Arabic Content Marketing - Digital MarketingServices

How to Build an Arabic Content Marketing Strategy

21st February 201617th August 2020 Yasser Ahmad

The main concept behind content marketing is filling the gap between what the company produces and what the consumer is searching for. Arabic content marketing strategy will always be one of the top marketing activities for companies to grow in the Middle East.

Middle East North Africa’s (MENA) online audience is currently one of the fastest growing online segments with high rates of growth. Although the demand for Arabic content is growing, the online Arabic content is still way behind.

Only 2% of worldwide content is written in Arabic. And 5% of Fortune 500 websites have an Arabic language version. The gap between the size of the market and the percentage of the content available online is huge. Although there is a gap in content, there is a bigger gap in the distribution, topics varieties, and specialized websites. Social media is playing a big role in the region but would you do if you need you need to discover your content marketing opportunities beyond the social media? What if you want to enhance your organic search results through inbound links? The answer is Arabic content marketing.

Do I really need to create a content marketing strategy for Arabic?

When it comes to the Middle East region, companies rely heavily on Paid Ads and Social Media as an effective tactic to accelerate their results. Since Arabic content creation is one of the biggest challenges, the marketers would not recommend it as one of the top approaches. Over the years, clients used to ask me why you always recommend Arabic content marketing. The answer is; simply because it is underestimated!

As I’ve learned from the market, not only do you need an Arabic content, you also need to market it to go viral. Now, let’s try to find out the most important practices for an effective Arabic content marketing strategy.

Define Your Business Goals for Each Local Market

What is content going to do for you? Create awareness? Generate leads? Improve loyalty and retention? Those are all important question you’ll need to answer with your strategy. Yet, the most important goals for the regional market would be tricky.

It is very important to define first your goals for each local market separately. Avoid the common concept that since all those countries speak Arabic so it takes one strategy. Well, that’s not true! The dialects are different; the trends are tricky; the channels are specific. To get the right conclusion, you will need to divide your goals in the region by countries. Your KPIs and analytic reporting should be defined for each local market accordingly. Separate the KSA market from the Egyptian market to get real insights and to enhance your approach.

Research, Customize and Adapt

Forget about the standard principles and drive your researches further into the market. Based on the insights you’ll need to adapt and build a customized strategy. Learn as much as possible about the target segments, their preferred channels, their top sites, their search behavior and the competition. The market is full of gaps and it is a golden chance for those who are willing to take advantage. An effective Arabic content marketing strategy should be fully customized for the local culture.

Enhance Your Arabic Content

Investing in quality content is one of the most critical issues. Some would imagine that translating their English content is all that it takes. In fact, this would never help you reach your audience in the region.

Enhance your content quality and originality. Avoid translating your marketing materials from English to Arabic and start creating original and localized content. Bring in native copywriters, designers, and creative artist to create engaging content. Include the trends into your content calendar. Get the local team involved in the process of content creation. Take the advantage of creating different types of content. There is no enough infographics, video reviews and presentation slides in Arabic and that’s a huge chance.

Finally, investing in Arabic content is profitable and very effective in growing your Arabic SEO SERPs.

Open Up Your Network

Content marketing is challenging in Arabic. One of the major issues is the lack of specialized websites. If you exclude social platforms and global websites, almost 90% of the traffic in the region is dominated by news portals. If you are trying to market your products, you should think of creating a new story around your product. It might sound tricky but the Arabic news portals are trying to cover all the Arabic readers’ interests from light news to product reviews.

The practices of discovering content marketing channels are not the same as in the USA or Europe market. You will have to dig for different approaches. Partner with startups who are taking initiatives of creating content platforms and specialized website. Open a platform for contributions and content creation contests. Get your PR and Social Media teams busy with pushing the content into your network and top influencers. Maintain a very solid relationship with press and media in the local market.

Finding Arabic channels for content distribution is not hard after all. It is all about team effort and in-depth researches.

Build it to Grow

Content marketing is an ongoing effort. It is very important to have the seeds for growth and to get all the team involved. Building content and marketing it requires effective online communications as well as offline events. Explore for partnership opportunities on content creation and marketing. Benefit from your internal team and partners feedback to enhance your content marketing plan. As long as your network keeps expanding, your content exposure will grow over time.

