Just a few years after launching its social media services for businesses struggling to adapt to the digital age, Chicago-based tech company Geofeedia has announced that it has raised a total $6.8 million in funding since 2011.
Geofeedia released an announcement on March 5th that it had acquired an additional $3 million, four months after announcing that it had raised $3.5 million in Series A funding, and is already actively discussing ways that the company can use these funds to expand and give back to the Chicago community.
Currently, the company has offices in both Chicago and Indianapolis, which employ 36 and 15 workers respectively, according to the Chicago Tribune. Geofeedia has already announced that it plans to hire at least 50 new employees with its most recent funds, splitting the new positions between tech analysts and sales jobs in both offices.
According to Crain’s Chicago Business, Geofeedia easily passed its initial investing goals and decided to launch another round of funding during 2014.
“We surpassed our sales goals and our investors wanted to know if we could grow faster if they added more capital,” CEO Phil Harris explained. “We plan to hire key talent here in Chicago to invest in marketing programs and to expand into new vertical segments.”
Currently, Geofeedia has an estimated 10,000 clients, including big-name corporations like McDonald’s, Dell, the AP, BBC, and CNN. After seeing an 857% increase in customer bookings within the past year, ChicagoInno states that the company anticipates its clientele to quadruple over the coming year.
So what exactly is Geofeedia providing to these businesses that’s causing such dramatic success?
Geofeedia has quickly become a B2B industry leader by providing a “platform [which] helps agencies and organizations collect location-based social media intelligence,” the Tribune states. Although an estimated 84% of B2B marketing businesses already focus on social media content creation and distribution, Geofeedia has taken a different approach to this strategy.
Its “social media intelligence” is primarily focused on providing data about regional social media content — rather than creating or distributing the content — which helps businesses see which news stories and topics are trending in certain regions. Geofeedia provides its clients with an easy-to-use platform which collects pieces of content from a wide variety of social media sites and provides real-time analyses of the trends.
Rather than replacing the marketing teams at major companies, Geofeedia capitalizes on accessibility and convenience of raw data so that companies can create their own content — and this type of complex service is something that very few B2B marketing companies have been able to provide.
Although Geofeedia hasn’t provided any specific details on how it will use the newest funds to develop a stronger service, Harris did mention to the Tribune that the company is interested in expanding the tools available to clients on the platform.
