Using the power of community to fuel the mompreneur movement

Run by Moms, Facebook

The Challenge

In 2019, SMBs all over the world were hit hard by lockdowns, but female and minority-led businesses were hit harder than most. According to Facebook’s 2020 State of Small Business report, 66% of female business leaders admitted that additional domestic duties had significantly impacted their work.

The Opportunity

At the height of COVID 19, Facebook held an internal hackathon calling for ideas to support SMBs. As someone who’s passionate about empowering women in business, I knew this was my chance to do more. I formed a core team of creatives and marketers to lead a proactive initiative that focused on female entrepreneurs who carried the largest domestic burdens—moms.

The Idea: Run by Moms

Being an entrepreneur is a lonely job, more so for moms juggling work, household and childcare responsibilities at the same time. Mompreneurs often fail because they don’t have anyone to turn to for trusted guidance and advice.

But we wanted them to know that doing it all, doesn’t mean doing it all alone.

We found a thriving community of “mompreneurs” already using Facebook Groups to connect with each other. We partnered with 5 of the largest Groups—with a combined membership of over 500,000 mom business-owners—and on Mother’s Day, we launched a campaign run by moms, for moms.

Night School

The defining activation of the campaign was a series of educational Facebook Live classes with detailed information about topics which moms had chosen. Each session was run by moms, for other moms, and was held at a time that mompreneurs told us worked best for them—after their kids went to bed.

With zero budget, and absolutely no dedicated time or resources, we begged and borrowed from across our org to build:

An anthem video remotely filmed in 4 different APAC markets during lockdowns
A microsite with resources to help mompreneurs to grow their business on Facebook, Instagram & Whatsapp
Night School: A series of educational Facebook Lives, and a digital media campaign driving people to sign up for it

The Results

Night School reached 1.1 million moms in the Phillipines alone, with 32.2K moms tuning in live. More than half tuned in from outside the Manila metro area.

Even though this was an entirely proactive campaign, and only ran for 6 weeks, it ended up helping the SMB marketing team hit its Economic Impact training goals for the whole year.

More featured work