SocialAgent Helps Make Sense of Business on Chinese Social Media

SocialAgent.me is an online lead generation tool to help businesses find leads in the Chinese market. Based between Shenzhen, China and Hong Kong with a mix of Americans, Chinese, Canadians, they help western companies have a better chance of success in the Chinese market through leveraging Chinese social media.

Our model is a monthly subscription plan with additional lead generation packages,” says co-founder Michael Michelini. “We’re also working on live online sales workers to boost their chances of finding quality prospects.”

“Who are the customers? Who are these prospects?” asked Nobuaki Kitagawa. Mike responded that they find customers in the Chinese market through social media profile search, depending on the client’s profile.

Andrew Collins pointed out that a “fan generation” (like helping football clubs find followers in China) approach would work on an interest graph like Weibo, rather than lead/sales generation. Mike responded they complemented the Sales department of a client, not the marketing department. Since they went live, they have around 10 paying customers.

Their eclectic clients include everything from the prosaic, such as Singaporean college recruitment agencies who want to find Chinese students to apply to singapore schools and New York-based real estate sales agencies to the esoteric, such as firms that make New Zealand milk powder QR tracking systems or Mexican seafood distributors.

Jeffrey Paine asked about the sustainability of clients: Once they found the people they needed within a few months, wouldnt they exit? The stickiness, Mike responded, was in the data management backend that helped businesses maintain relationships over time.

Their future plans include expanding to other social networks – a Wechat Agent is planned for the immediate future, followed by plans for presence on Twitter and Facebook.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Singapore 2013, our event running on April 4 and 5. For the rest of our Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @techinasia, and on our Facebook page.