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A North East digital technology firm is looking to build its influence across the º£½ÇÊÓƵ marketing sector after securing a six-figure investment.

Xinfluence’s software platform Xi enables brands and advertising agencies to search, engage, and collaborate with verified influencers, helping them identify the most appropriate partners for online marketing activities. Xi uses a range of metrics to help and maximise clients’ return on investment, helping the creation of tailored marketing content for social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube from concept through to full post-campaign analytics.

The Newcastle business, which also has a London office, is using a £200,000 investment from the North East Growth Capital Fund Loan Fund, which was sourced though regional fund management firm NEL Fund Managers, to boost its sales and business development resources, with up to 11 new jobs expected to be created over the next two years.

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Work is also continuing on the development of new technologies, with a new tool to enable brands to connect their digital marketing activities directly to sales in physical stores set to be launched later this year.

Xinfluence was founded four years ago by brothers Mark and Paul Wright, who have five decades’ combined experience in the digital marketing, technology and sales industries. The company has also brought in Gary Hunter and Sam Morton, founders of renowned affiliate marketing company The Redu Group, as non-executive directors.

Support on the transaction was provided by Barry Gill of TiG Corporate Finance, with legal advice supplied to NEL Fund Managers by Zoe Ditch and Hayden Richards at Muckle LLP, and to the Xinfluence management team by Jabad Jaigirdar at JLF Law.

Xinfluence director Mark Wright said: “There’s been an explosion in influencer marketing over the last few years, but brands and marketers are often still making decisions on which influencers to work with on the basis of metrics like ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ that don’t really have any substantial, measurable or reliable meaning.

“We recognised that it was too easy for companies to spend a lot of money without having any clear idea of their likely return on investment, so spent two years developing a platform that would give them access to reliable, recognisable data on which they could base their decisions.”

Jane Siddle, senior investment executive at NEL Fund Managers, added: “Xinfluence provides the type of detailed insight that could make a huge difference to the impact of digital marketing activity and has a robust business plan in place for how this insight is going to be delivered.”