About Three Wholesale – Marketing and Strategy
Three UK is the challenger mobile network operator in the UK targeting consumer customers and with a market share of 10% of the entire mobile telecoms market. Three is part of the CKH Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world with a turnover of $53bn and a telecoms division that operates in 12 countries serving 130m subscribers.
Three Wholesale are focused on driving incremental growth for Three UK by re-selling access to Three’s high-quality network to MVNOs, Roaming partners, IOT service providers and bulk SMS aggregators.
The Business Challenge
Three Wholesale had aggressive growth targets as part of Three UK’s overall growth strategy. It was vital that the Three wholesale business grew significantly and to do this they needed to demonstrate that they were open for wholesale and IOT business.
Three had invested significantly in it’s network and now needed to communicate that the network was better than ever, that Three were open for wholesale business and had a clear strategy of partnership with brands to drive joint success.
As a largely consumer brand, the marketing resources and wholesale market knowledge required to engage with the MVNO and IOT were not available in Three UK. To deliver the massive growth required, Three needed to look beyond their internal teams.
The Solution
Graystone Strategy were approached by Three Wholesale because of our expertise in the wholesale market, our team of experienced marketers up to Marketing Director level, and our proven ability of driving MVNO and wholesale propositions in the UK market. We deployed a team of people to support Three Wholesale and embedded our most experienced consultant in the Three organisation. The main areas that we focused on were:
- Building a detailed strategy that would enable the Three Wholesale team to achieve their growth ambitions.
- Re-developed and re-positioned the Three Wholesale brand.
- A programme of market engagement using PR, Analyst relations, conferences and awards programmes to get the message out that Three were open for business.
- Developing impactful sales assets and the “Why Three Wholesale” story to help business development teams engage with new and existing MVNO partners to drive growth.
- Developing Three Wholesale’s online web presence and delivering marketing campaigns to drive traffic and leads.
- Supporting existing MVNO partners with marketing assets, tool kits and training activities to ensure that key messages were understood and executed in sales channels.
Outcomes
Due to the strategic and commercially sensitive nature of this project sharing detailed results and outcomes is not possible. However, since the project kicked off, Three Wholesale have:
- Won the Best MVNO partner award 2018.
- Presented at a number of high-profile MVNO conferences.
- Delivered a Wholesale presence on Three.co.uk/wholesale.
- Won Most Innovative Wholesale award at the MVNO World Congress.
- Won Best IOT Enabler at the MVNO World Congress.
- Achieved Highly Commended in the Best MVNO Hosting Network at the MVNO World Congress.
- Achieved Highly Commended for Superdrug Mobile as Best MVNO at the Mobile News Awards.
- Increased the quality and quantity of credible sales leads coming into the business development team both online, through social media and conferences.
Darren King Head of Business Development at Three Wholesale commented, “Delivering rapid growth in our wholesale business is a strategic imperative for Three. Graystone Strategy deployed a team of experts across Strategy, marketing, training and PR and have delivered significant success in the short term whilst setting us up for continued growth. What I have loved most about working with Graystone is how collaboratively they have worked across the entire Three business. They really felt like they were permanent and fully committed members of our team.”