Back to case studies

Social Sweep

Replaced a US$5,000-a-year licence with a tool I built. Now sold in every Innovatr membership.

Client · Innovatr · Product lead: planned, built and maintained · Mar – Sep 2026

  • Build vs buy
  • Product strategy
  • AI product
  • Research tooling

An AI social listening tool I proposed, built and maintained for Innovatr while running its marketing.

A finished Social Sweep report on Chinese versus German car brands in South Africa, leading with net sentiment, comments analysed and an executive summary.

Building instead of buying

Innovatr was about to sign a US$5,000-a-year social listening contract. I proposed building a tool instead and delivered it in three months: platform APIs feeding an AI analysis layer, prototyped in Replit and built with Claude.

How it works

You ask a question in plain language. The tool picks the relevant platforms and returns a report in which every claim links to a real comment, with no dashboards or boolean search queries to learn.

Savings and revenue

US$5k
Saved in licence fees, every yearThe quote it replaced. Building it in-house cost under R10,000.
R6.5–15k
A month, for the memberships that include itThree reports in Starter, unlimited in Unlimited, alongside Innovatr's other research tools.
49
Platforms reachableSocial, search, commerce, reviews and the open web. Each study queries only what the question needs.

Prices from Innovatr's published membership tiers.

Inside the tool

  • Social Sweep's question screen: one plain-language box, a time range, an option to enrich with web search, and the eight platforms it listens across, with a trends radar below.
  • A finished Social Sweep report on Chinese versus German car brands in South Africa, leading with net sentiment, comments analysed, loudest emotion and an executive summary with key takeaways.
  • The evidence view: overall sentiment split, which platform carries the conversation, sentiment over time with spikes flagged, and a ranked emotion mix.

What I'd do differently

I'd also sell it on its own, outside the memberships, so its revenue could be measured separately.