A case study of how a leading international marketing and communications agency, utilized social insights to win one of its most competitive pitches.
Today, insight-driven digital agencies have a valuable ally to optimize their pitch process, differentiate themselves from competitors, and win new impactful clients: social intelligence.
In this post, we’ll show examples of the pitch strategies a leading marketing agency implemented using social data analysis, including listening to online consumer interactions with the target brand, its competitors, and conversations related to the brand’s industry.
An important question presents itself before implementing a social intelligence strategy: how do you distill meaningful insights from a large mass of data, and how do you integrate these insights into new business pitches?
This article answers these questions using a leading global marketing agency as an example. You’ll see:
Happy reading, and please leave any of your own examples and experiences in the comments section!
The agency in this case study is an international marketing and communication agency founded in 1949. Since its inception it has married a precise philosophy of creativity and consumer insights into a respect for the customer. Building on this philosophy, a new mission emerged in the digital age: utilize technology platforms not only as content distribution systems, but also as a strategic way to gain new consumer insights.
Over the years, this agency has won several international awards and boasts a portfolio of clients including Heineken, Volkswagen, Vodafone, and McDonald's (just to name a few).
The strategic planning and new business teams quickly realized that the growing number of competitors participating in important pitches created a need for a new strategic process.
For this reason, a business challenge became clear: optimize the investment dedicated to pre sales activities, improve the team's operational efficiency, and create clear and differentiated positioning during pitches.
The opportunity to put into practice this new vision was the proposal to win the social and branding communication of a leading Oil & Energy industry client.
In collaboration with Digimind’s insights and analytics team, the agency used Digimind Social to enrich the proposal using a detailed competitive analysis and brand positioning analysis using social media insights.
In detail, the agency and Digimind worked together to bring out the following social insights:
The two teams produced a full social intelligence audit that was included with the pitch proposal. Thanks to the social listening, analytics, and data visualization features, the report was able to present key areas of improvement for the brand.
Some specific areas where the Digimind tool provided particular value include:
In addition, all the results were segmented according to the different types of competitors: natural gas, propane, and butane providers.
The proposal process involved many marketing and communications agencies, but the ability to generate specific competitive insights and an action plan to take action on those insights made all the difference for this particular agency.
The results are clear:
Using social intelligence, an insight-driven strategy drives clear benefits for both clients of the agency and the agency itself.
The agency’s success is particularly interesting as it allows us to isolate some universal best practices:
Of course, these best practices must be complemented by a strategic investment in know-how (professional analysts and strategists), work processes, and tools like a strong social intelligence platform.