Archive March 28, 2021

Marketing to Muslim Consumers

We are all aware that religion is the core element in all concepts of culture. Notably, the religion of Islam gives room to all types’ transactions. For example, Muslims are free to buy and sell, form a company, trade, or rent. All this is to make daily life easier for Muslim consumers. But, that trade becomes unlawful when it harms both parties.

The Muslim community is diverse in economic, political, and legal systems. Besides, we see the thriving accessibility of halal goods and services.

They are the second-largest religion with a total population of 1.8 billion people.

Moreover, the Muslim market size is currently at 2.11 billion U.S dollars. That is to say, by the year 2023, the market value will be around three billion dollars.

With this in mind, it’s evident that the halal market, which means lawful, is growing fast. Thus, it’s a requisite to fathom the Muslim world and do an effective marketing strategy. Today you’ll learn marketing, a formulation that caters to Muslim consumers.

Keep scrolling to the end.

Muslim consumer’s background

In the first place, the Holy Quran and Sunnah are the principal sources of teaching for Muslims. In other words, they form a constitution that guides all Muslims.

Islam has five main pillars.

  • The testimony (Shahadah)
  • Prayer (Salat)
  • Giving to the needy (Zakat)
  • Fasting (Siyam)
  • Pilgrimage (Hajj)

Usually, the Islamic religion sets out structures that form ethical behaviour for all Muslims. We have two ways in which the Quran identifies a Muslim adherent. The First one is halal, which means legal or lawful. The second one is Haram, which means illegal and unlawful. With this in mind, your brand should adhere to halal principles or face a boycott.

Truthfulness in business dealing

When doing business with Muslims, you should be truthful and show a clear description. If your product has any defect, then you have to tell the truth. The recommended business practice revolves around being:

  • Fair dealings
  • Being tolerant
  • Courteous
  • Not making a hard sell

Marketing in the Muslim world

According to Brenkert, marketing envelopes us and thus permeates our daily lives. Most importantly, marketing forms the core of any business organization. But, unlike other organization strategies, marketing revolves around customers.

Islamic marketing follows the guidelines and principles of the Quran and Sunnah. It is to maximize the value based on equity and justice for consumers.

Apply ethical behaviour

By all means, you should put in place ethical behaviour, which will lead to customer credibility. Again, they will have confidence in you and give you a higher percentage of the trust.

Moreover, your marketing mix should protect customer decisions from coercion. The Islamic teachings put it clear that unethical marketing practices constitute injustices.

Adherence to Islamic ethical framework

The Islamic marketing viewpoint provides room for equity and justice. For one thing, to guarantee the dignity and freedom of users’ minds. So, retailers should not only serve their enterprise but also offer effective transactions.

In general, if you are a Muslim marketer, you should embrace high ethical values and norms. In summary, Key areas you should watch involves:

Needs

The Quran mentions two basic needs that involve Islamic marketing. First, it talks about the physiological needs of water, clothing, and food. The second, the need for security. (Quran, 20:118-119:17:29).

SEO marketing in Sydney

According to a recent census, Muslims make up 2.6% of the total Australian population. In Sydney, SEO Rankglider defines Muslim consumers around this place by the:

· Dietary

· Lifestyle

· Financial rules of the Islamic faith

Besides, they speak a distinct language, eat other foods, and wear discrete clothing styles. For example, in Sydney, we have Bangladesh, Turkish, Kurdish, Pakistani Muslims, and others.

SEO continues to evolve, with no exception to the Muslim world. As a new business looking to concur with Muslim consumers, you need an effective SEO strategy. Our research shows that organic search results yield lucrative traffic.

So, how do you go about it?

On-page optimization

Usually, we have on-page optimization and off-page optimization attempt you can manage. On-page SEO is the real work you can do on your website to manipulate search results. Here, you’ll be able to understand your industry, website blueprint, and keywords research. Usually, all these on-page SEO techniques are entirely under your dominance.

