As the sacred month of Ramadan approaches on March 12, 2024, businesses face the dual challenge of heightened competition and inflated paid media spending during this festive season. We wanted to provide a strategic roadmap designed to transform challenges into opportunities and equip marketers with actionable influencer marketing strategies for exceptional business growth.
Here is a brief rundown of these exclusive Vamp strategies, which can be found in more detail in our latest influencer marketing strategy guide.
UNDERSTAND THE RAMADAN LANDSCAPE
Ramadan is a fruitful time for businesses, encompassing 1.9 billion Muslims worldwide, with an overwhelming 97 per cent actively celebrating this holy month.
The InMobi Ramadan 2023 Report highlighted a surge in spending on gifts, clothing, groceries, and travel, particularly peaking in the last week of Ramadan and before Eid.
Online sales in Southeast Asia experienced a commendable 19 per cent increase, with apparel, health & beauty, home & garden, and electronics leading the sales spike. Meanwhile, Redseer Strategy Consultants predicted MENA overall retail sales to grow from $61 billion in 2022 to an impressive $66 billion in 2023.
Further to this, social media usage in Saudi Arabia rises by 30 per cent, and online spending in the MENA region reached 6.7 billion USD in 2023, with a 9 per cent increase. Projections suggest online spending might exceed $7 billion in 2024. With 41 per cent of UAE residents increasing spending during Ramadan and 83 per cent open to trying new brands, influencer marketing becomes a key strategy.
AUTHENTICITY AND MEANINGFUL MESSAGING
People seek content that inspires and connects with their faith. For example, 80 per cent of Muslims want to see messaging around family relationships. Our first strategy encourages brands to include non-sales-related messaging in their Ramadan plans. Working with creators who amplify these messages becomes crucial for advocacy.
Leveraging authenticity is a global social media trend we expect to see throughout 2024, with 69 per cent of consumers trusting influencers, friends and family over brand information. So this Ramadan, we urge brands to incorporate content formats allowing creators to produce in their style, minimising overtly brand-led messaging in collaborations.
JUMP ON TRENDS TO DRIVE DIFFERENTIATION
Amid high competition, CPMs, and inflated paid media metrics, collaboration with creators offers a cost-effective alternative.
Jumping on trends boosts relevancy and personality, driving differentiation and recall.
Utilising a mix of pop culture and evergreen trends ensures timely messaging with boosted relevancy. Creators, natural trend followers, become ideal partners for trend-led content, optimising reach and virality.
THINK ABOUT TIMING
Aligning content with consumer behaviour and mindset during the four stages of Ramadan – pre-Ramadan, Ramadan, the final two weeks, and Eid – provides a natural framework for your comms strategy. Crafting messages relevant to specific stages ensures resonance with the audience.
Being less product-driven during some stages, whilst partnering with creators on business-crucial stages increases chances of higher reach engagement, and sales.
OPTIMISING FOR MOBILE/SOCIAL COMMERCE
The majority of muslims in Saudi Arabia increase the time they spend on their mobile device and social media respectively during Ramadan, showing why mobile marketing takes centre stage during Ramadan.Utilising high-performing organic creator content as paid social media ads is a proven method for success. Prioritising portrait video will make this strategy easy to achieve.
SHORT-FORM VIDEOS
This isn’t anything new, but it’s still powerful. Short-form video content remains popular, making it a powerful tool for Ramadan advertising. Engaging video ads, live streaming for cooking demonstrations, product launches, or Q&A sessions offer real-time connection.
Platforms like TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts provide high reach when optimised for mobile-first. Partnering this strategy with your trend-led and mobile-first strategies will boost performance.
USE NANO-MID CREATORS AND TARGET SPECIFIC COMMUNITIES
Ultra-targeted messaging through smaller creators in specific niches will help to tailor content with laser precision. Not only this, they come with an expected authenticity that taps into one of our earlier strategies.
This is reinforced with 82 per cent of consumers likely to follow micro-influencer recommendations and micro-influencers content bringing in 20 per cent more conversions than macro-influencers.
USE SOCIAL SEARCH
Searching platforms for terms and hashtags relevant to your brand and community ensures content creation that resonates.
Brands should use social search to guide creative execution, understand current community trends, and identify relevant conversations. This trend is pivotal in optimising influencer marketing strategies for increased visibility, enabling brands to align with consumer search behaviour during Ramadan.
To delve deeper and access a comprehensive communications staging framework, download the full report now at vamp.com
