Middle East digital marketing changing drastically as web becomes more app-centric (page 1 of 2)

Digital marketing is vital for any modern day company and as with all new forms of marketing, approaches towards it have differed greatly. In the Middle East digital brands have evolved considerably over a short amount of time. While the region has played catch up with Europe and the US to some extent, it is now seen as a keen early adopter.

"In the last three years a lot of the online marketing was banner advertising, that's what people did. Then people had microsites that they would lead the banners to and on these microsites they would have information like competitions and more interactive things. But it wasn't what we would have in Europe or more Western countries, where there are really great experiences that you look at and you share them with people so you get additional traffic," explains Alexander Rauser, CEO of Prototype.

"Then what we've experienced in the last one and a half to two years in that social media has entered the region as well, so a lot of people have jumped onto social media and everyone was learning how to use it to market themselves," he adds.

Social networking is huge part of digital branding

According to Rauser, companies in this region originally relied on 'push' techniques to get people to go to their Facebook or Twitter pages and like or follow them. Updates would be posted by the company in an attempt to attract more people to their social networking page. "Now people have become more educated about the topic and realise it doesn't really work like this and are finding more engaging ways to get people onto their platforms. Some companies have done this really well through properly interacting with their customers," states Rauser.

However, some companies have launched wholeheartedly into social networking sites as the sole means of their digital marketing, leaving behind other forms of getting through to their audience. Rauser believes that this is just as wrong an approach as ignoring the social media aspect all together.

"A lot of companies now solely focus on social media. Again that might not be enough because you only have limited branding opportunities on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, you can change your background and control the content you put on it but from a brand perspective it's not that great. So everybody is trying to master social media and they forget about some more exciting brand experience they could create," opines Rauser.

Mixed approach is best strategy

As with most marketing techniques, the best approach is a mixture of the options available, yet it seems firms are getting the best results when they are providing consumers with a more interactive and creative marketing campaign.

The methods of digital marketing are changing fast in this region. The UAE in particular is seeing more budget and time being pushed towards mobile apps. A recent digital marketing conference, Shadi Hasan, managing director of Flagship Projects suggested that mobile apps now account for more than 5% of overall marketing budgets.

"The UAE has given a huge push to the popularity of the mobile Apps in the Arab world and this has paid off in the past one year. The penetration of these mobile applications is tremendous in the UAE," comments Hasan.

Middle East not fully exploiting mobile apps

He adds that the Middle East is yet to fully exploit this advancement in mobile apps in the region, despite being ahead of the game in terms of numbers of people embracing them.