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The 'Better-for-Business' Zone for Zen Internet

How do you engage 2.4 million Covid-battered businesses in diverse locations across the UK and persuade them to change their vital lifeline to the outside world? The solution is to Think Local.

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The Client

Founded in 1995, Zen has grown from providing internet access to schools and small businesses in its local Rochdale area to serving 150,000+ businesses and homes UK-wide. Much smaller than its competitors, Zen relies on channel partners who resell Zen’s ‘backbone’ services locally.

The Challenge

Zen’s latest initiative is FTTP (Fibre-to-the-Premises): optical fibres run from the central office all the way to the subscriber’s premises. BT wholesales it as ‘the next generation of broadband’, delivering speeds of up to 900MB on the country’s most reliable broadband technology.

FTTP is being rolled out street-by-street, so a business can be literally a block away from noticeably faster broadband. The challenge became how to take a challenger Internet Service Provider (ISP) and rollout their new offering both on a national level across the country, but also in a way that felt local and captured this sense of those in the FTTP ‘zone’ and those outside it.

Our Solution

Our solution was to leverage Zen’s channel relationships and think local. We devised imaginative and powerful communications that generated genuine excitement amongst partners and their on-the-ground sales people. We motivated partners to implement our campaign and followed up with face-to-face meetings.

We leveraged local partners’ lists, networks and contacts to create local buzz online, and to identify potential local advocates to act as influencers and drive word-of-mouth. By thinking local and tapping into the ‘support local business’ vibe, we developed a strategy that took advantage of the fact that FTTP was being rolled out street-by-street, so a business could be literally a block away from noticeably faster broadband.

Our solution included a toolbox of market-ready communication assets that won the buy-in of 100% of partners approached – who in turn committed over 50 of their on-the-ground sales people to support Zen FTTP.

The Results

Our solution included a toolbox of market-ready communication assets that won the buy-in of 100% of partners approached across 29 areas – who in turn committed over 50 of their on-the-ground sales people to support Zen FTTP.

Our through-channel campaign helped our client and its partners benefit from a sales uplift of 26% vs the previous monthly rolling average.

100% strike rate with reseller partner recruitment

Over 50 on-the-ground-sales people assigned to Zen FTTP

26% increase in sales uplift vs previous monthly rolling average

What the client said...

FTTP is a huge opportunity for Zen. But while we have the fire in our bellies to take on the big beasts in our market, we don’t have their deep pockets. OneGTM thought outside the box to give us a clever, highly targeted campaign and the practical means to compete in the big league. Their campaign leverages our biggest strength, our partners. Engaging and exciting them gives us great tools for targeting people where they work: locally.

Amanda Rogers, Marketing Manager, Zen Internet

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