Having to reposition a brand while competing with several large competitors was the task Naresh Chouhan, UK marketing director at Truphone, had to undertake. Maxine-Laurie Marshall learns more
Fring missiles at drone planes from naval frigates is an unusual start to a career in marketing, but it worked for Naresh Chouhan, UK marketing director at global mobile operator Truphone. The self-confessed geek, who still enjoys writing code, began his career working with the navy writing software for radar and missile systems.
With an obvious love of tech, that will no doubt put him in a good position in a world where marketing technology is growing in importance, the leap to an enthusiasm for mobile isn’t that great. This infatuation also began years ago: “I was probably one of the earliest adopters of mobile generally. I went into sales and my first company car had a mobile, it was a massive great box right in the middle of the car, you had to reach round it to grab the handbrake.”
Chouhan has since stopped writing radar software and worked for some of the country’s largest mobile phone brands: Nokia, Motorola, Orange and Vodafone. However, this technically-minded marketer clearly likes a challenge and appreciates working in an agile and fast-moving environment. When he joined Truphone in April 2013 he was tasked with changing its brand perception.
Brand perception
Chouhan says: “Truphone was perceived as a voice over IP provider, it tried to compete with things like over-the-top offerings (OTT) such as Skype, but out of that tech development came Truphone as it exists now. I came in and had a blank sheet; how do we rebrand, how do we position ourselves and write our core value proposition, what are the products and services that we go out to, who are the customers we’re going to focus in on, and what mechanisms can we use to reach out to them?”
With many questions to address Chouhan really had to nail down the brand’s proposition. Truphone’s core value is being a global mobile operator, and that allows customers to use their phones abroad without incurring any of the usual inconveniences. You can use all your apps, the internet, make and receive calls like normal without incurring any extra costs because instead of roaming to another network, you are still on the same Truphone network as you were when you were in the UK. He says: “The Truphone proposition is about keeping people local wherever they are and connected without user behaviours having to change.”
Ever the realist, and the experienced mobile marketer, Chouhan knew what strengths and weaknesses Truphone had. Calling the proposition clever and unique, he also notes: “We are competing against the giants like Vodafone, Telefonica etc. We don’t have the marketing budget to go out and compete with those guys, we’re not going to do above-the-line campaign work, it’s way too expensive for us.”
What’s the alternative? Extremely accurate targeting.
He says: “The mechanisms for marketing to customers is much more targeted and focused. There’s a term I coined a little while ago, I think of it as ‘segmentation of one’ and marketing to that one individual. That’s how specific we have to be because we’re trying to reach senior decision makers and buyers within very large organisations.” And it’s working, Chouhan tells me Truphone works with three out of the top five banks in the world.
Internal advocates
As part of cementing the brand’s offering and positioning, Chouhan also had to focus on internal marketing. He wanted everyone speaking the same language and saw the benefits of employees being brand advocates. One of the techniques used to make this a reality were proposition cards. Chouhan explains: “We have fairly simple things like proposition cards employees can use, I carry mine with me everyday. Employees know our core message; what we should be saying. We try and test on it every day, I ask people randomly, what’s the elevator pitch, and so on.”
His efforts were well worth it as the company went from 250 people to over 600 in a six-month period. As well as being great brand advocates, Chouhan says employees are a fantastic source of leads as well: “I think we do have great people who are great advocates and those are some of the best sources of leads for us. We pull together referral programmes, incentivising them and rewarding them as well.”
Clearly a catalyst for change at the company, Chouhan also had some adjustments to make on the website. It’s no surprise with working for a global mobile operator, a mobile-friendly website was a must have for Truphone. However, the financial sacrifices made in order to have a mobile site surprised me given the mixed reaction to mobile many B2B marketers have had. When Chouhan came onboard the website had ecommerce functionality, in order for the site to be mobile-friendly it needed to be integrated with the back end billing systems that drove the architecture for the website. And the back end couldn’t be made mobile.
Chouhan says: “A few months down the line I got so fed up of not having a mobile site I decided we just sever that link for now and adopt a more agile approach to development. We took a risk in developing that site but now it’s working and providing great results – so much so that we’re deploying this methodology across the whole business as soon as we can. The UK website is now totally responsive design.”
Chouhan’s bold nature mixed with his extreme passion for his industry goes a long way to explaining this B2B leader’s success. Without those attributes, growing a relatively unheard of brand to the point of standing up against several larger competitors wouldn’t have been possible.
