A Disruption Analysis about Voice. ITU Telecom 2013 Workshop: New Telecom Opportunities in Voice and Messaging

UPDATE:

Gary Kim writes that Telcos Could Lose Up to $172B in Voice, Messaging Revenues Over 5 Years.

Great read out of Psychology Today about the difference between a Vision statement and a Mission statement and why having clearly defined mission and vision is important. (Can you say Culture?)

“A study by Bain and Company indicated that organizations that have clearly defined Vision and Mission statements that are aligned with a strategic plan, outperform those who do not.” Reason enough?

How about hiring is easier when you can articulate a clear vision and mission to candidates?

“As Jack Welch, Chairman, General Electric said, “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.””

The Snapchat growth hack

Snapchat is a photo sharing app. The story was the growth hack: To help foster the sense of privacy and security that wasn’t readily available from Facebook or Instagram. “Snapchat creates a brand new way to communicate with friends that is fun and interactive, while creating a sense of privacy through the disappearing nature of the content. We know that the security isn’t foolproof—but it’s far better than its predecessors.”

Once it started being used for sexting, mainstream media started mentioning Snapchat – and Poof! that kind of publicity just generates curiosity and interest that turns into a haven of word-of-mouth.

It’s kind of like the curiosity and publicity that Google generated for its Fiber project in Kansas City. It has been four years since the announcement by Google. Just How Big is Google Fiber’s Impact? The goal was mainly to light a fire under the Duopoly to deploy Gigabit broadband. Amazon is probably grateful as well. They need fat pipes to keep cloud services, kindle sales and their video service pumping into homes and businesses across America.

Target just launched a digital movie service as well, so those pipes are going to be mighty full.

One of the ways to stand out from the Duopoly is to provide security for your customers. Sonic.net has been praised for being a Privacy Advocate for their customers.

If you are on my email list, you have gotten links to add security and privacy including this link for encrypting email. Or this one about a back door in D-Link routers.

Your customers hear about how privacy on the Internet is gone. Help them make decisions about where their data can be safe-guarded, like with this chart from the EFF on encryption of Big Name cloud players.

What do customers want? You would think the best price, but that isn’t true. All the research shows that price is the determining factor IF and only if the prospects can’t tell the difference between vendors. The three factors that customers want from a vendor are:

Bring New Perspectives and Ideas.

Be Willing to Collaborate.

Confidence that you CAN deliver on promises and deploy the benefits. BTW, in Cloud Comm, we see customers who don’t benefit much from the Broadsoft deployment move to another vendor upon contract completion.

It isn’t just inbound marketing versus outbound. It’s just social or mobile. It’s that in a connected world, where anyone can buy anything at any time, everything changes.

People have their noses buried in devices 24/7. It is a big challenge to get attention.

“If you have more money than brains, focus on outbound (old fashioned) marketing. If you have more brains, focus on inbound marketing.” Roberto Ricossa, VP Marketing & Inside Sales at Avaya

SEO has changed a lot. See a good article here on INC. It boils down to knowing your market. Big Data means that companies can get a profile of the ideal customer. They can also see the Lifetime Value of the Customer. If they know what their Customer Acquisition cost is, they can determine how to acquire customers (against the LV of that customer.)

We are closing in on marketing one to one.

Content is still King. Really good content wins. Video, podcasts, blogs, tweets, memes, photos, etc. – anything to convey use cases, business value, positioning, etc.

7 Marketing Truths. The big one: Brands still Win!!! Brands equal Trust (even person brands). Trust is required to make a sale.

“You don’t need a big budget to create a big buzz.” If you know your target market, have a clear, concise message, the buzz can be had cheaply. Again Big data helps. If you know the profile, you know where the prospects are (online) and can target them inexpensively there.