Social marketing test-drives helped with new platform

UK entrepreneurs seeing success with retail-focused social networking platform

A Birmingham start-up has devised a social networking platform aimed at helping retailers and resellers test-drive their customer marketing programmes and benefit from the social media trend.

Owned It is a platform, incorporating a user-friendly dashboard, that allows organisations to devise and try out new social networking campaigns, lead generation programmes, or other marketing projects. Campaigns need not have social networking elements incorporated, according to the developers.

Manoj Krishnapillai, co-founder and managing director of Owned It, said that the platform enables retailers to track the performance of various campaigns and identify the one which works best for them. Once identified, retailers can also replicate such campaigns on other marketing channels and avenues.

"This is what differentiates us from other existing platforms," Krishnapillai told ChannelWeb. "We built a system to encourage product sharing and provide retailers with detailed analytics. When more and more stores opted for the system we pivoted from the initial idea of creating a platform for customers to a platform for the stores."

While the most obvious target market is B2C, VARs and other business-focused resellers could also find the platform useful, he said. Already, the start-up is working with a company that sells industry reports to its corporate clients.

"In B2B, the messaging tone and the networks used for promoting products may differ slightly. For example, the organisation we are working with plans to focus product promotions on LinkedIn and email more, rather than Facebook and Twitter," Krishnapillai said.

Owned It allows users to log and display a group of purchases that have been "shared" on social networks, allowing retailers to get more benefit from social media while reducing their overall marketing and advertising costs. Online retailers have been the first users, and organisations in 18 countries are using it so far.

The start-up has so far been funded to the tune of £100,000, primarily from Finance Birmingham.