Ramadan just like Christmas has become a season of increased consumerism and attention to shopping. Marketers need to understand how to effectively market during this season in order to take advantage of many of the opportunities it contains and to avoid Ramadan marketing mistakes that could be costly. In this guide, we briefly cover some of the various aspects of Ramadan marketing to help you be more successful with your seasonal marketing efforts in Muslim regions.

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Holidays in the Middle East, just like in other countries around the world, are important times for businesses to bring their A+ marketing games. One of the most notable holidays in the Arab world is the United Arab Emirates’ National Day, and is critical for anyone who does business in the country to know. This important national holiday is associated with heightened purchasing habits, resulting in tremendous business opportunities across the country, so marketers must understand how to effectively position their businesses to best take advantage.

Welcome to the internet’s most comprehensive English language marketing guide about this holiday. To help you optimize your UAE National Day marketing efforts, we provide in-depth background information, must-do steps, and mistakes to avoid.

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If you’re looking to take your marketing in the Arab world to the next level this post will provide and in-depth look into seasonal marketing opportunities in the Arab world. Feel free to use this post to help you plan out your seasonal promotions to Arab consumers in countries across the in Middle East.

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Though the world of Arabic PPC is always expanding, many new ad campaigns fail to be effective due to several common mistakes. Any ad campaign run in Arabic needs to be optimized just as an English campaign needs to be optimized. We find many companies try to save money by outsourcing translation of ads or by having Arabic ads run by someone without experience running Arabic PPC campaigns. In most cases we’ve seen this ends up costing the company much more in wasted ad-spend, than the company saves from not hiring a professional to run the ads. We’ve literally seen companies waste tens of thousands of dollars on irreverent keywords and targeting in their ad campaigns in an effort to save a small amount on the management side of running ads.

We’ve compiled a list of some of the most frequent mistakes we see in Arabic PPC campaigns in the MENA region so you can avoid these pitfalls in your own efforts. 
 

1. Using poorly written or nonexistent calls to action

When creating ads in Arabic, it’s important to utilize similar calls to action, like “buy,” “find,” or “shop.” Without these calls to action, the meaning of the ad can become unclear to the customer. For example, the ad below is for a company that finances Islamic real estate purchases, meaning they provide a specific kind of financing for Muslim customers. The ad was generated while searching for      “عقارات لندن” (London real estate) and it advertises mortgage financing. However, the ad’s wording leaves the user without a call to action, opting to instead state the services offered. For a list of Arabic calls to action you should be using, see this article.

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