The Arabic online market is already changing

Over the years, the online market in the region is continuously changing. 8 years ago the forums took the control of Arabic content. Later on and due to Arab Spring, the news portals started to dominate. Now and as we speak, all this started to change again. The startups are taking huge steps in creating platforms for Arabic quality content (check startups like 7awi and Wamda). Video bloggers and independent YouTubers started to generate huge demand vs TV shows, especially in Morocco, KSA, and Egypt. With increasing funds and digital investing the region is a hot spot for content marketing.

Digital Marketing in the Middle East: Where is the Gap?

17th March 201517th August 2020 Yasser Ahmad

Digital marketing in the Middle East has been growing and expanding, but what about effectiveness? The Arabic consumers have changed. The digital experiences are no longer new in the local markets … They are expected to bring a value.

While there is a massive amount of digital campaigns in the region, the Arabic consumers are eagerly looking for something more specific, personalized and unique. The gap will increase between the consumer and the marketers if the digital experiences don’t adapt to these changing expectations.

I have spoken to a large number of brands in the Middle East region looking to increase their digital marketing and while there is a definite desire for investing into digital, there is an equal lack of understanding in critical objectives such as how to measure and track the results, or how to personalize content. In most of the cases, they are more convinced with quantities and the short-term results. I have been watching digital agencies running everywhere on social networks to just fill the plate with numbers.

So what is next? We all know that the market will certainly have to consider new expectations or to be more accurate “the right expectations”. To put digital marketing in perspective, you have to implement it in your overall strategy. It is not anymore something you can just assign it to an agency or team and expect it to work like magic. Yes, digital marketing not anymore a “plug-and-play” tool.

The Evolved Customer

It is clear to everyone now that the evolution of marketing is moving beyond the goal of creating new customers to the concept of creating an evolved customer. No wonder that the content-driven experiences are now the natural-selection process that moves the customer along.

To succeed in the Middle East, marketing departments must themselves evolve. They must not only advertise the brand by describing the value that has been created in the product but also to create differentiated experiential value that is separate from that product.

Personalized Digital Marketing

Personalized digital marketing is no longer a luxury. Some would even say it is the future. I believe that the consumers in the region are more interested in relevancy more than anything else. With those multiple social networks feeds and buzz feed at every corner, there is a major need for personalization. Arabic content is still suffering from the lack of quality and quantity. Companies and brands are still relying on translating their marketing messages from English into Arabic instead of creating original content. Products are not providing enough content targeting the behavior of the Arabic users.

Personalization is one of the major gaps that digital strategists and content marketers should work on to achieve better results in each market.

Conversion Optimization

Conversion metrics are not only helpful for setting the right expectations and ROI, but it’s very effective to learn more about your consumer. Understanding the audience is always the key to creating a targeted message and digital experience that appeals to that particular audience. Put in mind that every local market in the Middle East should have a different conversion and metrics. I always brought the conversion as the main topic for every campaign discussed with a client and with that I was able to set the right goals for the campaign.

Finally, digital marketing is not always about the top 10 practices or following the notes from speakers and gurus, it is all about innovation and testing. Middle East markets are not a major challenge if you get closer to your target segmentations and learn how to avoid the gaps.

If you want to start putting your Arabic digital marketing approach into the right action plan, contact me for consulting and discussing the opportunity.

Why the Arabic Digital Marketing Will Be Different in 2015

21st February 201517th August 2020 Yasser Ahmad

How is the Arabic digital marketing is changing? What is the major changes and how to indicate it?

In the past few years, all internet statistics point towards the Arab world as one of the most booming markets. The region had a massive rise in the numbers of Arabic-speaking people getting online (413 million in 2015).

However, this massive increase doesn’t have a major impact on the digital marketing in the Middle East region anymore. You’ll need to deal with the different facts that will have a greater impact on the market.

