Some stats – with of a population of over 8 million in the UAE as of Oct 2014, more than 93% stated they had social media accounts. Facebook penetration exceeded 60% (over 5 million users), LinkedIn exceeded 25% and Twitter was at around 10% penetration levels (MBRSG report). This, with mobile penetration at over 200%, makes a strong case for social media marketing in the UAE inevitable – but how?

Choice of relevant engagement models: User adoption and flexibility weigh the most amongst other factors.

Questions to keep in mind:
– how do marketers boil down to specific points of action for the social media users?
– what are the engagement KPI’s?
– how to calculate tangible and intangible advantage points, both for the marketers and users?
– what are the industry/sector specific do’s and dont’s?
– how to inculcate and act on predictive analytics and/or BI components?

A year back, with more than 90% of smartphone users in the UAE accessing the internet on their devices, the writing was pretty clear – mobile and internet marketing channels go very much hand-in-hand. Now, with 77% of smartphone users visiting social networks at least once a day, we foresee a similar convergence of mobile and social media marketing in the UAE going further. Up to what extent do we let mobile and social media marketing be part of one another? Where do we draw the lines?

At Gulf Ideas, we take a holistic approach (including other digital marketing fronts – search marketing, content marketing, email marketing etc.) to weigh and locate mobile and social media marketing efforts. We then dive deeper with the questions above, while focusing on the need, points of action, KPI’s and analytics at each stage, to include value and responsiveness, thereby driving higher levels of engagement.

(Sources: Kissmetrics, MBRSG, Google Mobile Planet)