Charlotte Small Business Growth Fund
For Scale Link
Using authentic brand storytelling & digital strategy to boost loan applications.
The Charlotte Small Business Growth Fund is a loan program for small businesses in Charlotte, N.C. Facing low awareness of the program among entrepreneurs, plus general distrust of financial institutions, it needed help. Our digital campaign featured business owners from the historically marginalized communities the fund sought to serve — and nearly doubled applications.
BRANDING
Starting with a fresh identity,
we added people & places.
Our client already had a strong brand identity. To meet the challenges of this campaign, we found opportunities to make it more engaging, audience-centered and locally relevant. We started with new patterns to add visual interest. Then we designed materials and ads using photos of program participants and other people and of recognizable Charlotte locations. And we wrote a message platform rooted in the audiences’ lived experiences, barriers and motivators.
VIDEO STORYTELLING
Building trust & credibility through owners’ true stories.
By telling real people’s stories, we can build consumer trust and counter skepticism while engaging audiences with experiences they relate to. We worked with film producer Jarami Bond to create a series of videos driven by small business owners’ voices and experiences with the loan program. Jarami brought experience telling stories about Black business ownership as well as community development financial institutions. The ads show the heart of Charlotte’s small business community and convey the program’s commitment to making it stronger.
DIGITAL CAMPAIGN
Millions of great impressions
produce a surge in applications.
As confirmed by campaign performance metrics, our strategy landed well. Our client saw more awareness of the loan fund, more traffic on its website, and a steady rise in loan applications. Our media buy leveraged media we knew the audience favored: Meta, LinkedIn, Google, programmatic display ads, email and the Charlotte Business Journal. In three months, the effort nearly doubled pre-campaign numbers, with:
- 2.3 million total impressions.
- 298,000 people reached.
- 45,000+ digital ad clicks (3.33% click-through rate).
- 90 new loan applications, with 57 of them completed.
- 24 matches between qualified business owners and lenders.