When targeting Muslim consumers, make it known to search engines from the start. You need to learn good use of:

· Keyword research and development

· URL

· Meta tags

· Internal linking

In a word, once your web pages are 100 per cent fully optimized, you’ll improve your ranking. Finally, more and more Muslim consumers will search for your products and find them.

Keyword research

The more you’ll learn about SEO, the more you’ll appreciate the need for keyword research. Notably, the best deal is to discover high traffic with less competition. Less competitive keywords will be easy to rank for your website.

Meta tags

Meta tags are a variety of labels that help search engines get a grip on your website theme. To put it in another way, they are a short description of your pages. They influence SERPs and click-through rates to your website.

URL

URL plays a vital role in overall SEO. Even though we have thousands of factors Google considers in the ranking, you need a friendly URL. A friendly URL can be one with keyword phrases.

Internal linking

Another strong on-page SEO chance to capitalize is to make use of internal linking. In particular, it involves linking to other pages on your website. Internal linking ensures you pass link juice to pages lower in the hierarchy.

Off-page optimization

Off-page optimization is also crucial for your website existence. Most of the traffic will result from off-page optimization for your website.

It refers to what you do outside your website to improve search results. The common practice here includes gaining a quality authority link to your website.

Market

Usually, a Muslim market in all sectors complies with Sharia principles. Take note that non Halal products do not abide by Sharia principles in Muslim countries. An example of such products includes alcohol and pork. So, if you want to attract Muslim consumers, you need to be pork-free and more.

Good conduct

In the first place, for you to attract more Muslim consumers, you should have good conduct. Ethical behaviour is one of the core elements of the Islamic religion. Likewise, it would be best if you were pure, lawful, and offers beneficial products. (Quran, 2; 172, 2:168)

Trade by mutual consent

The Prophet Muhammad said that trade by mutual consent is indispensable in any business. In brief, mutual consent means practising the free and fair will of all parties.

Ethical advertising

Advertising today is facing a lot of criticism because some marketers stretch too far. For example, some ads are targeting kids with inappropriate content.

But in Sydney, we believe Muslim ads should adhere to Islamic principles. In other words, the ads should not be deceptive, misleading, and cheating. (Al-Imran, 3:77).

Islamic market mix

Once you have a marketing strategy ready, you can begin the journey of the marketing mix. The marketing mix entails the use of a marketing tool for your target audience. Typically; we have the conventional four Ps of marketing, and they are:

  • Product
  • Price
  • Place
  • Promotion

However, the Islamic marketing mix elements are a little bit different based on Muslim consumers. In most cases, these elements derive their ideology from the Quran, Muhammad, and Muslim research. Some of the Islamic market mixes include:

  • Product. Must be Shariah-compliant and use the name of Allah in branding or labelling.
  • Price. Here, there should be no cheating or maximizing profit. Again, avoid hoarding.
  • Place. In particular, you should not create a channel that burden consumer. Also, your product should not cause any harm to customers or coercion.
  • Promotion. Most importantly, you should not use a woman in any form to lure your target customers. Again, you should avoid using women in advertising. Your ads should have no sex appeal or obscene in any way.
  • People. Notably, you should be polite, friendly, and honest. Above, abide by Shariah (law).
  • Process. Here, you need to provide the correct marketing information and avoid complex sale.

Summary

As shown above, the Islamic religion plays a crucial role in the Muslim’s buying journey. Usually, the Quran paves the way for exemplary ethical behaviour. If you plan to do marketing to Muslims, then you should adhere to Quran principles.

Digital Marketing Trends You Need to Know For 2021 and Beyond

The year 2020 caught the world with an immense startle and came as one weird simulation. Right now, many consumers and businesses are still between a rock and a hard place. As a result, marketers are shifting gear, trying to adopt new marketing tactics. Simultaneously, the pandemic chaos is still ravaging many businesses. The big question is how marketers will get a second wind.

