Digital marketing has become crucial to modern-day marketing strategies. With the growth of technology and the internet, businesses all over the globe are utilizing digital marketing to help them increase their brand visibility, generate leads, and boost sales. Saudi Arabia is no exception to this trend, and in this blog post, we will be discussing the digital marketing trends in Saudi Arabia.
Social Media Marketing is one of the most popular digital marketing channels in Saudi Arabia. With over 35.09 million active users in 2022 making Social media platforms are great tools for businesses to reach their target audience.
Companies use social media to create brand awareness, promote their products and services, and engage with customers. According to Google Trends, the keyword "Social Media Marketing" is one of the most searched digital marketing-related keywords in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabians share more online than any other country in the world as Social Media has brought many types of freedom to Saudis (especially women) that never existed prior to the introduction of the digital age.
Saudi Arabia has one of the highest Twitter penetration at 14.2% and ranks number eight globally in terms of the total number of users, not surprisingly Saudi Arabia also has the highest Facebook usage rate in the Gulf region as Facebook ranks third as the most visited website in the country.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is another trend gaining high popularity in Saudi Arabia, with the increasing use of smartphones and high-speed internet, video content has become more accessible to users. Brands tend to use video content to promote their products and services, tell their brand stories, and engage with customers.
Google Trends shows that the keyword "Video Marketing" is one of the most searched digital marketing-related keywords in Saudi Arabia as YouTube has the largest user per capita in the entire world. Saudi Arabia currently hosts the largest number of YouTube users and in recent years Saudi Arabians have been producing a great deal of YouTube content. This Youtube content is on a variety of different topics but the most popular content category would be Arabic comedy videos.
Mobile Marketing
According to recent reports, smartphone penetration reached 98.7% of the population in Saudi Arabia with over 43 million mobile phone users. As time passes smartphone users are becoming more dependent on their smartphones and it is not uncommon to find Saudi Arabians with more than one smartphone.
Surprisingly some users who are older or from lower classes are still having their first experiences with the Internet on mobile as 95.4% of users can currently access the Internet via mobile devices marking the average daily time users aged 16 to 64 spend using the mobile Internet as 4 hours and 25 min.
96.6% of smartphone users watch videos on their phones, which provides insight into YouTube's popularity as to why it would make such a great advertising medium in the country. Internet users aged between 16 -64 that discovered a new brand or product through search engines were 36.3% and 31.2% from ads on social media. The interesting thing was that 60% used social networks and 50% used search engines when researching brands.
In light of these high numbers, different forms of advertising that are mobile-friendly can be extremely effective as traditional SMS marketing still works, but new channels that target Arabs while browsing the web or watching videos on their smartphones might be as effective if not more.
E-commerce
E-commerce has been on the rise in Saudi Arabia over the last few years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this trend. As more people stay at home, the demand for online shopping has increased, making e-commerce a popular search term in Saudi Arabia. According to a recent report by JLL, the e-commerce sector in Saudi Arabia is expected to reach a value of SAR 62 billion by 2023.
Saudi Arabia is potentially the largest e-commerce market in the Middle East right now but what most fail to mention is that when it comes to physical goods that are bought in Saudi Arabia, 75% of those goods are bought using Cash on Delivery (COD). What is interesting to note is that digital payment transactions went up to 75% as well when Saudi consumers began embracing online shopping during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, while cash withdrawals from ATMs and other payment points fell 30 percent over the same period.
It is important to note that there are some risks involved with offering COD, including increased returns and send backs despite the higher order volume. Electronics remain the most popular products purchased online with software coming in second if you decide to include Apps within this category. The exciting thing about the Saudi Ecommerce market is the fact that it has already become a decent size market, but the next decade appears to hold huge growth as the majority of the population is starting to open up to online commerce.
It is important to note that due to fears of internet fraud, the Saudi Government set up a program to verify the legitimacy of websites in Saudi Arabia called Maroof. Many of the top websites in Saudi like Amazon. sa, Souq, Namshi, Cobone, and Noon are registered on the website. Websites looking to conduct business in Saudi Arabia should consider registering with Maroof although it isn’t required.
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