High Net Worth Arabs | The Complete Guide

In this guide, we will give an introduction to the world of the high net worth Arabs and ultra high net worth Arabs. We are concerned with how these individuals have achieved their great wealth, what types of projects, investments, and causes they spend their money on, and what type of foreign investments they are likely to hold or in which they are likely to take interest.

 

We will briefly analyze the spread of “HNW” (high net worth) Arabs throughout the Middle East (those holding liquid assets worth more than $1 million) and look at how their growth, methods of achieving wealth, and foreign investments differ from those of ultra-high net worth Arabs.. Throughout the article, we will make frequent reference to “UHNW Arabs” (ultra- high net worth Arabs) and “UHNWIs” (ultra-high net worth individuals). Ultra-high net worth individuals are defined as those who hold liquid assets exceeding $30 million. In this article, we will generally exclude from analysis those ultra-high net worth Arabs who hold wealth as government caretakers rather than as individuals – e.g., members of royal families. We will discuss the wealth and spread of UHNWIs in the Middle East, introduce some of the wealthiest individuals in the region, then delve into how they tend to spend their money and how this information could be of use to the marketer. Feel free to skip to sections that most interest you.

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Arab Influencer Marketing

What is Influencer Marketing?

The strategy of influencer marketing uses a personality or celebrity to promote your brand to a larger audience, some well-known examples include Serena Williams for Gatorade and Jennifer Aniston for Emirates Airline. Hiring celebrities as brand ambassadors has been a successful marketing strategy for some time but as social media gains popularity, companies are choosing alternative ambassadors over the significant cost of A-list celebrities.
Across several channels, countless social media profiles have gained loyal followings. With thousands, sometimes millions of viewers, these profiles have significant power and influence, making them an attractive investment for companies looking to increase brand awareness and product sales. This practice is beginning to take off in the Middle East in particular, as social media usage is skyrocketing in the past five years. For the purpose of this article, we will look at YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat and identify what makes these platforms opportunistic as well as looking at specific examples of users who are promoting brands on their accounts.

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Middle East Ad Spend Trends

According to the Northwest University Qatar estimates in their Media Industries in the Middle East 2016, the total ad market in the Middle East was valued at 5.5 billion USD in 2015. While it only accounted for a small percentage of global ad spend in 2015, the market in the Middle East is ripe with opportunities for marketers to expand their advertising. Though the current market structure differs greatly from that of the global market, or even other underdeveloped markets, the MENA region is seeing a gradual shift into the modern era of digital marketing, an area especially pertinent to the region’s 141 million internet users.

arabic advertisement

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Arabic Magazine Advertising

Arabic magazines both in print and online have continued to pop up over the past 2 decades throughout the Middle East. In this article we will discuss various aspects of Arabic magazine advertising in the MENA region.

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103 Arabic Calls to Action You Should Be Using

Any marketing copywriter for the past century will tell you that calls to action are essential to getting your target audience to respond to your ads. This is true with the Arabic language as well. If you’re not asking Arabic speakers to take some sort of action in response to your ads you are very unlikely to have success with your marketing campaigns. The problem is a great deal of Arabic marketing done today is often either translated directly from English by translators who don’t properly translate the tense of calls to action or alternatively the ads are written directly by Arab marketers who haven’t studied calls to action and their power to drive marketing results.

Arabic call to action 2

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6 Ways to Increase Arab Sales Online

6 ways to increase arab sales online

Any market entry plan should include strategy and tactics for reaching your target audience effectively within that region. How a product is marketed in some regions of the world may be very different from how it should be marketed in the Middle East. In this post we will examine some of the unique ways you should be marketing and selling your products to Arabs.

 

1. Think Tribe & Family with Arabs

Arabs are considered to be collectivists. Collectivists show a high degree of loyalty commitment to their group, family, and tribes. They are committed to their extended family unit and they feel a strong responsibility as a representative of their group. The group as a whole and individually takes responsibility for each member of the tribe.

