Consolidating Social Media Tech at BMO: A Case Study in Scaling Employee Advocacy and Social Selling
At the helm of a formidable task in 2018, Nicholas Nunes, director of enterprise social media at BMO, faced the challenge of consolidating seven different point solutions for the bank’s social media tech stack. The disjointed system, composed of varying technology, account teams, metrics, and operational flows, was in dire need of a streamlined solution.
The Montreal-based bank turned to Sprinklr, a fintech providing customer experience management, in early 2019, to consolidate its diverse tech tools into a single social media framework. This strategic move paid off in spades, with the bank’s earned media value skyrocketing from under $100K per year to nearly $1 million in 2022, marking a significant growth for the $1.4 trillion asset-bank.
Understanding Earned Media Value
Earned media value is a metric that estimates the dollar amount of organic exposure a brand receives from social media mentions, reviews or press coverage. This is calculated by comparing it to the cost of paid advertising that would be needed to achieve the same visibility.
As Nunes explains, “Since we launched our employee engagement framework with Sprinklr, we’ve seen significant increases in adoption and engagement. For value realization, we look at what we would have to pay to achieve a similar level of reach through advertising. We’ve seen a substantial boost in earned media value, and we’ve got a scalable and secure model that’s now setting the industry standard.”
A Closer Look at Earned Media Value
However, Lincoln Parks, founder of bank marketing agency WebMobileFusion, cautions that earned media value is “a soft metric.” The methodologies for calculating it can vary widely from one institution to another, influenced by factors such as employee base size, sharing activity, what counts as ‘earned media,’ and the baseline paid-media cost.
Parks suggests examining the participation rate, the assumptions behind the EMV calculation, and the incremental business impact of leads and conversions to determine the true impact. “Conversions are, in my opinion, the really only true way to determine this,” Parks opines.
The Power of Employee Advocacy: Introducing BMO’s Share Tool
At the heart of BMO’s social media strategy is the BMO Share tool. Developed in collaboration with Sprinklr, this employee interface enables BMO employees to find and share preapproved social media posts about BMO via the company’s intranet. Nunes, now the managing director and head of enterprise social media for BMO, proudly states, “We have over 5,000 employees using the BMO Share tool.”
Nunes believes the high adoption rate of the bank’s internal social media tools can be attributed to their ease of use. “We made it a seamless process for employees with two clicks to share a piece of content. By contrast, many users for other advocacy solutions have focused on standalone apps that take nine to 15 steps to share a piece of content,” Nunes explains.
How Social Selling Contributes to BMO’s Revenue Generation
For BMO, the power of social media doesn’t stop at employee advocacy. The bank also leverages social selling tools for revenue generation. “Our sales teams are out there every single day driving substantial revenue impact for the bank, and one of the ways that they do that is through our social selling program,” Nunes adds.
Once a consumer interacts with a social media post or clicks through a shared link, the “query strings” attached to those social media links track consumer activity and assign an eventual customer acquisition to that origin point.
Parks notes that “There are tools now that can track the customer journey from the minute they land on your site anonymously to the minute they make a phone call, or ultimately fill out a form or book an appointment.”
Attracting Talent Through Social Media
Moreover, BMO’s social media strategy has proven invaluable in talent recruitment. Nunes shares, “We’ve had numerous stories from recruiters talk about how prospects have seen content being shared by their team. One hundred percent of our recruiters are using our BMO Share product, and we’ve had numerous stories come out about how people have seen content and ended up applying for jobs at BMO because that content has made them see what living and working at BMO really feels like.”
With a clear, strategic vision, BMO has successfully harnessed the power of social media to boost its earned media value, engage employees, drive sales, and attract talent. The bank’s success story serves as a testament to the transformative potential of a consolidated, employee-driven social media strategy.
Source: “Here“