Here are the marketing trends to watch.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Most importantly, we can’t ignore the fact that AI use is increasing. Back in the days, AI was an enigma swaddled by jargon. But, the narrative is changing fast because early adopters are reaping big.

 Notably, Facebook, Amazon, and Google use AI to provide great experience possible. In particular, they use user’s data, such as interest to deliver relevant ads.

AI early adopters

  • Facebook uses deep text to decipher the contents you post. They then direct you to advertisers based on your conversation.
  • Google uses deep learning to help rank websites on search results.
  • Amazon is a pioneer of AI and busy pushing the bounds of innovation.  Amazon was the first to launch AI to drive its product pointers.

On a positive level, AI allows SEO experts to create more relevant content to their readers. Moreover, they can use AI-powered link building tools to get more opportunity.

AI also helps marketers to analyze consumer behavior and search patterns. Most of these data are from social media platforms and blog posts. As a business enterprise, you’ll need this data to understand your customer’s behavior.

 Some areas AI will impact in digital marketing are:

  • Customer profiling. Here, you’ll be able to know your customer’s preferences and needs.
  • Conversational AI-powered chatbot. We are expecting to see complex bots that answer customers what they are asking.
  • AI will help in most visual design. In most cases, marketers rely on designers to create a website, website pages, and more. Usually, you must use money, and that’s costly. With new AI-powered tools, you’ll be able to build websites and ads on your own.

Using augmented reality (AR) in marketing strategy

Most marketers are trying hard to avoid going on a wild goose. As such, their top priority becomes fulfilling consumer’s desires. One way to help them achieve this more is by incorporating AR. For quite some time now, AI has emerged as salvage to help brands deliver a unique experience.

Additionally, AR ensures customers try a product before they buy a product. For example, it allows customers to on clothing items and samples many more.  In the end, a customer will get an item that best suits their needs virtually.

In summary, we have Facebook already implementing the use of AR. For now, their AR allows customers to sample a product digitally. Here, you can f you want to buy make-up, the AR will enable you to model one before buying.

Conversational marketing

Conversational marketing is gaining more prominence in the new era of digital marketing. It’s one to one engagement with your prospective customers. In general, it allows you to approach your customers on an individual level. Most importantly, it enables businesses to create a better human buying experience.

In other words, conversational marketing is a tool that boosts users’ experience.  It is a productive way to start building a relationship with your customers. Most definitely, your customers will not have to wait for a response from lead capture forms.  Your customers will get answers from AI-powered chatbot equipped with natural language.

SEO

We all know how Google keeps changing its search algorithms. As a marketer, there are trends that will rein and affect search ranking in the future. Some SEO top watch list for marketers includes:

  • Voice search
  • BERT for natural language processing
  • User experience such as load speed
  • Videos to become amongst the top SEO marketing strategy
  • Mobile search to continue

 

Video marketing to continue blossom

Video marketing is soaring heights in recent years and is here to stay. Many marketers believe there is substantial ground worth investing in video marketing.

In essence, we human beings find visually appealing content like video more memorable. That’s why you see videos get more conversion and exposure than text.  With this in mind, a video marketing strategy is a safe bet for much business. And the stats don’t disappoint either.

  • 81% of businesses consider video as one of their best marketing tools. (HubSpot) The figure is soaring height compared to 61% in 2016.
  • YouTube has 2 billion users worldwide and is the second most popular site after Google. (Alexa)
  • About 72% of online consumers prefer to learn about new products from video sources. (HubSpot)

From the start above, we can conclude that video marketing will still have smooth sailing. And this does not apply to YouTube alone. You have plenty of avenues to engage with your audiences. Similarly, one can start a video post, Instagram stories or live broadcast on Facebook.

Wrapping up

Lastly, any business that aspires to survive should embrace new marketing tactics. As the pandemic hit is diminishing, the future of digital marketing will be full of optimism.