Are Lebanese Digital Agencies getting more clients during COVID-19?

You probably heard all the hype about businesses going digital and trying to sell online due to COVID-19.

If you are a digital agency owner, you are probably looking at your closing rates and wondering where are all these businesses going. Are Lebanese traditional businesses really looking all to switch their sales process online? What are you missing?

I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about this, analyzed 3 months worth of data, more than 170 meetings & 75 quotations sent across 4 countries. Here is what I found out:

Most Lebanese Businesses are still not ready

But they are really close, COVID-19 made sure of that. If Lebanese businesses want to survive then they have no choice.
However, the last couple of years have been really tough on local businesses, most of them dont have much to invest and are looking for quick affordable ways to start selling online and generate quick cash.

For the past 3 months we have been doing meeting after meeting with leads coming organically from Google (we stopped advertising during COVID-19, we are only re-marketing – and we rank #1 in more than 5 different keywords)

Back to our meetings data, here they are:

Country	Meetings Done	Quotations Sent	Win Ratio	Avg. Days to Win
Lebanon	132	50	6%	6 Days
France	5	3	0%	–
KSA	25	15	6%	35 Days
Dubai	10	7	0%	–

Now, lets compare them to only February 2020 numbers:

Country	Meetings Done	Quotations Sent	Win Ratio	Avg. Days to Win
Lebanon	13	10	10%	2 Days
France	–	–	–	–
KSA	38	33	15%	10 Days
Dubai	2	1	–	–

Our conversion rate dropped by a whooping 9% in KSA & 4% in Lebanon. This might be due to meetings now done remotely while in February we were doing face to face, i will also add:

1. Companies are now looking to move their whole business online. Most of them don’t realize that this is not done overnight & requires hard work from both sides.
2. Most are actually surprised that a website or a facebook/instagram page will not actually generate that much sales alone.
3. Virtual meetings tend to be less effective & convincing than face-to-face meetings.

Digital Agencies were not ready also

Yep, it is our fault also. As soon as COVID-19 struck & countries were on lockdown, agencies started advertising their services, promising gold & precious metals with every website sold or social media page activated. Sadly, thats not how the world wide web operates.

We have to change:

1. Budgets changed, we have to change our strategy. Businesses are going to struggle for a while and the ones that used to spend thousands of dollars per month on advertising cannot do that anymore.
2. Customer behavior & needs changed, we have to sell differently now.
3. Don’t exploit the situation, with a huge recession glooming, more and more businesses are looking to save their life’s work and switch online. We should not exploit the fear & try to make a quick buck.

Technically, a lot changed on the web also, I recently talked about Google’s May Core update but this is really the tip of the iceberg, data on the web are now looking much different than they were 3 months ago. Here are my findings:

Paid ads are really, really cheap

Traffic on the web has increased tremendously during COVID-19, so much so that Netflix have had to reduce their streaming quality to help.

On the other hand, advertisers are no where to be seen. This means advertising is now very cheap.

If you haven’t tried paid ads yet, you should consider it. There is now more inventory than there has been in years & it doesn’t look things will change soon.

Organic traffic is down

Industries like Advertising, Construction, Energy, Manufacturing, Travel & Real estate has been hit really hard worldwide. It is interesting to note that Real Estate in Lebanon is actually witnessing a small rise compared to the previous months.

One of our clients in the real estate industry have stopped advertising at the beginning of the crisis, however his organic traffic made up for the lost opportunities.

However, on a more global scale, traffic in the above industries actually took a dive

Obviously the most hit industry is Travel with some airlines like Delta losing than $60 million dollars daily.

Businesses are still looking for digital services

But they did not increase as much as it seems.

I did a small research using Google Keyword Planner and analysed the search volume trends for many keywords related to digital services. Here is what I found out:

Lebanese businesses are still looking online for digital agencies, however, the trend is still the same as it was one year ago, we are doing more meetings thats true, but our conversion rates are not higher and most of the times dropped.

Conclusion

Sadly, i dont think things will get better in the near future, especially for our country Lebanon. However, there are opportunities out there, enough hopefully to keep putting bread on the table for everyone involved in this fast moving & fascinating industry.

At Maze, we are planning to launch new solutions very soon that will hopefully help Lebanese small businesses sell more online without breaking the bank.

Everyone is putting its sweat & blood into this and we are sure it will benefit Lebanon’s small businesses.

Talking about future plans, we are looking for Customer Success Manager. If you think you have what it takes or know someone who does, please do not hesitate to apply.

Need help in getting organic traffic to your website?

Maze is a Digital Marketing Agency based in Lebanon & KSA, we can surely help. Check out our SEO services and request your free consultation if you want to take your digital presence to the next level.