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Is your brand getting maximum exposure during the month of Ramadan?

Why you need a nuanced marketing strategy during Ramadan

Working in the United Arab Emirates comes with its own excitement and challenges. Of particular interest to us is communicating clearly with people from a wide spectrum of cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds. How do you ensure that brands not only reach the right audiences, but also speak to them in the most effective possible way?

The answer: Insights derived from data.

There are plenty of data and insights available on the MENA consumer. As expected during Ramadan, purchase behaviour, social media usage and food consumption changes. Considering that 86% of people in the Middle East celebrate Ramadan, it goes without saying that marketing strategy should adapt during this time – look at this slideshow by CommsMEA.

Consumers are barraged with a ton of brand messages daily, and brands need to cut through the noise. You also need to ensure that your messages are targeting the correct audiences – which means you need to know who your audiences are and how they are segmented.

Let’s look at the demographic breakdown of the UAE:

Religions are represented in UAE as follows:

Source: Wikipedia

As digital literacy in the region increases, the MENA consumer is increasingly turning to digital for entertainment and information. During Ramadan, several factors contribute to a significant rise in media consumption, including reduced working hours as consumers have significantly more free time on their hands. Equipped with this insight, MENA marketers are in the midst of catching up to this consumer behavior and ensuring their campaigns take advantage of this data. Furthermore, there’s a huge opportunity for brands to reach consumers effectively via digital without having to pay a small fortune. Think With Google has written an extensive article on the digital opportunity for brands during Ramadan, which you can find here.

Those who aren’t fasting usually have a shorter working day by about two hours, and their normal routine does not change as much as it does for their fasting colleagues. Thus, for them, Ramadan affects maybe 10% of their day. This is why you need a segmented strategy – to ensure that you reach both audiences if you need to. Your brand’s audience may be entirely European, in which case you need to ask whether your marketing strategy needs to adapt at all during the holy month. The only reason to change it would be if you are attempting to acquire a new segment. Your strategy is dependent on whether you are targeting the 86% celebrating Ramadan, the 14% who are not, or both.

Some key sources for insights and data are:

  • Facebook Insights
  • Facebook IQ
  • Think With Google
  • Google Trends
  • Crimson Hexagon

You can also just type ‘Ramadan Consumer Insights’ into Google, where you will find gems like this article by Arabian Marketer.

With these insights you can customise your channel strategy for this month. One such insight is that instead of lasting a single month, on Facebook, Ramadan conversation lasts for nine weeks. This time can be divided into three phases:

  • Phase 1 (4 weeks in advance: discovery and inspiration)
  • Phase 2 (3-4 weeks: mobile engagement)
  • Phase 3 (final week: Eid and last-minute gifting) [1]

This is why Ramadan digital strategies should consider three phases:

  1. The inspiration phase where consumers look for inspiration for example recipes or ingredients for traditional Arabic dishes
  2. The engagement phase where mobile becomes the main tool for engaging and the top activity being sharing of video content
  3. The third phase is Eid – this is where consumers shift to looking for gift ideas or travel deals, and the consumer is more likely to buy on impulse at this stage than previously [2]

Brands need to ensure their promotions target not only the different buying behaviours, but also the different segments of their audiences, both fasting, and non-fasting. It is imperative to understand the digital behaviour of your segmented audience groups such as when they are most active or likely to buy. Due to their specific needs, each audience segment will be purchasing different products. Head of consumer research for YouGov in MENA, Pranay Dandekar says,

 “It is evident that although there is an increase in consumption and expenditure during Ramadan, consumers’ purchase patterns differ according to the type of product they are buying which impacts the offers they look out for. Brands need to take cognizance of this fact and design the right promotions tailored to specific product categories in order to stand out from the crowd and win the fight for consumer attention”.[3]

However, nuanced advertising and marketing need not stop here. YouGov found that 30% of people intend to travel abroad during Eid, while 56% intend to travel within their home country.[4] Public sector employees tend to receive two days off over Eid. This means that advertising needs to be targeted to those who didn’t participate in Ramadan as well as those who do. There’s an opportunity to create two distinct creative programmes targeted at two distinct audiences. In the UAE and KSA, there are over 20m interactions with content on Facebook related to either going on or planning a journey during Ramadan.[5] That’s an important insight that could govern your channel strategy.

Your brand needs to ensure its messaging is being aimed at the correct audience, that all segments are effectively considered and that your strategy is nuanced enough to appeal to them individually.


[1] Facebook Insights, http://www.commsmea.com/pics-17226-in-pics-consumer-behaviour-during-ramadan/2

[2] http://www.khaleejtimes.com/news/general/mena-users-spend-more-time-on-facebook-during-ramadan

[3] http://research.mena.yougov.com/en/news/2016/06/06/infographic-consumer-behaviour-ramadan/

[4] http://research.mena.yougov.com/en/news/2016/06/06/infographic-consumer-behaviour-ramadan/

[5] http://www.khaleejtimes.com/news/general/mena-users-spend-more-time-on-facebook-during-ramadan

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