The problem is, when you’re bootstrapping a new hot sauce or snack line, you can’t sit around waiting for organic magic to happen. For our most recent launch — a line of spicy gourmet nuts — I wanted to have an audience going into TikTok (@whatevernuts) before we’d finalized the packaging. It was just the right gas for High Social’s speed and tactical targeting. As we set up, we described our ideal muncher in the room — people who are into home cooking shows, specific food influencers (hello @spiceology), and competitors in the better-for-you snack space. The AI-facilitated growth was instantaneous, attracting followers that were not simply numbers. They were real people that created their own recipe videos using our product before we were available at scale. This user generated content (UGC) was easily our most powerful marketing asset. The fixed-cost model, and visibility of it, would also be crucial for a startup; I’d now know exactly what my monthly spend was on audience growth as opposed to the variable (and often opaque) figures that can go into influencer gifting or broad paid buys

Marketing spend should behave like an investment would in a boardroom and investment likes to be predictable and have clear KPI’s attached to it. I started suggesting High Social to my portfolio companies about 18 months ago as a focused way to build incremental, base-level audiences on TikTok. Key to both their strategy and the quality of what they offer is clarity: They are not a generic social media manager, but one very specific growth engine for one platform. This emphasis enables better ROI tracking. The service's performance is consistent. At a developer tools startup that I advised, we went into High Social because our ideal audience was engineering leaders. By focusing on interests in certain GitHub repos, tech conferences and competitor tools, they built a very relevant follower base of over 25k in just six months. This audience quickly became the best launch channel for their beta, fueling some 40% of early signups. The algorithmic, hands-off operation is a great fit for cash-strapped startups looking to show traction to investors.

Unlike most consumer-facing B2C growth tools, we wanted a service that knew how to reach a professional, niche audience on TikTok. We are working with [Name of Service, e.g., High Social] for the last eight month to support our main account (@firstlinesoftware). The onboarding strategy there was consultative – we created target audience clusters based on interest in #digital transformation, #CTO and followers of top tech publications. The true worth was seen in our integrated campaigns. For instance, with a push for our “AI Strategy” service, the follower growth that was specifically targeted magnified our explainer video series. We had 52 percent higher engagement on those videos versus our organic posts, attributed entirely to the more relevant audience.” The granular geo-targeting enabled us to target growth in areas where we were also running simultaneous LinkedIn ad campaigns, which achieved strong multi-touchpoint impact. From a client empowerment perspective, the steady increase in followers allows our sales team to share respectable social proof during pitches.