Hello! I am the COO of needls.com. I am here to answer any of your questions! Simply put, we are a smart and intuitive way for businesses to advertise on Social. We found the process of advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram very time consuming and challenging for a novice user so we sought out to simplify the process. By answering 6 simple questions we can create 100's of ads and distribute them across those 3 networks. However, we knew we needed more than that, so we developed an engine that effectively targets our clients ads to the people who need or want their product or services. Say, for example, someone in LA tweets "I'm looking to renovate my kitchen - any reco's for a great contractor?". We know this person is looking for a contractor and any contractor who is our client in the LA area will have their ad displayed to that user on Twitter, but also on Facebook and Instagram, exactly when they make that post. We turned targeting on its head so rather than picking who you think wants your products or services by selecting demographics we target the people who say they need and want your product or service. We are very appreciative of Claus Moberg who "hunted" us and again welcome any questions or feedback you have!
@michael_needls Almost forgot! For all you product hunters, we are giving you $50 in free ad credits to try out our platform. Just use the code "PH50" on checkout to apply the discount.
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Congrats on making it to Product Hunt your software is simplifying online advertising for a lot of small businesses that wouldn't necessarily know or have the time to do it. Congrats and keep it up!
@quharrison Exactly! All the big boys and online marketers have the best tools out there to optimize their ad campaigns, but they are not ideal for startups, small businesses, Independent professionals and more.
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Pretty cool platform. Seems WAY more intuitive than trying to do it yourself across all of these networks. I especially like how you guys are targeting. I don’t think I know of any other platform that can target my ads to people that say they want something on Social! Genius!
@nzilbert Thanks Nathan! Our customers seem to love our targeting - glad you do too!
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Just signed up! I'm so excited to see how this works. Edit: I tried it for a week. Got better results creating my own ads on instagram. Customer support left to be desired.
I started using needls to drive qualified leads over the Christmas period. As it boasted to be the most effective way to advertise on FB and IG, and marketing materials state that needls will create "high converting ads", my expectations were understandably high. I'd already managed to drive a few sales on FB myself, and it was a time of heightened purchasing, so should have been like adding rocket fuel to a flame.
The concept is sound. Serve ads to warm leads. So, someone posts about needing a new suit, needls serves up ads for suits, and bish bash bosh, you've got yourself a sale.
Great. Sadly though, it's unrealistic.
After a week or so of seeing no return on ad spend, and only having used part of the first week's budget, I decided to try and optimise the needls campaign, with advice from a needls support rep.
Instead of optimising the campaign, needls begun blasting through the budget, still delivering precisely 0 conversions. I left it to run anyway. After all, it's machine learning, perhaps it just needed to learn. As the end of the budget drew near, and with no sales to speak of, I decided enough was enough.
Unfortunately, when I tried to stop the future billing, needls begun developing bugs, and decided to not allow me to update any settings. I attempted to contact support, though they too had stopped responding - perhaps understandable over the christmas/ new year period. A few days passed, and I became unable to connect to the platform's chat support altogether.
After being charged the full budget for another month, and a $100 "platform fee", I have now finally been able to pause the campaign, but have had no word from the needls support team.
While the concept is good, there are too many bugs, too much ambiguity in the data, and too little support.
Avoid.
UPDATED 11th January 2018: Needls support team have now cancelled the account and issued a refund for platform fees and unused budget.
Pros:
Good UI. Easy to set up.
Cons:
Very buggy. Often fails to update campaigns and billing. Data is ambiguous. Support is not responsive. Avoid.
@tribaling Hi! Twitter is here! We reached some API limits which have since been removed so by next week we will have Twitter as an option again. Google we anticipate for end of 2016.
I started using needls to drive qualified leads over the Christmas period. As it boasted to be the most effective way to advertise on FB and IG, and marketing materials state that needls will create "high converting ads", my expectations were understandably high. I'd already managed to drive a few sales on FB myself, and it was a time of heightened purchasing, so should have been like adding rocket fuel to a flame.
The concept is sound. Serve ads to warm leads. So, someone posts about needing a new suit, needls serves up ads for suits, and bish bash bosh, you've got yourself a sale.
Great. Sadly though, it's unrealistic.
After a week or so of seeing no return on ad spend, and only having used part of the first week's budget, I decided to try and optimise the needls campaign, with advice from a needls support rep.
Instead of optimising the campaign, needls begun blasting through the budget, still delivering precisely 0 conversions. I left it to run anyway. After all, it's machine learning, perhaps it just needed to learn. As the end of the budget drew near, and with no sales to speak of, I decided enough was enough.
Unfortunately, when I tried to stop the future billing, needls begun developing bugs, and decided to not allow me to update any settings. I attempted to contact support, though they too had stopped responding - perhaps understandable over the christmas/ new year period. A few days passed, and I became unable to connect to the platform's chat support altogether.
After being charged the full budget for another month, and a $100 "platform fee", I have now finally been able to pause the campaign, but have had no word from the needls support team.
While the concept is good, there are too many bugs, too much ambiguity in the data, and too little support.
Avoid.
UPDATED 11th January 2018: Needls support team have now cancelled the account and issued a refund for platform fees and unused budget.
Pros:Good UI. Easy to set up.
Cons:Very buggy. Often fails to update campaigns and billing. Data is ambiguous. Support is not responsive. Avoid.