April 16th, 2006
Harris Interactive study has plenty of VoIP marketing lessons
On his IT Facts blog, colleague Alex Moskalyuk posts a link to a Harris Interactive report entitled, "Awareness of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) on the Rise in Great Britain and in the United States.
The report, which has been summarized before, asks 1,089 U.S. and 1,117 U.K. consumers 18 or over about VoIP.
Noticed I said "summarized" before. But I do want to try something extra for ya. I’ve got some screen shots of key findings. I’ll display six of them here, and will give you my take. 
The "gender" gap reflects the unwelcome, but still somewhat relevant, perception that for early adopter technology for early-adopter sake, men and women are different.
Not suprisingly, Vonage is first in the U.S. I have to think that Net2phone’s strong showing is familiarization-promoting artifact of their rather generic brand name.
I have to think there is a very close correlation between the percentages of survey respondents who are "not at all interested" in VoIP and those who haven’t heard of it. Discouraging as that might be, that’s pretty normal for newer technologies.
What’s interesting here is when you add the percentage of U.S. respondents who would never buy VoIP to those who prefer to wait 12 months or longer, that’s only 23 percent- compared to 42 percent who haven’t heard of it. You don’t need to be a marketing expert to interpret those results- the more familiar people are with VoIP, the less their resistance will be to signing up.
The way to reach these holdouts is to stress the economic savings- with no fine print like the more traditional phone companies often impose. But if you look closely, there’s a red flag. The most attractive single category about VoIP to non-subscribers in the U.S. is "caller ID showing callers name." Not every VoIP provider offers this. They should, before they lose points with prospective subscribers. 
This one is easy. Hammer home the cost savings over other telecom options.
And, as for those who choose "I don’t want to talk to my computer"- stress the personalized nature of VoIP. You are not talking to your computer. You are talking thru your computer.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
