David Clyde, Group Brand Director, and Mayur Jauhari, Director of Marketing and Online, provided two different perspectives on Lebara’s growth. David shared insights into their global strategy, while Mayur revealed the secrets to their success in more focused local areas.
Where did Lebara’s MVNO journey begin?
The current market for new MVNOs is notoriously challenging, due to a wide range of factors. In order to truly differentiate and remain competitive, businesses must think outside the box and look for innovative strategies to capture and retain the attention of customers.
Lebara’s journey as an MVNO can offer plenty of valuable inspiration to MVNOs looking to grow in 2025, as they’ve grown the business by five times in terms of customer revenue.
David Clyde (DC): “If we rewind to late 2022, the telecom market as a whole was pretty stagnant, growing at just 0% to 1% across our key markets. Everyone already had a mobile subscription, so there wasn’t much room for growth. However, the value segment was growing between 3% and 8%. That was our opportunity. But to grow, we had to win market share from competitors.”
So, winning more market share was the task, but how exactly did Lebara achieve that?
Using customer research to find the perfect positioning for a global MVNO brand
David and his team conducted customer research to understand what the key drivers of growth in the category were, and why customers were choosing their particular brands.
They found these drivers to be:
- Network quality, with reliable coverage and fast data speeds
- Good pricing
- Great customer service.
While Lebara performed well on price, it was ranking lower for customers’ perceptions of quality and service. This would need to change.
Another challenge was that Lebara came with strong association to the retail niche, which was holding back its growth potential. The brand was anchored in that space, and that was something they’d have to broaden away from. To grow, they needed to position the brand in a new light.
As well as broadening out of the retail niche, Lebara also needed to build brand awareness. Brand awareness was only around 25% to 30% in the UK, and lower in areas like France and Germany.
In their attempts to connect with a far larger audience, they identified their new target customers as “value seekers.” This aligned well with the time-sensitive cultural issue of the cost-of-living crisis, with the majority of people looking for ways to save money on their everyday expenditure.
After a great deal of in-depth customer research, Lebara created a new positioning for the brand, which was, “championing a smarter way to connect.”
This was supported by the brand’s phrasing for customers, talking about Lebara’s services as, “A smarter way to get a mobile subscription.”
Lebara took inspiration from other successful challenger brands, like Aldi and Burger King, to improve in the three key areas of priority for customers mentioned earlier.
DC: “We learned from those examples in other industries that being a challenger brand isn’t just about positioning, it’s a belief. So, we made it our mission to give everyone access to a reliable network, exceptional service, and affordable prices, and made sure we delivered on all three of those things to attract more customers.”
To complete their repositioning, Lebara also developed a new, audience-centric tone of voice to reflect their new branding: challenging, straightforward, democratic and light-hearted. That’s how they were able to broaden out to reach wider audiences and connect with more customers.
Creative marketing campaigns can elevate you above the competition
With their rebranding complete, the next step for Lebara was to use even more customer insights to develop creative, eye-catching marketing campaigns.
Mayur Jauhari (MJ): “Instead of brainstorming concepts for marketing internally, we analysed over 50,000 positive customer reviews to find key themes and ideas. We found that our customers weren’t just saving money with us, but they were also getting better service on what was essentially the same network. Many of them called it simply a smarter choice, so that became the angle for our marketing campaign.”
To achieve their goal of taking market share away from their competitors, Lebara knew their marketing would need to stand out and grab the attention of their audience. That led Mayur and his team to focus on three key principles for the marketing:
- Target MNO customers
- Remain light-hearted and “tongue-in-cheek”
- Use a “low budget” to their advantage, to reflect the new branding positioning
MJ: “Compared to the bigger players, our marketing budgets would be nowhere near theirs, so we decided to turn that disadvantage into our advantage, by basing our campaigns precisely on that. And that low-cost feel to our marketing personifies our smarter way to get a mobile subscription, which talked about saving money for customers.”
These guiding principles allowed Lebara to deliver a range of creative, unique marketing campaigns that helped audiences become more familiar and accustomed to the company. This was done by portraying a more relatable, approachable brand for the average customer, while still emphasising the quality and reliability of the service.
Results that speak for themselves
Mayur’s team has produced excellent results by taking this customer-focused approach to marketing the new Lebara brand.
MJ: “Over the last 18 months, we’ve grown awareness from about 36% or 37% to about 45% or 46% which means we’ve made about eight to nine million customers more aware of the brand. We’ve also grown our consideration from about 6% to about 8% too.”
“Additionally, ROI was very positive as measured through an econometric study we do. And it showed a significant proportion of our acquisitions could be directly attributed to marketing campaigns over the period. Lastly, we also saw significant improvement in churn and CLTV.”
Scaling a winning strategy across global markets
The UK team was the first to apply this marketing strategy. However, since the performance was so positive, David’s team decided to replicate it across more countries, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
Of course, it’s important to tweak the campaigns and the nuances of the branding for each individual region.
DC: “We then used the same positioning in other countries, but tailored the campaigns to be more colloquial and local for each individual country. There’s a strategic thread that runs through all of those campaigns. Some have had different media budgets attached to them, but we’re seeing success across all of those markets. I’m hugely proud of the work that Mayur and the team have done in the UK, and it’s great to see that core thinking succeed across all the other markets we work in.”
Key takeaways: To grow an MVNO business in a stagnant market, and win market share away from competitors, Lebara has demonstrated that a customer-centric approach is an excellent strategy. In-depth, empathetic customer research can help to truly understand what customers are looking for, and to determine the best way to deliver it. Tailoring the company’s messaging and marketing to resonate with those customer needs is perhaps the most effective way to grow an MVNO business today.
