Growth
2026-10-20 · 8 min read
Sapun Lamichhane
Founder & CEO of Arcetis
If you run a business in Kathmandu, Pokhara, or anywhere in between, you have probably noticed that your usual Facebook post is not getting the reach it did two years ago. That is not your imagination. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts now drive most of the organic discovery for audiences under 30, while Facebook still holds the largest raw reach for the 30-55 age group, especially outside the Kathmandu valley where it remains the default "internet" for many households.
TikTok's status in Nepal has been inconsistent - banned, reinstated, debated - and that uncertainty alone is a reason not to build a core strategy around it in 2026. Treat it as a bonus distribution channel for content you are already making for Reels, not a platform worth dedicated budget or a dedicated content team. For higher-trust, higher-ticket categories - education consultancies, clinics, real estate, B2B services - Google Search and LinkedIn still convert better than social reach ever will, because the person searching has already decided they have a problem.
“The businesses that win in 2026 will not be the ones chasing every new platform - they will be the ones that picked two or three channels and got disciplined about measurement.”
A growing number of Nepali users are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity questions like "best digital marketing agency in Pokhara" or "which CRM should a small business in Nepal use" instead of typing them into Google. These tools give a direct answer, often without sending a single click to any website. If your business is not mentioned in that answer, you simply do not exist in that moment - no amount of traditional SEO ranking saves you if the AI tool never cites your page.
This is the single most under-prepared area for Nepali businesses right now. Most local business websites have no FAQ content, no clear structured answers, and nothing an AI model can lift cleanly into a response. The upside is that because almost nobody locally has fixed this yet, the businesses that do it first get a real head start - not a guaranteed one, but a real one.
Google Ads costs in Nepal are not uniform. A clothing brand bidding on broad terms might still pay a modest cost per click, while an education consultancy bidding on "IELTS classes in Kathmandu" or a law firm bidding on commercial terms is competing against dozens of other businesses for the same clicks, and costs have risen accordingly over the past two years. Remember that ad spend and management fee are always separate - the money you pay Google or Meta for clicks is not the same line item as what you pay an agency or freelancer to run the account.
For smaller budgets, the realistic response in 2026 is not to out-bid bigger competitors on broad keywords. It is to go narrower - long-tail search terms, ward or city-level geographic targeting, and retargeting people who already visited your site - where competition and cost per click are both lower.
Across almost every category we see data from, a Reel filmed on a phone by a staff member or the founder regularly outperforms a studio-produced ad in both engagement and cost per result. Production costs have dropped, but the real requirement has shifted from budget to consistency - three or four short videos a week, not one polished video a quarter.
The honest trade-off here is that this cannot be fully outsourced. An agency can plan the content calendar and edit the footage, but somebody inside the business has to be willing to be on camera regularly. Businesses that do not have that person internally tend to see this channel underperform no matter how good the strategy is.
As Meta's targeting gets narrower and iOS privacy restrictions continue to limit what platforms can track, businesses that already have a list of past customers - phone numbers, WhatsApp contacts, emails - can retarget them cheaply. Businesses without that list are stuck paying full price for cold prospecting every single time they want to reach someone.
Building this list does not require a big system. A simple lead magnet, a WhatsApp or Viber broadcast list, or even a loyalty card scheme for a retail shop all count. The point is to own a way of reaching your past customers directly, independent of whatever a platform's algorithm decides to show them.
Pick two or three channels deliberately based on where your actual customers make decisions, not based on what is trending. Audit your website for basic AI and search readiness - clear FAQ sections, direct answers, consistent information across pages. Start collecting first-party contacts now, even informally, before you need them for a campaign.
None of this requires a large budget to start, but it does require someone to actually sit down and map it out against your specific business rather than copying a generic checklist. That kind of audit - where your budget should go, what is worth testing in 2026, and what is just noise - is something Arcetis does for Nepali businesses before any ad spend starts, precisely because getting the channel mix right matters more than the size of the budget.
Treat it as a secondary distribution channel, not a core strategy. Cross-post the Reels content you are already making for Instagram, but given the platform's inconsistent regulatory status in Nepal, building a dedicated content team or ad budget around it is a risk most small businesses do not need to take right now.
There is no universal number, and anyone who gives you one without seeing your account is guessing. A more useful move than simply raising budget is narrowing targeting - long-tail keywords and tighter geography - so the budget you already have goes further before you add more.
Building a first-party contact list and fixing basic website structure so AI tools and search engines can actually understand and cite your business. Both are low-cost, both compound over time, and both are things most competitors in Nepal still have not done.