Reaching microentrepreneurs
at national scale
Growthr designed and ran an 18-month national digital growth campaign, powered by Mastercard Strive USA, that connected small business owners, gig workers, and self-employed people with SaverLife's financial tools and fed research at every stage.
Reaching an audience that
doesn't self-identify
Microentrepreneurs, gig workers, freelancers, and side-hustle operators often don't think of themselves as business owners. Mastercard Strive USA needed to find, acquire, and engage this hidden audience at national scale while building a research-backed understanding of their financial needs.
Audience discovery
Finding microentrepreneurs at scale when the audience doesn't search for "microentrepreneur" took creative keyword strategies and behavioral targeting.
Multi-phase complexity
An 18-month, 3-phase campaign spanning growth, research, content, engagement, and savings challenges, each phase building on the last.
Research integration
Acquisition had to feed research surveys, intervention testing, and funder reporting at every stage.
National reach.
Niche precision.
Three phases over 18 months, each one built on what the previous phase measured.
- Phase 01: Foundation
Research, data architecture and testing
Designed audience segments across gig workers, freelancers, and side-income earners. Launched an initial $5K test spend across 4 audience segments and 6+ creatives to identify winning combinations before scaling. Built data filters and Tableau dashboards to track ME engagement across the platform.
- Phase 02: Scale and engage
National campaign launch and interventions
Scaled winning ad segments nationally. Launched a Small Business Savings Challenge with tiered prizes to drive deep engagement. At the same time, tested interventions, including microgrants, content format A/B tests, and dedicated dashboard sections, to measure what changed savings behavior for microentrepreneurs.
- Phase 03: Optimize and report
Tax season campaign and dissemination
Launched a personalized Tax Season Small Business Challenge with savings races, ME-specific content, and trusted referrals. Delivered intervention analysis, research briefs, and a final report that Mastercard Strive USA now uses to set strategy for microentrepreneur financial inclusion.
Campaign intelligence
Conversion efficiency across the full funnel: the stage-over-stage pipeline, the engagement mix by channel, and the momentum curve across the 18-month campaign.
Full-funnel architectureStage-over-stage campaign pipeline
Engagement breakdownMember activation across 4 channels
Campaign momentumEngagement index, months 1 to 18Full-funnel pipeline
at national scale
Over 18 months, we built and optimized a complete acquisition-to-engagement pipeline for an audience that doesn't self-identify and can't be reached by keyword. The campaign delivered every funder KPI and produced three research briefs that Mastercard still uses.
Reach a niche audience
at national scale.
Tell us who you need to reach. We will say how we would find them, what we would test first, and what the research layer should measure.
