Best Marketing Strategies for Businesses at Ramadan and Eid

by Buana Sari Digital Marketer

Ramadan and Eid season is marked by reflections, celebrations, and renewed personal connections with around 1.9 billion observers across the globe. For advertisers Ramadan and Eid is the season of increased consumerism. It has a potential market reach of 317 million customers in the Middle East alone in 2022 (Source : Istizada).

Customers are on a shopping spree availing lucrative Ramadan marketing campaign offers and deals. Most of them are ready to spend much more than they generally do. It’s a big opportunity for brands to drive revenue and lay the foundation for customer loyalty. Between 2020 and 2021, the conversation volume on Twitter around shopping over Ramadan increased almost 3x. 91% of people on Twitter plan to do shopping over Ramadan and Eid.

Marketers across the globe are under tremendous pressure to come up with ingenious Ramadan marketing strategies to meet up with the emerging buying trends. Growing smartphone usage among consumers has given a new dimension to the marketing efforts using unconventional and innovative techniques. The good news for marketers is that increased smartphone penetration has brought endless possibilities and most of them are cost effective.

Ramadan marketing is expected to be different this year too with the pandemic still looming large in different parts of the world. Ramadan 2022 is having a digital twist. Customers have largely turned to the online world for shopping. Customers generally prefer online purchases over traditional ones. Hence, it makes more businesses opt for digital marketing strategies to acquire more customers. Experts suggest that mobile advertising tools and platforms like moLotus, Facebook, Instagram, HubSpot, Google Ads, etc. are the predominant choice of brand marketers this season. They can leverage digital advertising tactics to differentiate from the rest.

For brands and advertisers looking for Ramadan marketing ideas, here are the best marketing strategies at Ramadan and Eid :

1. Embrace Mobile Advertising

Like every year, the 2022 Ramadan & Eid season is driving a sudden spike in mobile traffic. Brand marketers in the Middle East and South-East Asia region are always looking forward to this time to drive mobile advertising campaigns and drive sales. With the rise in mobile content consumption, 68% of Saudi viewers and 61% of Egyptian viewers watched more mobile ads than the year before. And they had high expectations of their favorite brands.

Every passing year advertisers are witnessing increasing returns on their Eid marketing campaigns attributed to mobile advertising platforms like moLotus. moLotus is an innovative mobile video customer interaction platform that has introduced new revenue models for advertisers especially during the festive season. moLotus direct mobile inbox delivery with high brand visibility and response rate. The focal point is that the platform doesn’t require any app download or data connection. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are some of the most downloaded mobile advertising apps during Ramadan and Eid. The display ads on these platforms get good impressions during this period. Search ads in Google contribute good leads. However, Ramadan and Eid season happens to be a highly competitive time for the Google Ad and Facebook Ad auctions resulting in high advertising costs.

2. Use Personalized Greetings

Ramadan & Eid season is a great time to pamper and engage customers. A startling fact that emerged in the last few Ramadan seasons is that 68% of Saudi customers watch more advertisements of their favorite brands that focus on personalized messaging. Advertisers have concluded that customers are more responsive to brands that exhibit personalized experience.

More and more brands are engaging them by using moLotus personalized advertising with options for name, greetings, reward, call-to-action for individual customers. ‘Eid Mubarak’, ’Ramadan Kareem’, etc. with customer names is a customary celebratory greeting found in messages. Customers no longer prefer email messaging. Customers have become more sensitive to a brand's presence and also spread word-of-mouth appreciation to their acquaintances. This further leads to an increased customer acquisition and more profits.

3. Promote Mobile Commerce

At the end of Ramadan, the Muslim community celebrates Eid al-Fitr. This is a huge celebration wherein people exchange gifts. From a marketing perspective, this culture of exchanging gifts translates into significant selling opportunities, especially when it comes to mcommerce. Mobile commerce increased 26% in South-East Asia alone prior to Ramadan. The appetite for buying goods and services via e-commerce stores ramps up around the globe, including in South-East Asia, the Middle East, India and North Africa.

It is the right time for e-commerce brands to rely on mobile marketing technologies like moLotus to grab customers’ attention, leading to superior mobile commerce. The innovative platform prompts buyers to place orders via various e-commerce sites. Buyers can strike conversations with brands via moLotus easy interaction options like SMS, USSD, URL Click, Call, etc. for sorting out their queries before placing an order. Promotional Campaigns using mobile phone advertising and marketing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, AdColony are also being created by some e-commerce brands to promote the mobile shopping drive but these have limited interaction and are not very cost effective.

4. Offer Easy-to-Access Coupons & Vouchers

During Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr brand marketers must reward their customers intelligently for the desired buying behavior. Surveys have shown that buyers from South-East Asia, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and North Africa receiving special coupons tend to buy more. With the emergence of digital marketing platforms like moLotus, AdColony, HubSpot, etc., brands can easily engage and convert the buyers with real time digital coupons and vouchers.

moLotus assists them in creating automated personalized campaigns offering mobile coupons and vouchers. It has replaced the printed coupons by real time, digital, hyper-personalized, and event-related mobile coupons and vouchers. These have a high response rate with a much cheaper and faster distribution than print media. Also, administration is easier & cheaper with absolutely no chance of fraudulent usage. moLotus has introduced new levels of control, tracking, accuracy, and analysis for businesses leading to higher ROI.

