New York-based startup Percolate announced today that it has raised an additional $24 million in investment funds after partnering with fundraising group Sequoia Capital. Percolate’s great success in the Series B round of fundraising pushes the company further toward its goal of being the content marketing firm for enterprise-sized businesses, and might change the direction of social media marketing overall.
Content Marketing in the Advertising World
Of course, the idea of offering content marketing services to large businesses isn’t exactly new. Big businesses struggle with the agility needed to keep up with social media. Twitter and Facebook increasingly require a team that can work in real time to offer social media users content that they want to share with their friends and family online. Percolate can offer that real time approach.
To understand why this is important, you need only look at the statistics. From a purely financial standpoint, placing more of an emphasis on content marketing just makes sense. 61% of web users say they are more likely to buy from a business that makes the effort to offer custom content that offers utility. Social media content marketing firms, like Percolate, in particular are increasingly important because social media, with its two-billion-plus users, is increasingly fertile ground for marketers to plant their seeds.
“We have have been moving forward with content ourselves, because we’ve noticed that customers have increasingly been requesting expertise and guidance on the subject,” explains Tiffiny Hladczuk, Business Manager at Integrated Technology Services, Inc.
How Percolate Could Reshape the Content Marketing World
Percolate’s recent success with Sequoia Capital should have the business world taking particular interest in the content marketing sphere. Why? Quite simply, Percolate represents a move away from social media management platforms of the past to a more personalized, intuitive approach to social platforms. As TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha so smartly wrote on this topic, Percolate will change the content marketing game because “it’s not just allowing businesses to listen and respond on social media, but to find, create, and distribute engaging content, too.”
The service aims to accomplish this goal with a set of powerful tools, including a calendar tool for crafting editorial calendars; a browsing tool that makes it simple for businesses to search for content that’s related to their brand and industry; and collaboration tools that give the whole team the ability to sharpen content and share it with their brand’s audience. In a nutshell, Percolate moves marketing away from the static, impersonal approach of SMS solutions of the past.
What do you think the success of Percolate and similar businesses means for social media marketing? Sound off in the comments below!