Marketing Application

When optimizing and designing your website to target collectivist cultures like Arabs you should apply these tactics

  • Focus on the community or family in the imagery of the website.
  • Honor and respect tradition, status, and cultural maxims.
  • Honor those in authority and the elderly

Below are some examples of these principles.

selling to arabs

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LinkedIn Arabic Advertising – The time to start is now!

Linked-in-Arabic

Now is the time to start taking advantage of opportunities to market to Arab LinkedIn users. Just two months ago LinkedIn started the supporting Arabic on their platform. This is the first right to left language (RTL) that LinkedIn has offered to their users.  Though LinkedIn has been quite popular among professionals in Arabic speaking countries over the past few years it has not been available in their native language, which makes it hard to use for those who only do business in Arabic. Surprisingly many Arabs who have been on the platform for some time now have done an amazing job strengthening their profiles through adding skills, getting endorsements, and recommendations to the point that some Arab users with little experience could be mistaken as an expert. One thing is for sure, Arabs love social media and making the platform Arabic friendly will significantly increase the number of Arab professionals on the platform. Below we will discuss some of our insights about what this means for marketing to Arab LinkedIn users.

 

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10 Surprising Things Arabs are Searching on Google

10 surprising things arabs are searching on google

Ever since Google came out with their Autocomplete feature in their search results in 2008, people have been fascinated the suggested search queries that populate below the search bar as they type. Google is known to use the most common search queries related to keywords you are typing in to auto populate the suggestion box and this is no different in the Arab world. Just by looking at what appears in this box you can quickly get an idea of some of the most common things people are searching for in Google. In this article we explore some of the most common questions Arabs are asking by examining the suggestions that show up in different countries in the Middle East when you start typing in a question like “How do I …” or “What is …” in Arabic. You will probably find many of these quite interesting.

 

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Top 10 Arabic Commercial Advertisements in the Middle East

In this post we compiled what we thought were some of the most well done Arabic commercials in the Middle East. Many of these will be entertaining regardless of whether or not you speak Arabic, but we have also include a description of each advertisement and why we thought it was so great. If you have any examples of Arabic commercials you think should be on this list be sure to let us know.

 

Panda Cheese

The above Panda cheese commercials are hands down the funniest in this list of Arab country commercials. Each commercial starts with a person refusing or postponing the consumption or the purchase of Panda cheese in a casual way. Next the Panda appears and there is an awkward silence for a few seconds. Then the Panda does something violent in retaliation for the lack of interest in his product. He throws a birthday cake, smashes a car, tips over a shopping cart, breaks a TV, and much more to show everyone “Never say no to Panda”. The reason for the huge success of this commercial is that it literally applies all four of the most power ad campaign techniques into one commercial. There is a word hook, a character hook, a repeatable theme, and a consistent format in each commercial. (more…)


Arabic Character Limits for Adwords Ads

arabic character limits for adwords ads

If you are running PPC campaigns in multiple languages its important to know the character limits for each line within your Google Adwords ad to best utilize the ad space provided to you. However, if you wanted to run an Arabic PPC campaign you might be surprised to find that there is a lot of conflicting information on the web about character limits for Arabic ad texts. Many websites that discuss this topic reference information that is out dated or inaccurate. These sites appear to state that your ad title should be 12 characters and each line of the ad text should be just 17 Arabic characters but this isn’t accurate. By doing a search for any product that will bring up Arabic ads within the Middle East region you quickly realize that Arabic advertisement texts are much longer than the limits mentioned above.

