reach the mobile inbox of the customer without requiring any application download or data plans. The messages reach all mobile devices irrespective of the mobile or mobile phone type. The customer data is being used to derive insights which can be put to multiple uses, leading to the maximization of top-line and bottom-line revenues transforming data into meaningful decisions. The data is compiled into crisp and comprehensive formats and used for mobile advertising and customer-related process transformation via moLotus, enhancing your overall ARPU and strategizing.

Advanced Big data curating and analytics features of marketing automation platforms like Hubspot, moLotus, Marketo, etc. make data management and analysis easy and simple.

2. Resort to Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation, in the telecom industry, is re-imagining the business processes. Telcos have resorted to breakthrough transformation technologies like moLotus; ensuring high margin revenues with speed, agility and cost savings. Several telecom players have tried out SaaS, low code platforms, cloud offerings, PaaS, and open source softwares for digital transformation.

Over the years the telecom industry has been challenged by silos and complexities in legacy processes. This further inhibited them from innovating at speed and generating high margin revenue. In the last few years telco firms are digitizing, transforming and automating the processes with the acceleration of IoT and 5G and inflow of disruptive technologies. The pandemic has further accelerated digital transformation paving the way for more telecom earnings.

moLotus is empowering the telecom players by automating and transforming customer processes like payment & service reminders, document submission, loyalty, contract/policy renewals, customer onboarding, and many more. Telcos have entered into the modern digital landscape, exceeding customer expectations and improving top-lines and bottom-lines at lesser costs.

3. Target the Right Audience

Targeting and reaching the right customers adds up to the telecom revenues. Telcos have been struggling in understanding and reaching the right customers for their products and services often failing to achieve the desired revenue results.

To accurately target the buyer personas that fit telecom business appropriate mobile advertising tools like moLotus, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, AdRoll, etc. are required. moLotus gives telcos the ability to target customers based on demography, interest, location, language, etc. to ultimately generate more revenue. With demographic and language-based demographic segmentation, operators can channelize their advertising efforts in specific locations across the globe.

Telecom brands can target specific customers they perceive are likely to buy their product and services and enhance their revenues in the process. Customer data such as age and interests is extensively used to customize campaigns according to customer requirements.

4. Improve Customer Communication

Superior customer communication has a favorable impact on telco revenue generation. However, telcos often fail to grab the customer's attention and interact well with prospective customers.

Hyper-personalized communication is now the most preferred way of communication with telco customers who prefer tailored products and services. Telcos should send personalized recommendations and offers to their customers receiving instant attention and response. Next-gen mobile advertising platforms like moLotus have become the preferred choice of top-notch telecom brands utilizing their customer data, Artificial Intelligence(AI), and advanced algorithms to hyper-personalize ad campaigns.

Emails and social media are no longer preferred by telcos as they have superior technology and platform for brand-customer interaction. Interacting and intriguing subscribers is convenient now with moLotus mobile video customer interaction platform and technology. Telcos can interact with subscribers about their products and services via highly interactive moLotus campaigns adding to conversions and sales revenues.

Telco marketers are designing interactive and profitable ad campaigns using moLotus; loaded with easy response options including URL Click, USSD, SMS, Call, etc. Also, the tool aids superior visual communication by offering a wide array of rich media formats including video, brochure, greetings, slideshows, and showcases. Further, they can add product images, voice-over, music, etc. creating eye-catching storyboards and high impact mobile videos up-to 40 seconds.

5. Enhance Lead Generation

Just getting traffic to a website or social media pages doesn't create revenues. Performance oriented lead generation is a crucial step towards earning high revenues. Telcos have realized this.

Lead generation has been one of the biggest challenges for telcos. In the last few years telecom players have been using digital advertising platforms like moLotus, AdRoll, Marketo, HubSpot, etc.for getting leads for meeting their sales and revenue targets. moLotus is being perceived as a cost-effective way of generating and converting leads by major telcos across the world.

moLotus lead generation campaigns quickly prompt customers to share their contact info like name, address, number, emails, etc. The non-spammy nature of moLotus 40 sec. HQ videos assist telco businesses to not only attract more leads for their products and services but also convert them into actual sales.

Lead generation capabilities of moLotus are further enhanced by smart features like hyper-personalization, automation, interactivity, customization, scalability, integration and more.

6. Emphasize Customer Retention

Customer behavior insights from the telecom industry reflect that existing telco customers are more likely to shell out on their products and services than the newly acquired customers; therefore, having higher revenue generation potential. Also, data highlights that existing customers are more likely to become brand advocates recommending brands to acquaintances. Increasing retention by five percent can result in revenue escalation between twenty-five to ninety-five percent.

Telecom Strategists are of the opinion that telcos should resort to right marketing tools for reducing the churn rate. They should incentivize their loyal customer base with special offers, discounts coupons, vouchers. In return telco marketers can request them to leave reviews,or share feedback.

Several telcos run automated loyalty and reward campaigns using platforms like moLotus. It has played a major role in generating customer loyalty and revenues by creating unique reward campaigns. The campaigns are meant for special occasions like anniversaries, birthdays, and festivals with options for names, greetings and call-to-actions for each and every individual. And, it is supported by multiple media formats - cards, coupons, videos, images, showcases, and more.

7. Minimize Cost

Telcos are bogged down by the issue of escalating costs with overheads already high. According to business experts, escalating costs are squeezing revenues and profit margins for telcos. Experts are optimistic suggesting that operators can reduce spiraling costs by at least fifteen to thirty percent via marketing and transformation technologies like moLotus.

For telecom players looking for a spam-free and cost-effective advertising platform, moLotus is an efficient and economical one-stop solution. It helps in creating efficient ad campaigns at a low budget. Marketing channels like Google and Facebook are gradually losing their appeal due to rising costs, low return on ad spend (ROAS), and lesser marketing ROI.

moLotus transformation technology has hastened the cost-cutting endeavors of telcos via automating and digitizing entire telco business processes; reducing the cost of telecalling, statutory compliances, training, printing, stationery and delivery.

8. Increase Reach & Scalability

Reaching more customers opens up more revenue opportunities for the telecom players. Telcos using traditional marketing tools found it difficult to reach a large audience size. They have been unable to scale their campaigns to the extent needed to cater for the growing customer base. Fortunately, some innovative platforms like moLotus, InMobi, AdRoll, HubSpot have been super helpful to the telco marketers offering global scalability.

New-age tools like moLotus stand out in offering reach and scalability. The innovative technology quickly delivers automated messages to huge telecom subscriber data directly into their inbox on all mobile phones, irrespective of phone type or model.

Conclusion

The global telecom market size is gaining momentum this year from the ever-increasing upgradation and adoption of mobile technologies like moLotus contributing to new revenue streams together with knowledge share, real mobile advertising, deep customer insights innovation, agility and breakthrough transformation. Reputed telco brands are striving to maximize revenues by embracing the strategy of alliances and win-win partnerships. Info given by Fortune Business Insights states that “the telecom industry is all set to evolve and become a dynamic and revenue rich sector”.