Social media marketing platform, Tiger Pistol, has closed a $3.1 million investment led by Melbourne IT.
The investment will also see Melbourne IT become a whitelabel reseller of the Tiger Pistol platform, providing the social marketing platform to its 500,000 small business customers in Australia. Other participants in the investment include Liberty Financial CEO Sherman Ma, former Channel 7 MD Michael Harms, and other private individuals.
The investment will further accelerate growth in Australia, as well as the U.S. which is already the company’s fastest-growing market, and will drive further development of the Tiger Pistol Do It For You social marketing platform.
As a result of the investment Tiger Pistol’s U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles will be expanded with the hiring of 40 new employees, as well as a further 30 in Australia, bolstering business development and service delivery. This announcement follows a year in which the company was named one of only two global Facebook Marketing Partners for small businesses.
Tiger Pistol’s recommendation engine analyses millions of data points to automatically generate social marketing programs with the highest likelihood of delivering effective business outcomes, not just likes and follows. Coupled with a service layer, small businesses can intelligently leverage social networks to grow their businesses without lifting a finger.
Combining the analytics that drive results for customers with technology that delivers efficiency and affordability has led Tiger Pistol through massive growth over the past year, averaging 20-30% month-on-month. Further growth is expected as part of the Melbourne IT investment and partnership in Australia, as well as similar partnerships currently under consideration in other markets around the world.
Melbourne IT CEO Martin Mercer commented: “Tiger Pistol offers truly smarter social for SMEs. Tiger Pistol has uniquely managed to make social marketing simple and effective, something no other platform in the world has managed to deliver, and our small business customers are eager to start driving results. We expect this capability will be a welcome addition to the Melbourne IT offering as we enable small businesses to be successful online.”
Steve Hibberd, CEO of Tiger Pistol added: “Social marketing is moving so quickly that it’s virtually impossible for companies, and small companies in particular, to keep up. Without Tiger Pistol a small business would have to create and manage a presence across up to eight social networks and directory sites, and use countless other platforms for content creation, monitoring, ad management and scheduling. Tiger Pistol centralises this and makes the dozens of smart decisions that are necessary to drive a successful social marketing program. We remove all the complexity and leave the results.”
“Successful large companies such as Melbourne IT are looking to deliver value to their significant base of small business customers who are crying out for help with social marketing in particular. This partnership between Tiger Pistol and Melbourne IT delivers powerful social marketing based on data and expertise, from a brand small businesses trust.”
Tiger Pistol Do It For You packages are the only offering in the world to combine organic social marketing with advertising and reputation management, without needing an agency. Through the Do It For You package, a Tiger Pistol social expert manages a customer’s social media content and online reputation across Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Yelp, TripAdvisor, LinkedIn, Urbanspoon, Pinterest, Foursquare and myriad other networks.
Do It For You packages start from $249 a month.
Tiger Pistol was founded in 2012 by Steve Hibberd and Troy Townsend and has 30 employees in offices in Los Angeles, CA and Melbourne, Australia.