5. Organize Giveaway Contests

Ramadan is a time when people put community and charity first. And that generosity has spread to digital media. Advertisers across the globe including the Middle East and SEA region are busy designing creative, fun giveaways that highlight the importance of sharing with others. Researchers strongly agree to the fact that giveaway contests are one of the best ways for marketers to engage customers during Ramadan and Eid.

Customers tend to feel delighted when they win a prize. Although Eid giveaways represent lucrative marketing opportunities, managing them can be a daunting task for marketers. Good News is that moLotus has now made it easier to launch and manage online & mobile contests conveniently. In the past moLotus has assisted several brands in running cheap, hassle-free, and fast mobile contests resulting in superior engagement and customer response. In the Middle East and SEA region marketers no longer prefer traditional techniques like running Facebook, Instagram, Sweepstakes contests, but are trying new platforms to increase ROI.

6. Innovate Cross-selling & Upselling

Upselling and cross-selling are considered to be some of the best Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr campaigns for driving sales. Earlier marketers used to use traditional techniques like email marketing for the purpose but not anymore! Eid can be a momentum for marketers capturing a bigger share of ad revenues with highly personalized moLotus cross-sell and upsell campaigns.

moLotus mobile video advertising platform offers rich customer data analytics that have helped marketers to understand buyer behavior during Ramadan and Eid. They can accordingly bring-in highly relevant product recommendations that might interest the prospective buyers. This Ramadan and Eid season It is important for brands to upsell and cross-sell via apt recommendations in order to win trust and maximize revenues.

7. Launch New Products

Beginning with Ramadan and continuing till Eid consumers are more likely to try new product offerings and brands compared with other times of the year. The findings of an insights survey on Twitter revealed that 50% of people on Twitter in Saudi, UAE and Kuwait and 60% of people in Egypt, spend more money exploring new brands and products during Ramadan.

For Marketers launching new products has always been a cumbersome task. They are using marketing channels like moLotus, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google Ads, and more to promote new launches. Thanks to moLotus, launching new products or services has become convenient and cost effective from the marketing perspective. Studies reveal that the majority of customers watch moLotus explainer videos about new products and services. Marketers can easily create mobile videos using moLotus to explain difficult concepts for the customers. The product launch videos are inspiring and lead to more clicks, impressions and conversions.

8. Emphasize on Storytelling

Storytelling strategies are more beneficial for brands during Ramadan and Eid because the customers are genetically wired to love and respond to brand stories. For instance, in the month of Ramadan, it is all about reflection, family, and fasting. It is also the most important and busiest month of the year for customers as well as for advertisers across the globe with a surge in consumer spending.

Advertisers who have successfully implemented the right Ramadan and Eid-related themes and strategies via superior brand storytelling are more likely to enhance customer engagement and grab attention than those who don’t.

Brands are implementing a new approach to Ramadan storytelling by using mobile video ad platforms like moLotus. Using moLotus they can string images and captions together to create an interactive narrative. Different rich media formats including HQ video up to 40 sec. Greetings, Brochures, Slideshows and Showcases are supported by this platform. Creators can add product pictures, videos, voice-over and music, creating eye-catching storyboards. Facebook and Instagram’s carousel and video ad feature is also good for the purpose of visually appealing stories.

The secret sauce of great storytelling during Ramadan is knowing the consumer behavior and telling the right story via the right marketing technology. The customers spend more screen time during Ramadan and Eid, with higher levels of engagement. Hence, brands can activate and connect with their customers by making relevant, compelling and light-hearted long-form stories.

9. Customize Campaigns

Dozens of countries across the globe celebrate Ramadan and Eid. The potential of investing in Ramadan and Eid advertising campaigns happens to be extremely high, but only if the ads are customized according to customers’ demography, interests, languages spoken, etc. It's important for advertisers to remember that the more customized the campaigns are, the better the returns.

When it comes to building impactful promotional content, context is everything. Therefore, during Ramadan and Eid big brands go for customized mobile video campaigns offered by moLotus to reach out to a massive customer base; micro-targeting different languages, demography, interests, etc. moLotus assists them in segmenting the potential customers. Marketers can easily find out which customers are likely to find certain content compelling and are more likely to engage.

Using Facebook advertisers can create an audience of customers interested in Ramadan, likely to engage with content about Ramadan or live in places where Ramadan is typically observed. Marketers who already know who their best customers are, can use lookalike audiences feature to find similar audiences in a particular country or across multiple countries. However, Brands relying on Facebook can reach only those customers who use the Facebook platform thus significantly limiting the scale.

10. Mature Measurement

In festival marketing including Ramadan & Eid marketing, it is commonly said that if marketers can't measure a campaign performance, they can't improve upon it and also can't prove the campaign ROI.

It is crucial for advertisers to set the right key performance indicators for measuring success. Digital advertising platforms can easily measure and track these KPIs. moLotus offers real time tracking capabilities. It provides an online dashboard showing detailed real time analytics. Advertisers to tweak their strategy in real time, and fine-tune the campaigns for better achievement of the KPIs. Another case in point is Mobi’s Ad Tracker. Using such platforms advertisers can keep track of their ads effectively.

Conclusion

Brands and advertisers that can take advantage of the consumer behavior and sentiment during Ramadan and Eid period hold the key to success. They should use the increased mobile screen-time as a prime opportunity to educate, entertain and leave a lasting impact that continues conversation even during Eid, after Ramadan ends. Brands must activate and connect with their key customers via new age mobile advertising technologies and be the winner. Ramadan Kareem!