Digital advertising is booming in Dubai and the UAE and the majority of new and established businesses are going online to attract, promote and capture new leads and generate sales.
Nowadays, UAE business owners have to learn the secrets of creating and managing successful digital marketing campaigns and this article proposes to teach you the ins and outs of online advertising.
Before we dive into the detailed steps, we would like to stress that your digital content has to be compelling enough in order to grab users’ attention, trigger their curiosity to find out more about your products and services before converting them into a paying customer.
Since the UAE is home to a sizable number of expats, it is also important to create a digital communication that takes into consideration the wide variety of cultural interests and different languages spoken.
Let’s now dive into the different phases of a successful online strategy, follow these simple steps to reach digital excellence:
As a rule of thumb, if your target audience is broad then we recommend you use Facebook because has more than 1.71 billion monthly active users. This platforms helps you create a community around your business, create brand awareness, engage with your audience and eventually sell.
If your business is in the publishing industry then we recommend you become active on Twitter and Linkedin. If you are into fashion, beauty, F&B and other visual oriented businesses, then Instagram and Pinterest are good options.
Instagram is particularly popular in the UAE especially with Arab and Emirati citizens. It is wise to devise a specific strategy to reach this important audience by also adding Arabic content to your mix.
Twitter can be used as platform to monitor conversations happening about your brand as they are happening. This allows UAE and Dubai based businesses to use it as a CRM tool to improve their customer satisfaction.
There are many targeting criteria available on social media allowing you to reach the correct audience for maximum ad engagement. You can target by geography, age, gender, interest, connection, job role, education and many others.
We recommend you put yourself in the shoes of your prospects: understand their needs, know what they like, what they dislike, understand their behavior, their buying trends and reflect those criteria while creating your ads on social media.
Having said that, four main methods are used to target your relevant audience and these are: Location targeting, demographics, interest-based targeting and behavior targeting. You’re not restricted to choosing amongst these parameter, you can create your own custom made audience by combining from the list above.
The location targeting allows you to target by location, based on countries regions, cities and even radius when it’s available. You can also use this option to exclude some locations.
As for the demographics, you can target people depending on their gender, age, education level, major, career and even their relationship status.
Regarding interest-based targeting, people are basically reached depending on topics and posts they like, the information written in their about section, and the content they have shared on their timeline.
Last but not least, behavior targeting is based on the customer’s behavior inside and outside the social platforms. For example, Facebook will also target users based on the devices they own, the sites where they get their news, the ecommerce platforms where they shop, their buying trends…etc.
If you objective is direct response, then we recommend you go for paid ads on Google search and conversion based ads on social media (on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest for example).
Always keep in mind that a picture is worth a thousand words which means that the choice of you visual impacts a lot the performance of your ad. Add a strong call to action in your message and make sure to mention a compelling offer in your ad.
Always test 2 ads in parallel in order to compare their performance and improve your advertising activities.
Also don’t forget to direct the user to the relevant landing page after clicking on your ad. For example, an ad promoting a Handbag should direct to the Handbag page on your ecommerce website (and not the Homepage!).
After going through all these steps you should make sure that everything is going as planned. The Conversions rate (user to potential customer) has to be high, online ads has to be effective such as Google ads.
It all depends on the budget.
For Google there are few points to always check such as the traffic generation, who’s visiting, who’s coming back and where are they coming from. But more sophisticated measurement exist like CPC (calculated by dividing the total cost of clicks on your ad by the total number of clicks. The cost of each click is determined by the value of the keywords you bid on). CTR or KPI (key performance indicator) and CPL (Cost per lead that calculate your average cost to acquire one lead per channel) and so on.
As for social media platform, everything varies depending on the type of campaign you are adopting, but the main performance tools are the following: The impressions, the post engagement (likes comments shares) the number of reach and of course all sorts of clicks (regular or ctr) which is the most important point and video views if your boosted campaign includes a video.
And finally check the ROI.
Compute the ROI for each channel to understand which ones are the most effective and profitable. The higher ROI the better.
If you are serious about taking your UAE business to the next level, then do not hesitate to contact us. Founded by a former Googler, Clouds Media is expert in creating and managing successful digital advertising campaigns in Dubai and the UAE.