The majority are already onboard

The majority of Arabic-speaking people are already online, which means the real matter will shift from the high numbers of followers to the relevancy of your followers. Believe it or not, most of the brands in the region still focused on the hits and likes. RIP the numbers of fans.. It is the time for the real buyers. Show me the money!

Where is the sales? Where is the profit?

Goodbye, the role of “Purely branding” and let’s close some sales. Digital Marketers will have to start considering the profit for their online budgets since companies are not able to see the benefits in the region. The digital strategist should align with the sales in order to fill the gaps with more solid techniques like the relevancy of the content, improving conversion rate, optimizing landing pages and humanization. Digital marketing in the Middle East is not about branding only anymore.

Facebook pages are not effective anymore

The golden times of Facebook pages are gone. In 2014 we all felt it while managing campaigns over the Facebook pages and we all started to see how the numbers of reach are dropping down. Facebook news feed filter is working against you and there is nothing you can do about it.

Marketers will have to come up with new solutions like the Facebook store, optimized landing pages and call to action instead of only focusing on likes and replies.

YouTube is the King

YouTube is mainly considered as a traditional media channel for the marketers in the region. They are still not able to maximize their benefits from video marketing. I have seen some of the startups using video content effectively and promoting their solutions and gaining a lot of attractions and even sales.

Marketers should build more video content for their products and go beyond the mentality of using YouTube as a TV channel for TV Ads. YouTube is eager for more valuable content in Arabic. Let me give an example:

If you are selling electronics and you started to create some reviews videos in Arabic. I believe this will help you sell the product more than just promotional Ads. The Arabic users are more for such interactive solutions.

Instagram is the new trend

People in the region are moving with their pictures to Instagram. A lot of businesses such as fashion, hospitality, food are moving to Instagram and its working. Instagram is now one of the most engaging channels in the region and if you wish to gain more attraction to your images try investing onto Instagram. There are many benefits from Instagram such as hashtags but I believe the great opportunity with Instagram, that it is almost politics free.

The shifting mode of the Arabic audience on Social Media

The most important issue with the social media users in the region is politics. Social media evangelist used to believe that social media played a main role in the Arab Spring. Although, this relation between the Arabic audience and social media already changed over the last year. The Arabic users are now avoiding the political news and potential arguments with their friends on the social media. A lot of users consider it stressful especially with their beloved channels like Facebook. Facebook has turned into a political buzz in the Middle East and this started to drive a lot of people away from the timeline. The same thing started to happen with Twitter since the news channels started to invade it.

The mode of the Arabic user started to drive them away from the traditional social media channels to new channels like Instagram. The marketers should start to study the psychology of Arabic audience and keep on track with the recent changes.

The mobile experience is not a luxury anymore

Do you have your website optimized for touch experiences? Do your pages fit in mobile/tablet display? Do you have large text and touchable big icons and buttons?

Arabic users are now using smartphones and tablets to access the internet and it is a must to consider a fast and easy to navigate website. Dull websites with old design are easy to abandon no matter how competitive products or services you have. If you still an old fashion with an old website, believe me, you are missing a lot of your digital marketing efforts! Your website pages will not help you converting sales.

Humanization and Localization

Every market in the Arab region and the Middle East is different. What works in Dubai doesn’t work in Egypt. The region is not only about outing your content in Arabic and that’s it. Promoting a product for ladies in the Gulf region requires a local lady wearing the traditional clothes and not a lovely blonde model. You need to take each market in the region separately and build a different campaign based on the traditions and trends.

I had a makeup client in UAE who was super angry because we posted an image of a lady with UAE flag colors as a makeup during the Flag Day in UAE. They considered it an insult to the flag. In any other culture, this would be totally fine but certainly not in UAE.

Humanization is one of the main concerns for marketing in the region. In Egypt, a campaign with a sense of humor works better than a neat idea. In Lebanon try to focus on the luxury of the experience while in Dubai you better focus on the short-term trends and new products.

Certainly, the region is still eager for more ideas and you’ll need to stop taking your 2014 and 2013 strategies for granted. I hope that I was able to deliver some of 2015 predictions for the Arabic digital marketers or those who are focused on this market. If you have any thoughts, please shoot and let’s share the ideas.