Throughout COVID-19, the number of Canadians spending time on social media increased by 20%, reaching 34.5MM1. Canadians began spending an average of 2 hours per day on social media2, a growth of more than 30 minutes3, with no sign of slowing down post pandemic. With the increased time spent on social channels, organizations need to pivot their sales strategies to reach customers on the channels where they choose to spend their time.
Social selling is the practice of using social media to find and nurture sales prospects. BMO’s Social Selling program empowers BMO’s regulated employees and sales forces, to leverage social media to grow their networks, raise awareness of products and services, identify prospective clients, nurture business relationships, and ultimately drive measurable, bottom-line impact.
Through BMO’s customized social selling platform, employees receive tools and resources to effectively drive sales in a highly regulated financial industry. Managed centrally by BMO’s enterprise social media team, our social experts partner with marketing stakeholders within BMO’s lines of business across North America to engage employees and build programs which address each group’s strategy and regulatory needs.
In 2022, we set out to grow the Social Selling program by 10%, drive $2MM in Earned Media Value, and deliver an incremental 10% in sales revenue through social selling, building on our team’s multi-year strategy to deliver a best-in-class Employee Advocacy and Sales Enablement framework.
The BMO Social Selling program first launched in 2015, as a series of pilot programs for sales teams across BMO to address regulatory requirements and provide oversight of social media activity for employees. What started as a compliance program quickly evolved into a revenue driving program that has contributed to BMO’s bottom line.
Today, BMO’s Social Selling program enables participants to leverage social media for business in a simple and compliant way, with an easy-to-use social media management tool for social sellers, and designed to:
Through the program, employees can connect approved social media channels, access a robust library of content; including pre-approved social posts, branded and stock visuals, view relevant industry articles, utilize convenient scheduling tools and editorial calendar, research trending topics with listening capabilities, and review their performance activity all in one place. Specific teams have the option of implementing delegate workflow capabilities, allowing users to receive assistance in managing their social media activity. Regulated groups also have compliance workflows integrated into their environments to ensure content is reviewed, approved, and retained as per regulatory requirements.
We built a robust Social Selling program that suited the needs of multiple unique BMO groups. Today, thousands of employees from teams across the bank – including Mortgage Specialists, Business Bankers, Financial Planners, Private Wealth Advisors, and more – have access to BMO’s Social Selling program, driving tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually. The success of our program was achieved by:
The purpose of creating BMO’s Social Selling program was to support our salesforce with more opportunities to generate revenue and connect with customers through social media. Looking back at our goals for 2022, the program significantly outperformed objectives and it continues to grow:
Since the start of the program, results have exceeded our expectations:
Earned Media Value generated by BMO’s Social Selling program has grown by 100% since its launch and in the last 3 years, the program has grown by +430%, with thousands of BMO employees currently participating. On average, participants share more than 8 posts per month, and in 2022 total posts shared surpassed 100K. These posts generated an estimated 81MM social media impressions and 400K engagements. Given the results, we believe BMO’s Social Selling program has and continues to succeed in connecting BMO employees to customers through social media, in a manner that generates true bottom-line impact.