Nowadays, UAE business owners have to learn the secrets of creating and managing successful digital marketing campaigns and this article proposes to teach you the ins and outs of online advertising.
Before we dive into the detailed steps, we would like to stress that your digital content has to be compelling enough in order to grab users’ attention, trigger their curiosity to find out more about your products and services before converting them into a paying customer.
Since the UAE is home to a sizable number of expats, it is also important to create a digital communication that takes into consideration the wide variety of cultural interests and different languages spoken.
Let’s now dive into the different phases of a successful online strategy, follow these simple steps to reach digital excellence:
- Step 1: Advertise on relevant social media channels
As a rule of thumb, if your target audience is broad then we recommend you use Facebook because has more than 1.71 billion monthly active users. This platforms helps you create a community around your business, create brand awareness, engage with your audience and eventually sell.
If your business is in the publishing industry then we recommend you become active on Twitter and Linkedin. If you are into fashion, beauty, F&B and other visual oriented businesses, then Instagram and Pinterest are good options.
Instagram is particularly popular in the UAE especially with Arab and Emirati citizens. It is wise to devise a specific strategy to reach this important audience by also adding Arabic content to your mix.
Twitter can be used as platform to monitor conversations happening about your brand as they are happening. This allows UAE and Dubai based businesses to use it as a CRM tool to improve their customer satisfaction.
- Step 2: Target the right audience
There are many targeting criteria available on social media allowing you to reach the correct audience for maximum ad engagement. You can target by geography, age, gender, interest, connection, job role, education and many others.
We recommend you put yourself in the shoes of your prospects: understand their needs, know what they like, what they dislike, understand their behavior, their buying trends and reflect those criteria while creating your ads on social media.
Having said that, four main methods are used to target your relevant audience and these are: Location targeting, demographics, interest-based targeting and behavior targeting. You’re not restricted to choosing amongst these parameter, you can create your own custom made audience by combining from the list above.
The location targeting allows you to target by location, based on countries regions, cities and even radius when it’s available. You can also use this option to exclude some locations.
As for the demographics, you can target people depending on their gender, age, education level, major, career and even their relationship status.
Regarding interest-based targeting, people are basically reached depending on topics and posts they like, the information written in their about section, and the content they have shared on their timeline.
Last but not least, behavior targeting is based on the customer’s behavior inside and outside the social platforms. For example, Facebook will also target users based on the devices they own, the sites where they get their news, the ecommerce platforms where they shop, their buying trends…etc.
- Step 3: Create effective ads
If you objective is direct response, then we recommend you go for paid ads on Google search and conversion based ads on social media (on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest for example).
Always keep in mind that a picture is worth a thousand words which means that the choice of you visual impacts a lot the performance of your ad. Add a strong call to action in your message and make sure to mention a compelling offer in your ad.
Always test 2 ads in parallel in order to compare their performance and improve your advertising activities.
Also don’t forget to direct the user to the relevant landing page after clicking on your ad. For example, an ad promoting a Handbag should direct to the Handbag page on your ecommerce website (and not the Homepage!).
- Step 4: Measure & optimize your performance
After going through all these steps you should make sure that everything is going as planned. The Conversions rate (user to potential customer) has to be high, online ads has to be effective such as Google ads.
It all depends on the budget.
For Google there are few points to always check such as the traffic generation, who’s visiting, who’s coming back and where are they coming from. But more sophisticated measurement exist like CPC (calculated by dividing the total cost of clicks on your ad by the total number of clicks. The cost of each click is determined by the value of the keywords you bid on). CTR or KPI (key performance indicator) and CPL (Cost per lead that calculate your average cost to acquire one lead per channel) and so on.
As for social media platform, everything varies depending on the type of campaign you are adopting, but the main performance tools are the following: The impressions, the post engagement (likes comments shares) the number of reach and of course all sorts of clicks (regular or ctr) which is the most important point and video views if your boosted campaign includes a video.
And finally check the ROI.
Compute the ROI for each channel to understand which ones are the most effective and profitable. The higher ROI the better.
If you are serious about taking your UAE business to the next level, then do not hesitate to contact us. Founded by a former Googler, Clouds Media is expert in creating and managing successful digital advertising campaigns in Dubai and the UAE.
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