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Top 10 Arab Comedy Channels on YouTube

top 10 arab comedy channels on youtube

YouTube is exploding with Arab content these days. We wanted to take a look into the most popular comedy channels in the region. We looked at the number of channel views and subscribers to come up with this list of the top ten comedy channels in the MENA region. Three company names kept appearing when we were doing our research on the best Arab comedy on YouTube – Telfaz, Sa7i, and Kharabesh. Each of these production companies has a wide array of online content in Arabic, most of which we weren’t able to explore on this list. What is so amazing for many of these shows is the quality of shows and the production given the fact that many of the shows are on YouTube only. It’s clear that the Middle East is rapidly growing in their ability to create high quality video on a limited budget. (more…)


Top 10 Arabic YouTube Channels

YouTube Middle East
YouTube has become extremely popular in the Middle East making it a viable channel for reaching large audiences across the region. In this post we will examine the most popular YouTube channels in the Arabic language based off the total number of views each channel has received. It probably goes without saying but it should be noted that since view counts are constantly increasing you will find the view counts larger on each channel mentioned here. (more…)


Arab Wealth Infographic

Arabian Money

Have you ever been fascinated with the rise of Arab wealth in the past half century? You’re not alone. In this infographic, IstiZada examines some of the most interesting facts about Arab money and wealth. From some of the top Arab billionaires to the amazing things oil money is doing in Arab countries this infographic has it covered.  The graphic starts with interesting facts about a few of the wealthiest Arabs in the Middle East and then segues into some stunning details about a handful of the most expensive luxury items in the region.  It’s not all glitz and glamor though, as you get halfway through the visual the theme switches to some of the amazing feats Arab wealth is accomplishing. Did you know that the two tallest buildings in the world are in the Arabian Peninsula? That’s right and the infographic outlines that, within a decade, the 3 tallest buildings in the world will be in the Middle East.  From there the infographic gets into ways oil wealth is being used to build a sustainable future by sending hundreds of thousands of Saudi Arabian students abroad for education in places like the United States and England.  To top that off, the graphic concludes with some amazing facts about two sustainability projects in the region. The first is a planned renewable resource project to use sunlight to produce desalinized water for farms in Qatar. The second is a self-sustaining zero emission city in the UAE. (more…)


6 Common Middle East Online Marketing Mistakes

middle east mistakes

Online marketing in the Middle East can be extremely rewarding for those who are willing to engage in this rapidly growing region. With many market niches with little to no competition in the region those who invest wisely could see huge returns. Despite this, there are still many mistakes that companies seeking to grow their online presence in the region can make. Some mistakes can decrease a company’s potential return in the region while other mistakes could result in tarnishing a company’s reputation in the region. In this post I will highlight 6 common online marketing mistakes that companies new to the region often make.

 

1. Forgetting to optimize your website for mobile

Regardless of where you live in the world smart phone usage rates are going up significantly.  Growth in smart phone usage in the Middle East surpasses most regions in the world. In Saudi Arabia for example more than 60% of the population has adopted smartphones. Failing to make your website mobile friendly in both Arabic and English could cost you leads and sales. (more…)


How to make your website appear on Middle Eastern search engines

 How to make your website appear on Middle Eastern search engines

Getting your website to rank high in search engines in the Middle East is a common challenge these days.  With many viable market opportunities across the Middle East and North Africa online businesses want to take advantage of these opportunities.  However, getting visibility in Middle East search engines isn’t as easy as just setting up a well designed website.  In this post I will outline some of the major factors that go into determining whether or not a website will show up in the Middle East.

Mid east site visibility

ccTLDs

As with just about any region of the world a country code top level domain (ccTLD) is possibly the strongest signal for getting a website to appear in a specific country.  The MENA region is no exception to this rule.  If you want to target a specific country like the UAE you would want to purchase a .ae domain name.  If you were targeting just Arabic speakers in that country it might even be worth while to purchase the Arabic version of the ccTLD for the UAE which is امارات.  Depending on the country you want to focus on in the region these domain names can vary in price and difficultly to attain.  If however your website offer is specifically tailored to one specific country in the Middle East it makes a lot of sense to have a country specific ccTLD.  In addition its preference to search engines many residents of the country you choose to target will prefer to click on a website with a country specific domain because of its increased relevance to them.  (more…)