Local startup pioneers social media marketing intelligence

Social marketing tools can analyze a company's followers and fans but it fails at determining which of those followers are their actual users. That’s why Aaron Fitzgerald, Kelly Schricker and Morgan McCullough, a team of entrepreneurs, data scientists and marketers, set out to develop a marketing automation tool that could provide real-time insights about customers’ social behaviors, along with recommended content sharing actions.

 

As Rhodes alumni, this team was familiar with Memphis and they selected Start Co. to launch their idea because it gave them the opportunity to give something back to the city.

 

“Our goal was to help businesses effectively market to their actual users, not followers on Facebook and Twitter,” explained Fitzgerald. “Today’s digital strategists have mastered growing a following of people on social media through creative content like pictures, articles, and memes. However, content consumers aren't necessarily customers or those interested in buying a product or service. In fact, more than 60 percent of the people following brands on Twitter are just there to support a business or for free content consumption.”

 

According to Fitzgerald, this failure to determine actual users is leading to nearly $2B of wasted spending on tools measuring follower sentiment instead of actual customers. He said that the financial loss was further compounded by untold billions of dollars in missed opportunities for customer referrals.

 

Ncrease provides a social intelligence platform for the 6 million online businesses that use social logins, such as Facebook and Twitter, and allows them to tap into the rich user data of their actual customers. 

 

“We analyze common themes in their customers’ social behaviors to provide real-time insights, trends and actions to continuously engage their true customers, and we identify new ones with a high likelihood to convert,” said Fitzgerald. “PYT Funds struggled as a company to identify their target to market. Finding ways to create constant customer engagement was extremely difficult. The Ncrease team and technology has created an opportunity to implement a social analytics solution at an affordable price."