This case study with our client, Wellcom, shows how they differentiated their service offering to stand out among competitors and win new customers.

Social media intelligence expertise can benefit insight-driven agencies in a myriad of ways. It can help win new business pitches, expand work for existing clients, and increase customer loyalty.

In this case, see how Wellcom built new offerings focused social media intelligence services which helped them to differentiate themselves from competitors and avoid the trap of simply cutting prices to beat the competition.

The Agency

Wellcom is a communication agency that provides consulting services in a broad communications landscape, from branding to content, using owned, earned, and paid media including public relations, media relations, advertising, etc. Founded in 1981, Wellcom is an independent player in more than 50 countries, with more than 110 employees and 180 active customers included Adidas, Canon, BMW, Essilor, just to name a few.

Within a complex  multichannel communications ecosystem, Wellcom created a firm business vision focused on creating strong brand positioning and reputation management for their clients.

WIth the introduction of advanced social media monitoring and analytics, beginning in the mid-2000s and still continuously evolving, Wellcom was forced to reevaluate its service offerings to stay competitive in the market.

The Business Challenge

Wellcom's DNA has always been focused on public relations, however the challenges of the digital transformation forced the agency to broaden its scope of expertise to deliver truly integrated communication strategy. The traditional strategy was complemented by new offerings of online reputation management and online media relations, influencer marketing and brand advocacy, crisis management and digital brand positioning.

Beyond the digital advances made by the agency since 200, with the creation of the online press platform, Pressonline, Wellcom wanted to go further. The reevaluation of their industry also let to an understanding that public relations firms would incorporate social media and social data analytics into their offering.

Consequently, a clear business challenge was put forward to address these gaps: create a competitive advantage in the PR market by becoming the first agency to offer integrated social media listening and analytics services.

Influencer network graph of various insurance industry players, via Digimind Social

The Project

The project launched by Wellcom, in collaboration with Digimind, focused on these goals: customize proposals based on real customer needs, improve operational efficiency and create upselling mechanisms.

Every year Wellcom participates in more than 200 new business pitches.  To stand out among competitors and win more of these pitches, the company restructured their processes.

They launched a new initiative focused on analyzing the online presence of prospects, dividing labor among the various departments and integrating social listening into their core service offerings.

The Solution

Wellcom and Digimind devised a set of customized service offerings based on real needs of customers resulting in these solutions:

1. An audit system of brands and competitors through real-time dashboards was presented during each pitch
2. All Wellcom teams (Digital, Consulting, New Business, etc.) were given access to Digimind so they could incorporate social intelligence to their individual projects and provide feedback on new ways social listening could be used at the agency
3. Four new service offerings were developed based on social listening capabilities

A little detail on point three. In order to improve the possibilities of upselling, the agency also made a free base package which included a limited number of mentions analyzed in the Digimind platform. In this way, it was possible to entice existing customers to include the new social listening and monitoring activities in the contract.

Mentions of online insurance companies over time, via Digimind Social

The Results

After two years of intense collaboration between Digimind and Wellcom, results are absolutely in line with the original project goals:

• Wellcom has doubled its number of clients and has definitively established itself as the leading agency in social media listening services.
• The team's operational efficiency has allowed the portfolio to expand to top players from a wide range of industries. For example,  Carglass became a customer thanks  to a corporate social responsibility focused listening project.
• Many clients already in the portfolio updated their contract to include social intelligence packages.

Best Practices

Our collaboration with Wellcom is still ongoing and continues to grow. However, these first two years of engagement have highlighted some best practices applicable to every agency:

• An insight-driven agency approach has to begin with incorporating modern data solutions like social listening into the planning stages.
• Positioning yourself as an expert in social intelligence is crucial to creating a real competitive advantage. In fact, Wellcom has hired a consultant who deals with training within the tool.
• Internal information sharing (in this case all Wellcom employees having access to Digimind) is key to creating new offering based on client needs.

Are you already using social data to enrich your service offerings? If we look forward to hearing about your experience in the comments.