What is Digital Marketing like in Lebanon and the MENA region?

Digital marketing, online marketing or digital advertising is the promotion of a business, product or service online. There are different types of digital marketing, the most used being: Search engine optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC), Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and Email Marketing.

In Lebanon, the digital world is becoming busier each year, brands and businesses are fighting to be seen and heard in the big advertising cloud. Digital agencies in Lebanon, which number now in the 100s are always exploring new digital marketing services to help brands get noticed online. SEO, SMM, PPC, SEM are now being leveraged to increase online visibility and thus the number of potential customers.

This process is known as « the conversion funnel ». A conversion funnel starts when a consumer sees your brand or product online whether on search engines or paid advertising, continues till this consumer visit your site, gets re-marketed using personalized ads or emails, revisit your site and finally makes a purchase.

Depending on your product or service you are selling, an existing customer can get re-marketed again using personalised automated ads or emails related to his first purchase, till eventually he makes another purchase.

Digital Advertising Spending globally

In 2018 the global digital advertising spending reached 230,406 million USD with Search Advertising consisting 45.5% or 104,861 million.

Weirdly enough, SEM on desktop consists of more than 2x SEM on mobile.

Digital Advertising Spending in the MENA Region

Spending in the MENA region reached 1,110 million USD according to statista. Lebanon on the other hand spent 22.7M USD in 2015 with the highest CAGR of 55.59% between all advertising categories.

Maze can help in Digital Marketing

At Maze, we can handle brand’s digital presence from building their website to creating conversion funnels and optimizing them finally leading to consumers converting into purchasing clients or leads.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the use of many techniques to raise a brand search engine ranking organically. Organically means results that are not paid for or sponsored.

When a brand or a product reach the first SERP (search engine results page) for a specific keyword, it usually improves online visibility greatly which then impacts sales or leads conversions.

Ranking in the first page of search engines requires a lot of work in site auditing, link building, site speed, keyword targeting & positioning and content creation. Generally speaking websites should be fully optimized for search engines.

Maze uses tools like SEMrush to help in achieving the above work.

Did you know about SEO?

1. The average traffic share generated by the sites listed on the first Google search results page is 91.5%
2. The average content length of a Google first page result is 1,890 word
3. 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search, 10% from paid search, 5% from social, and 34% from all other sources.
4. Over 40% of revenue is captured by organic traffic.
5. In the US, the monthly amount majority of businesses are spending on SEO is 5,000$
6. 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information.
7. 18% of local smartphone searches led to a purchase within a day.
8. 70% of consumers say it’s important to have directions and a call button in ads.
9. The average number of words a typical searcher uses in their search query is 3.
10. 45% of all companies in the US say content marketing is ‘highly integrated’ with their SEO strategy.

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Do you need help in SEO? Contact us for a free consultation.

Paid Advertising – Pay Per Click (PPC):

Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) is a cost effective method to get customers to your site. Increase conversions with targeted ads and only pay when a user clicks.

There are 2 types of PPC advertising: Search engine advertising or marketing (SEM) and Display advertising.
Search advertising is usually the most used type of PPC, the agency’s role is to bid for specific keywords relevant to the brand’s services (mostly on Google Ads). Search ads appear on top of a search engine result page – Most of the times, there are no media (images, videos) associated with a search ad.

Display, shopping, hotels or video advertising is usually done on websites like youtube, facebook, twitter or other similar websites and most of the times involves the use of media (images, videos, gifs, AMPhtml).
Display advertising should be used with search ads for optimal results.

Did you know about PPC?

1. Google Adwords is now Google Ads
2. At end of 2018, more than 615 million user were using ad blockers
3. From 2016 to 2017, roughly 7% of people viewed pay-per-click ads poorly, meaning they associated them with negativity. From 2017 to 2018, on the other hand, only 1% of consumers held negative connotations to this type of advertisement.
4. An astounding 86% of all American consumers regularly utilize the World Wide Web to search for local businesses that match their particular wants and needs.
5. According to SocialMediaToday, more than 7 million advertisers invested a total of $10.1 billion in PPC ads just during 2017.
6. Internet traffic funneled through pay-per-click advertisements bring approximately 50% more lead conversions than organic web traffic.
7. 2019 will be an amazing time for ecommerce brands because they will have more opportunities to reach buyers with greater personalization and precision.
8. 46% of Internet users can’t readily tell the difference between PPC ads and links returned organically from searches.
9. Industries spending the most in PPC in 2017-18 were retail, education, publishing and travel.
10. 40% of brands want to increase their PPC budget, indicating that this is an effective and lucrative tool for marketers.

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Social Media Marketing

Social media has radically changed the way brands interact with consumers and vice versa. Today, it’s a critical part of smart businesses’ digital strategy.

Social Media generates better results when it is used as a compeling story telling. Brands now do not just broadcast their products and messages through SM but also converse with their users, social media websites made it possible for big brands to be closer to their consumers, be more transparent, talk more like human beings and generally form a relation with them that was not possible before.

Did you know about Social Media?

1. WhatsApp remains the most popular social media channel, based on usage, among Arab Nationals. Use of the apps group messaging function has grown substantially in recent years.
2. Despite WhatsApp’s popularity, not all of its functionality is necessarily available to WhatsApp, Snapchat and FaceTime video calls have historically been blocked in UAE.
3. Since 2012, Facebook has grown its MENA user base by 264 percent. However, in some Middle East countries, Facebook usage has dropped substantially (-20 percent) since 2013. However, usage of the Facebook portfolio of products has grown.
4. A more data friendly version of Twitter, Twitter Lite was rolled out in 24 new countries, in November, including Algeria, Egypt, Israel and Tunisia. The app is designed to make Twitter more accessible in developing regions where data plans are expensive.
5. There are 63 million Instagram users in the MENA region, equivalent to 10 percent of total global users. Usage has grown from 7 percent of MENA’s internet users in 2013 to 42 percent by 2017.
6. YouTube is viewed daily by half of young Arabs, according to the Arab Youth Survey. The fasting growing video segment is “short-form (few minutes long), amateur digital content – curated by Arab youth and distributed on video platforms.
7. Saudi Arabia is YouTube’s biggest market (globally) in per capita consumption, and video is the most popular online activity for young people, with the average 15-24 in MENA spending 72 minutes a day watching videos online.
8. Social networks are a popular means to keep up with the news in the Middle East, as elsewhere. Facebook is the most popular daily news source among young Arabs, ahead of online news, TV, and Newspapers.
9. In the UAE, around 43 percent of marketers spend up to $10,000 per social media influencer campaign, as this practice continues to grow.
10. Huda Kattan, an Iraqi American makeup artists and Dubai-based business woman, is the world’s highest paid social influencer, according to the first ever Instagram Rich List. With 20.5 million followers, she charges $18,000 per post.

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Are you looking for a digital marketing partner? We can help. Request a free consultation now.