Umair Wolid, the Chief Marketing Officer – Meta ASP at Roar AdX, shares the inspiring journey of Roar Global and its plans to become a unicorn by transforming the digital media landscape with impactful storytelling, innovative digital platforms, determination, and market expertise. Umair emphasizes that Roar AdX, as an ad reseller for platforms like Meta and LinkedIn, plays a crucial role in Roar Global’s objectives by empowering businesses in the region through strategic direction, training, and exclusive partnerships on these platforms.
Roar AdX boasts a certified team of digital marketers who provide localized support and tailored solutions to advertisers. Their focus lies in continuous education, enabling clients to connect with evolving audience segments and shape their brand experience. In recognition of their excellence, Roar AdX became the first Sri Lankan company to be awarded the prestigious Meta Authorized Sales Partner (ASP) in 2020. Umair, who also serves as the President of the Digital Marketing Association of Sri Lanka, begins the interview by reflecting on the journey thus far.
When Roar AdX launched the Meta ASP in Sri Lanka, it was something new to the country. Our team, which is made up of people who are widely recognized in the country as digital marketing experts, put in a lot of effort to educate potential clients, both large corporations and SMEs and kickstart our operations. We launched in early 2020, a few days before the entire country went into lockdown. This plunged us into a difficult and unfamiliar work environment. At the time, most people were just getting accustomed to virtual meetings and so on, and we were uncertain of the market conditions. But we were also undeterred and pushed through, onboarding 1,000 clients in the first year alone. This is a testament to the hard work we put in at the start, and today, Roar AdX is one of the highest-performing ASPs globally.
At Roar AdX, our mission is to set a benchmark for our ad reseller business, starting from Sri Lanka. We see our operations in Sri Lanka as an experiment for what a partner can achieve in an emerging market through excellent customer service and hyperlocalized solutions. We have been very successful in this so far; today, we work with 5,000+ brands and represent some of the world’s best digital platforms in countries outside Sri Lanka as well.
What value does a business get from working a Meta ASP over running ads on Meta platforms independently?
This is a question we get asked very often. The Meta ASP serves as an on-the-ground Meta sales office in a country in which Meta doesn’t officially have a presence. Our team members are experts on Meta platforms — we help brands understand everything about how they work. We provide consultation on a brand’s social media presence, campaigns and advertising activities, as well as in-depth knowledge and dedicated support. Plus, we offer local currency billing. One of the biggest issues Sri Lankan companies, especially SMEs, face is liquidity. Being able to spend on ads in LKR is one of the key benefits of working with us. Also, everything we provide in terms of consultation, training, monitoring and support is free-of-charge. It’s a straightforward operation; you don’t pay any agency or partner commissions.
Where we add the most value is in our hand-holding of clients. We work with a very wide range of businesses across different industries and verticals, and to meet this, we have a team of experts who come from specialized backgrounds. We have some who have many years of experience managing large accounts at top agencies and others who understand and have helped scale small brands and startups. This way, we can provide strategic and tailored solutions for businesses with varied pain points and objectives.
Our goal is not to just help optimize their ad campaigns but also to increase their overall sales and reach their business objectives. It has been inspiring to see some brands that started off earning just $100 in turnover making over $50,000 two or three years later.
The last three years have posed unprecedented challenges for businesses , demanding innovation and strategic thinking. What role does Roar AdX play in helping businesses navigate a volatile market, and what lessons have you learned?
Interestingly, some of our most successful clients are those who started their businesses during those tough early months of COVID. We saw some e-commerce and DTC brands build their businesses around the crisis and saw it as an opportunity to build inroads into the market. We were able to provide them with the insights and tools to be able to emerge during this time through advertising on Meta platforms. This, coupled with their entrepreneurial drive, has resulted in them growing exponentially over the last three years. Local currency billing also played a key role in our clients being able to survive or even thrive during this time. Also, if you look at our top 10 clients who perform well on social media, they are not large or traditional companies that have huge advertising budgets. In fact, they are smaller brands that don’t have massive brand recognition or aren’t backed by large blue-chip companies. By working with the Meta ASP, they learned how to be smart in their use of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger to get in front of customers.
I wouldn’t say all our clients experienced this level of growth, unfortunately.
The tourism industry was severely affected by lockdowns and the economic crisis although it’s heartening to see it pick up now. Retail, especially in fashion, grew in the last two years because people’s spending habits also changed during lockdowns, and they were able to capitalize on that.
What trends and new features are we seeing on platforms like Facebook and Instagram now, and how does Roar AdX train clients to create their campaigns accordingly?
One of the most significant changes that have taken place across social media over the last four years is discovery commerce. It relies on the fact that most people don’t know what they aspire to be or what they want to buy. But Facebook and Instagram allow brands to showcase their offerings even to those outside their target audiences and influence their purchase decisions. We also see an increasing number of people using these platforms as a search engine to look up products that are trending, and soon they also start seeing alternative options. Previously, customers had to seek information on their own and online shopping was web-based. Brands invested a lot in building the best-looking and most sophisticated websites. But now customers are being presented with a personalized experience on platforms, where they can discover new brands and evaluate multiple options. For brands, these platforms have become a centralized place to conduct business. Also, traditional brands in Sri Lanka, who used these platforms for conversions, are now using them more for building brand awareness, especially as local audiences continue to grow on Facebook and Instagram.
One of the most important services we provide as the Meta ASP is support and education in local languages. We run webinars and offline workshops and frequently share learning resources on our social channels and monthly newsletters in both Sinhala and Tamil. This includes our ongoing video series ‘Meta Unboxed’, which demystifies the different ad features on Meta platforms for those who don’t have access to expert-backed tips and best practices because they are not proficient in English. It’s an area we want to continue to invest in, in every non-English speaking market we enter, as we firmly believe everyone should have equal opportunity to take advantage of what platforms offer.
Roar AdX recently started working with LinkedIn Marketing. How can Sri Lankan businesses grow by advertising on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a great platform for B2B marketing, but in South Asia, we don’t see a lot of companies taking advantage of that as companies in other regions do. We are still at the early stage of this operation, but we have been working with selected companies that have an international clientele and stand to gain a lot by reaching business leaders and decision-makers around the world. It requires an approach that is different from that taken for Meta platforms. We also just launched our LinkedIn operation in Nepal and Bangladesh, and we are very excited to explore these markets, learn how businesses in emerging markets can grow on LinkedIn and use these insights as we enter other countries across the APAC region, as an ad reseller for Meta and LinkedIn as well as other leading digital platforms.
What is the purpose of the DMASL and how does it contribute to the growth of Sri Lanka’s digital marketing industry?
The average brand in Sri Lanka spends around 30% of its total advertising budget on digital marketing, which is not a lot when compared to its spending on traditional media. Our role as DMASL is to inform businesses as well as the public and non-profit sectors of the effectiveness of digital platforms, help them understand what is happening globally, and provide them with recommendations and ethical guidelines for unlocking their potential through digital marketing. There are also a lot of job opportunities in digital marketing, and we want to help Sri Lankan digital marketers stay on top of trends and hone their skills. On the 1st of July, we will host the first DMASL Digital Summit, where we will have an international panel of speakers who represent some of the world’s best companies. I am very proud of this initiative and am very excited about it!