Ramadan is known as a time for celebrating and sharing with family and friends, a time to pause and reflect, and a time for prayer. For advertisers, Ramadan is recognised as the prime-time season to engage with audiences digitally, mainly due to the shift in consumers’ online behaviour during this time. Advertisers will increase media spend during this period but still face challenges in reaching users effectively. The real solution is to keep an agile approach in order to stand out.
Want to know more about how brands and consumers will be spending their money and time this Ramadan? Join our Ramadan webinar on 7 April.
With the start of the Holy Month only a few weeks away, most brands have already begun preparing for their online activity while others are just getting started. We’ve put together three simple tips to help you achieve a successful Ramadan campaign.
Tip #1: Make it relevant
There is an increased focus on social values during Ramadan. Consumers have high expectations of what their favourite brands are communicating. From products to offers to charitable acts, the stakes are higher during Ramadan. Additionally, other brands, whether in your same vertical or different, are asking the same question: How can I stand out and be relevant?
While staying in theme by showing visuals of lanterns, stars, crescent moons and the peaceful “Ramadan Mubarak” is helpful, it’s not enough. The first thing to consider is your audience data. Analyse who your audiences actually are and where their interests lie. Then make your marketing relevant by incorporating these insights into your ads. Your content should be reflective of your key audiences and should tie in relevant Ramadan moments such as family-focused, sharing moments, meals and reflection. For example, if your brand sells tea products and a key audience is ‘fashionistas’ you can incorporate your brand’s positioning and product by showing a group of friends wearing appropriate trendy attire and enjoying your tea product during Iftar or Suhoor.
Tip # 2: Make it personal
Aside from having relevant ads, make sure you are customising your messaging to speak to your audiences in the right channels. Whether it’s Facebook or YouTube, engaging your audience with the right message at the right time is key. The use of dynamic templates can help brands scale their ads by producing multiple variations of messaging.
Whether your communication is focused on audience interest, location or time, you want to build an authentic connection with customers.
If a foodie is consuming video content on YouTube, there is a higher likelihood of interest and engagement if they see an ad communicating “Impress your guests with the perfect Iftar recipe”. Brands with multi-market targeting should also take the time to structure campaign messaging properly. For example, for those observing, the time to breakfast for the evening meal (Iftar) and the morning meal (Suhoor) change every day and are different for every city. Your ads targeting audiences in Dubai will be different from those in Cairo, therefore tailoring your personalised messaging to respective markets will be more effective.
Tip #3: Make it useful
Ads that are relevant and personal help drive higher consumer engagement, but ads that are also useful tend to complete the full journey to making an ad memorable for consumers. Timing is everything. During Ramadan, the most consistent daily questions are around what time prayer, Iftar and Suhoor are. Why not use this insight to make your ad memorable? By using dynamic ads you can incorporate unique elements such as a live countdown that shows the time until breaking fast at Iftar or simply surfacing on the creative what the exact time for Suhoor is on that day. You can also plan to schedule your ads to reach the right audience at the right time. If you are a restaurant or delivery service, there are key times that your messaging should be amplified during Ramadan. Similarly, brands should be respectful of Ramadan and mindful of certain messages throughout the day.
Final Thoughts:
Brands have an opportunity to build a lasting relationship with their consumers and deliver a successful Ramadan campaign. The best way to make use of these three tips is to plan ahead and creatively incorporate your own audience insights to your Ramadan ads. It may be useful to phase out your campaign activity to reach consumers during the pre-Ramadan excitement phase, during the actual Holy Month, and the days approaching Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.
Additionally, you can work with platforms such as Ad-Lib.io to help create dynamic Ramadan templates and scale creatives to the right audiences at the right time across multiple markets. As technology progresses, creating new strategies for advertisers is becoming easier by using the right tools to efficiently help reach your brand’s goals.
To find out more about Ad-Lib reach out to [email protected] or visit the website at ad-lib.io for more details.
