Birmingham-based Michael Panik told Hypepotamus that he’s been at the intersection of marketing and web development for most of his career. But his passion has been helping small businesses. “I believe in small business as a whole. I’m a product of small business,” he said.
“The problem is that even in Tier 2 cities like Birmingham, everybody starts fighting overpaid marketing. There are only so many billboards in the world. And on the Internet, everybody is fighting for the same paid ads. So often, I watched smaller to medium-sized businesses fighting for keywords that are completely dominated by large businesses.”
Struggling to break through, those small companies look to marketing agencies for help, but those agencies are competing to buy those same ad spaces.
Additionally, Apple announced major privacy changes in 2021 that will impact pay-per-click advertisements and digital marketing in general.
Panik believes the answer to this problem is organic marketing.
He co-founded Bordo along with Kevin Brown to help small businesses get better tools to grow organic social media marketing.
The platform helps users to “set it and forget it” by scheduling posts across social media platforms, collaborate with team members, and integrate with Canva and Unsplash for content creation.
Panik says Bordo differentiates itself from other scheduling tools by focusing on the “non-power user,” meaning it built the platform to be easier and more intuitive. The platform ensures that posts are indeed put up on platforms, and can provide immediate feedback when an integration or a post fails.
Bordo has been bootstrapped to date. The platform is free to use now, and Panik says there is potential to monetize down the road with upper-level features and integrations they have planned.
In 2021, the team plans to go after initial funding while adding additional integrations and improved content creation flow.
