A Melbourne social media marketing start-up called Tiger Pistol has announced the launch of what it’s claiming is the world’s first ‘crowd intelligence’ marketing platform, which takes the form of an automatic social media learning and scheduling tool aimed at telling small and medium businesses what they should be doing on social platforms.

The platform aims to provide a bespoke, pre-scheduled social marketing action plan generated in real time based on the best outcomes from thousands of real campaigns from other similar businesses. In other words, the platform learns from the success or otherwise of each campaign it handles and optimises a schedule of content for its users.

The company says it will focus initially on Facebook. Members sign up and certain information such as type of business, location, characteristics of typical customers, and the business’ current status on Facebook is captured. “Tiger Pistol then automatically generates a tailored program by analysing millions of data points to identify the actions with the highest proven success rate for other similar businesses with similar objectives,” the company said in a statement.

Tiger Pistol also announced it has closed a $1 million round of funding from Australian venture fund Rampersand and existing shareholders. The funding will finance the ongoing promotion of the newly expanded platform and the establishment of a Silicon Valley office.

Steve Hibberd, Tiger Pistol co-founder and CEO says, “We remove a headache and provide confidence to small business operators, helping them to be successful in just a few minutes a day. Most small businesses know they need to be on social, but have neither the time nor the head space to take advantage of it.”

“Where larges enterprises pay agencies thousands of dollars for their expertise, we offer a Crowd Intelligence platform using proven results that provides that expertise automatically for under $50 a month. This is the first time a business can affordably run a tailored, automated digital marketing program with a clear view of what it’s focused on achieving and why.”

Paul Naphtali, co-founder and managing partner of Rampersand adds,  “Social media marketing has come of age and it’s time small businesses had a tool as powerful as those built for enterprises, but with clear simplicity. Tiger Pistol has not only built a great product, they have created a new category in marketing platforms and we look forward to supporting company through its rapid growth.”