Facebook, Instagram, emails, Google Ads—the number of digital channels on which companies can advertise is vast. But many brick-and-mortar retailers lack the time and know-how to utilize them all properly. Socialpals is helping retailers with a proprietary marketing platform. The Holzkirchen-based startup also brings brands on board.
The story of Socialpals begins in 2014 with the premiere of the documentary film 'Cerro Torre' by Red Bull in Munich. To generate additional publicity, the beverage manufacturer hired the then freelancer and later founder of Socialpals Bastian MüllerHe remembers:
“The expectation was probably just to hang a few posters in climbing gyms.”
But Müller and his later co-founder Leonard Meisels had bigger plans: They wanted to reach climbing enthusiasts not only in the gyms, but also online. They wanted to raise awareness for the film with a Facebook competition where participants could win free tickets. Müller:
"The idea came to us at a barbecue. We decided that every participating retailer and/or climbing gym would receive a Facebook app programmed by us, along with the associated content, to massively increase our communication performance."
The result was an application that allowed individual retailers of mountaineering and climbing equipment to offer their fans a raffle. This way, it wasn't Red Bull itself that appeared, but rather the trusted retailer from whom the climbers bought shoes, ropes, and hooks.
“Through cold calling, we found 60 or 70 dealers/partners who participated in the campaign.”
The founding of Socialpals
Following the campaign's success, Müller and Meisels founded Socialpals. Initially, their focus was on the sports retail sector, with which they had already established strong relationships. Brand manufacturers such as Salomon, Atomic, Deuter, and Wilson welcomed the young agency's offering because, like many brands today, they had a problem: While they provided their partners with digital advertising materials via cloud solutions such as Dropbox, retailers weren't using them at all. They lacked the time, and often the know-how, to create and manage social media campaigns. With the Socialpals solution, however, this work was passed on to the agency, and the retailer simply had to onboard. Müller looks back:
"However, our workflow at the time was in dire need of optimization. For example, if a retailer/partner participated in multiple campaigns, we had to contact them repeatedly to ensure that all data and logos were still correct. This couldn't continue—so we decided to develop our own platform."
After a good year of development, the new platform was launched in early 2018. With it, Socialpals not only facilitated communication with brands and retailers but also introduced additional features and automation.
Expansion of the platform
Now, retailers can not only publish posts on the Socialpals platform, but also run and schedule Facebook ads. The budget for these ads is provided either by the retailers themselves or by the brands. The startup has also added additional channels beyond Facebook: The tool can now distribute content via Instagram and, most recently, Google Ads.
The integration of Google Ads, in particular, is a major step for the platform. It allows companies to reach their customers outside of specific social networks, for example, when watching YouTube videos, on websites and blogs, or simply by surfing the internet. What's special about this is that the respective retailer or partner is always the sender of the message. The content is always automatically delivered locally within the respective retailer's area.
In addition to the sports market, Socialpals has conquered numerous other markets since its platform launch. Müller says:
"In recent months, we have been able to gain new customers in new industries, such as AEG in the household goods sector, Ravensburger and Tonies in the toy industry, Hapag Lloyd in the travel segment, and Triumph and Liqui Moly in the automotive industry. Our dealer network now includes over 1,600 dealers."
Future development
When it comes to integrating new networks, Müller is cautious:
"We're obviously monitoring the market, but a platform like TikTok is far from being embraced by retailers and therefore not an option for us at the moment. As soon as this changes, however, we'll take action. Planning is generally a tricky business anyway: The world isn't an Excel spreadsheet, so it's important to remain flexible and be able to react to the current market situation. Sometimes, a feature has to be prioritized, even if the plan says otherwise."
