92% to 93% of U.K. Mobile, Internet, Voice Marketing Spend is Wasted

All the effort expended on marketing of mobile, fixed network voice and fixed network internet to small and medium-sized businesses in the United Kingdom might be directed to a potential “switcher” market as small as six percent to seven percent of the entire customer base, in any single year.

In fact, less than 60 percent of all SMBs in the United Kingdom, and between 41 percent and 47 percent of SMB survey respondents have never--never ever--switched from one service provider to another, a survey conducted on behalf of Ofcom found.

Only around 15 percent to 17 percent of respondents reported they had switched service providers in the last two years.

source: Ofcom

That seems an unusually-low amount of churn. Some argue that major mobile operators have annual churn as high as 40 percent.

source: S. Saravanan

Compared to other consumer services, mobile services do seem to have a higher rate of churn, compared to banking or utility services.

source: S. Saravanan

Churn rates in the software as a service business, by way of comparison, also are high, with annual churn rates as high as 58 percent a year in the SMB space.

source: KIssmetrics