Ramadan, like Christmas, is the biggest spiritual, and social season in the MENA. Marketers need to know how to market their products and services during this time and effectively take advantage of the various opportunities of this holy month. 

So let’s walk you through a few aspects of Ramadan marketing, to help you run successful seasonal marketing campaigns. 

Ramadan is a time of meaningful reflection; it is a global moment that transcends geographical and local boundaries. With close to 2 billion observers across the world and more than 92% of them in the MENA, the whole dynamics of the region change as people are spending more time with family and friends, donating to charity, shopping, cooking iftar, and suhoor, and exchanging gifts with loved ones.

Ramadan is one of the few periods of the year when people are pro-actively looking for content and ads, to the extent that searching for ads spikes during the holy month. Therefore, Ramadan presents a grand opportunity to scale businesses, raise brand awareness, and maximize profits. 

With the dangers of COVID-19 not yet behind us, people are leaning more and more towards communicating, shopping, watching, and consuming content online, showing a significant increase during the last year that is expected to rise during 2022. Customers want to see how brands tell their stories, position themselves, market their products and services, as well as embrace the spirit of Ramadan by displaying social responsibility, giving back to charities and local communities, and promoting the values of the holy month.

For the past few years, the Arab companies’ media strategies have been very simple: run television ads featuring celebrities to increase viewability. However after the pandemic hit, many companies decided to diversify their marketing strategies by integrating digital marketing in general and native advertising, in particular, to shake things up a bit.

Mothers are unsung heroes; therefore, they deserve to be cherishes and celebrated always. So in preparation for their big day, brands need to launch relevant, and engaging content to reach Mother’s Day  shoppers. Indeed, “Mother’s Day” is one of the major purchasing events around the world in general, and in the Middle East in particular. 

After two years of difficult pandemic circumstances, most people are  now comfortable with online shopping which will further grow over the next few years. Sectors like, food and beverage, houseware, electronics, jewelry and flowers have increased year- over-year. 

Now is the time to start planning your Mother’s Day campaigns!

Some of the most engaging content is gift guides, which manage to attract users and generate clicks. Most brands create at least one gift guide, or customize several ones to cater for different audiences. This strategy is valuable because Mother’s Day is not just for the consumer’s mother; it can also include mother-in-laws, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, wives, and new mothers. Men usually buy gifts for their mothers, mothers-in laws, and wives, while women buy gifts for their mothers. 

Flowers remain one of the most popular Mother’s Day gifts, so ads about flowers and flower delivery companies tend to perform well. Not only that, but brands and services promoting luxury hampers like spas and restaurants, or home good, food boxes, and self care products also proved very popular. Gifts can also include clothes, accessories and jewelry. 

Identifying the types of content and products that will engage consumers is only half the batter; the other half is employing targeting strategies that will boost engagement and clicks, and generate conversions.