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 Digital marketing in the Middle East won’t take off until businesses start using ecommerce and start seeing direct financial returns, suggests Magna general manager Azhar Siddiqui.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Click Digital Marketing summit, Siddiqui rejected the idea that 2009 would be “the year of digital” in the Middle East: “It’s not going to happen. At the end of last year and the start of this, people were just reflecting global thought. Yes, worldwide digital is still growing, still faring better than other media. It’s not going to happen over here, because clients all over the world want bottom line results, first of all.
He said the inability of client websites to convert traffic into leads or sales effectively puts the kibosh on extensive digital marketing: “Over here, that’s the problem – I can’t show the link to sales, using digital. The minute I can go and convince a client that I can move his product off the shelf, using digital, then all the factors of accountability, measurability come in – and that’s where the money comes in.
“If I go and say ‘use digital and I can show you the number of clicks from the morning, from the afternoon, from the night’, then the client will say ‘hey, great – what does that mean for my product?’ and I have to say ‘err, I’m not really sure’,” Siddiqui added.
As presentations in yesterday’s Click event demonstrated, there’s still a significant level of mistrust around ecommerce, especially that all-important bit where people put their credit card details into a website.
Kalimat Maktoob, a recently-launched search engine, proudly announced in its presentation that it is happy to accept offline forms of payment for advertisers, and cited this as a significant advantage over Google, which only takes credit cards.
If businesses really are that unwilling to splash the cash virtually, it suggests a fairly deep-seated suspicion around the whole “ecommerce” thing, at least among certain sections of the Middle East’s varied economies (read: most places outside Dubai/the UAE).
Siddiqui sees this changing, though – at least, once the region’s online culture and infrastructure come up to date: “There’s a couple of things that need to come together. There needs to be a cultural shift, from this fear of using credit cards, to being able to see credit cards as a facilitator and a convenient and secure mode of payment. Second, the digital infrastructure of the region is still weak. Yes, penetration levels are still 20% overall, which is good, but you’ll find the bulk of it is still basic dialup – we haven’t evolved onto broadband.”
However, Siddiqui sees the increased telco competition that has mushroomed across the region as a key driver for the latter factor, forcing broadband prices down, and extending its reach throughout the Middle East.
From the digital marketing perspective, he also dismisses the idea that traditional agencies, especially on the media side, are not pushing digital marketing – but he does acknowledge that they still need to find a model that works for both the agency and the client.
“What happens is, the minute you tag digital as part of, say, media, then the client is used to paying a certain fee structure on traditional media – 3%, 2%, whatever it is. But if the digital industry here is worth $40 million, then 3% of that is not enough to sustain an industry,” said Siddiqui.
“There’s two ways you can do it – one is by explaining that the volumes are lower and the work is higher, and increasing the fee base, but then the client says ‘but you said it was integrated media, it’s all one – why should I have to pay more?’ and so on. The other way to do it is to say ‘don’t think of digital media, think of digital as a separate world in itself’,” he added.
That last suggestion, though, is going to need a whole lot more work by agencies, web developers, and especially clients, to become a reality.
Still, we live in hope...
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