Middle East & Arabic PPC Company
Choose IstiZada to manage your pay per click campaigns in Arabic and in the Middle East. IstiZada has the unique market knowledge of the region combined with a deep understanding of how to drive more leads and sales among Arabic speakers using targeted Google ads.
What makes IstiZada different
- Extensive Knowledge of Middle Eastern markets online
- English & Arabic speaking account managers
- Arabic content focused
- Experience working some the largest global companies
- Google Ads Certified
- Conversion & ROI Focused
- Obsessed with the Arab World
Challenges involved with running PPC & SEM marketing campaigns in the Middle East
- Bids for the same keywords can vary drastically by country
- Clicks and conversions happen at different times of the day than in Western countries
- Cost per Acquisition goals will fluctuate greatly when compared with Western countries
- Many search results pages will have few or no competitors
- Arabs that are new to the Internet can tend to click on ads without the intent of buying
- Ad texts must be crafted carefully as to not encourage unnecessary clicks
- Keywords can vary by country
Major Arab Markets we target with our SEM campaigns
With a vast amount of oil wealth and a high demand for Western products and services this market is key to any company looking to start off successfully in the Middle East. With a population that is expected to grow to 53 million by 2020 it is a region that can’t be ignored. The Gulf’s oil wealth has contributed to a high level of prosperity and has help to generate a well educated middle class in countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Though the GCC is still a commonly used term, the GCC region has started to fragment some due to tensions between Qatar and the other GCC states. This rift between Qatar and the other states started in 2017. Though this fragmenting creates some new challenges to doing business across all gulf countries, it does present some unique advantages to savvy marketers in the region.
The Sham(or the Levant) region of the Middle East includes Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. This region constitutes a mass of Arabs who are hungry for products and services from the West. Beruit, Lebanon is known as the Paris of the Middle East with its citizens high tastes in fashion. In fact it has become a regional hub for beautification services and plastic surgery. Jordan on the other hand is an immigrant nation with Arabs from all over the region living in it. The country boast strong ties with the west and a free trade agreement with the United States. Jordan’s population is very Internet savvy and Amman the capital is becoming known as a center for tech start ups.
North Africa, though techinically outside the Middle East, is the most populous Arabic speaking region. Egypt the largest Arab state has experienced rapid population growth over the past decades and its 80 million inhabitants dwell mostly in urban areas a long the banks of the Nile River. With this urbanization of the North African populations we are seeing Internet usage rates increase rapidly. With the lowering cost of smart phone devices many Moroccans, Algerians, and Egyptians are having their first Internet experience on a mobile phone. Will your ad show up when they search the Internet for the first time?
Are you a PPC agency that needs help in the Middle East?
Mobile Ads in Arabic
No discussion of paid Arabic advertising would be complete today without mentioning the boom in mobile smart phone usage in the Middle East. Many Arabs will save up for months and months or even go into debt to buy the latest smart phone. According to Google’s Our Mobile Planet research on Saudi Arabia smart phones have reached a 60% penetration in their population. According to Google’s report 93% of smart phone users notice mobile ads and 70% of Saudi Arabians have looked something up on their mobile phone after seeing an offline advertisement.
Display Ads
Depending on your industry, a combination of both Arabic text ads on Google search and display ads on the Google Display Network (GDN) might be the most effective for reaching your audience in the region. With the right targeting and proper ad messaging, display ads can often drive qualified traffic and conversions to your website. Below you will find some examples Arabic ads we’ve used on the GDN.
PPC competition in the Middle East
For 10 years IstiZada has been updating this article. Most years the competition for the keyword evening gowns in Arabic in Saudi Arabia was much less than the competition for the same keyword in English in the United States. Now everything has changed and now for certain keywords in Arabic like this there is more competition in Arabic PPC listings than there are in English ones in the US. Check-out these comparisons:
Keyword: Evening Gowns – فساتين سهرة – Location – Saudi Arabia
VERSUS – Keyword: Evening Gowns Location: United States
In the above examples, we notice that for the same search query in Saudi Arabia, we see 4 text ads and 9 image shopping ads in Arabic. In the US, for the same search query in English, we see only 2 text ads and 5 image shopping ads.
See the snapshot below for the mobile phone industry in Arabic. You can clearly see product listing ads showing up in the search results in Arabic for this search term. Note, we also used the words “for sale” in this search as well. PLA ads in Arabic are likely to be very effective because of the limited competition. As you can see in the picture below, just one company is taking up all 5 PLA ad slots. In competitive markets like the United States, you will typically see all ad spots for PLA ads taken up by different competitors.
Is Arab focused PPC Right for Your Business?
Paid search marketing in the Arab world can be extremely lucrative for companies in a variety of industries but it definitely isn’t for everyone.
Here are some questions we consider to determine if paid search ads will work well for each industry we deal with.
- Is there significant search volume for keywords related to your products or services in Arabic?
- Does it appear from the search results that the searchers’ intent matches what you are offering?
- Will the cost of running a successful advertising campaign be within your marketing budget for the region?
- Have we worked with a company in a similar industry that would give us insights into how successful we could be with your campaigns?
What you can expect from working with IstiZada
Arab Obsessed
We’re IstiZada, we’re obsessed with the Arab World. We’re a team of marketers hyper-focused, measurable online marketing across the Middle East. You benefit from insights gained from working across many websites and industries targeting the Arab world.
Conversion Focused
Conversions are the most important metric from our standpoint. If our advertising isn’t driving sales, leads, or some other type of conversion, we aren’t getting you the results you are looking for. Traffic, impressions, clicks, and other metrics are helpful in many cases but they aren’t indicators of a successful campaign. Proving our value to you with conversions is an essential part of the campaigns we run.
Arabic & English
We run both Arabic and English ad campaigns across the Arab World. Yes, to get the most reach and to have the most success we recommend using a combination of both Arabic and English ads. IstiZada has both native Arabic speakers and native English speakers on our team so we can target and tailor ad messaging accurately and effectively for each language.
Complete PPC Transparency
When it comes to pay per click advertising we provide clients with complete transparency into their account and campaigns with us. This means that our reports include metrics like clicks, avg. cost per click, click thru rate, total impressions, and most importantly the number of conversions. To add to this if for any reason you want to leave we will give the account over to you with all the appropriate access so you can run it.
Dedicated Project Manager
Each client we take on has their own dedicated project manager who will lead the strategy for your account. This same project manager will remain with you throughout your campaigns with IstiZada. Each project manager takes a keen interest in the accounts they take on and their individual success is closely tied to the success of your campaigns. Our clients like that we have project managers who not only help them with the services they signed up with us for but also advise them on various other ways to increase their marketing success to drive more revenue for their companies.
Ad copy – Ad copy – Ad copy
Even before the invention of digital advertising, marketers as earlier as Claude C. Hopkins discovered that small changes in ad messaging could make a huge impact on how successful those ads were. In light of this, testing different ad copy with different audiences is important to getting the most success from your online campaigns today.
We’ve come across many companies that have been running Adwords ads that were just translated from English by a translator that had no clue of which words in Arabic would be the most effective to use. In an effort to save money, these companies end up losing much more money because they waste money running ads with words that fail to compel their audience to action. Having well-written Arabic ad copy that uses action-evoking words is just as essential as well-written English ad copy. Effective Arabic Google Ads management makes use of the best ad copy to drive results.
