Social Media - Middle East

We all know how limited marketing budgets can be, for even the most outwardly driven small and medium sized businesses. With marketing budgets being squeezed even more now that there is a global downturn looming on the horizon it’s interesting to see that many SMB’s are turning to online social media marketing strategies, that promise more targeted and more measurable results.

The issue for many business owners is simple, they need visibility of the results that each marketing dollar spent delivers to the business bottom line.  Offline campaigns, Public Relations Activity and the old stalwarts of marketing such as trade shows, direct mail and events although often effective are very difficult to measure.  Social Media according to Steve Vaile the CEO of Dubai Social Media company H2O New Media is where SMB’s can enjoy near immediate results for very limited budgets that are both measurable and quantifiable from a return on investment perspective.

Many of us have a Facebook profile, a My Space page or even a blog circulating in cyber space but is this social media? Apparently the Term Social Media encompasses much more than this.

“Social Media is a term used to define the online world of social applications that make your life easier” Steve Vaile CEO, H2O New Media, “content such as video, audio and text online is incorporated into online communities focused around interest groups. Interest groups can be anything, business related, consumer related, entertainment or even location related, by targeted specific interest groups relevant to your business with your marketing budget you can enjoy a much higher and relevant success rate for new customer acquisition.

These new platforms are incredibly valuable to a consumer or business user seeking to be actively engaged in a social community relevant to their business, leisure or other unique interests. Importantly businesses that target consumers can create branded content to be used on their own targeted social communities.  Branded social communities are being used by companies to initiate meaningful one on one dialogue with their target customers.  There are many examples of leading companies using social media to drive their businesses: Dell have used social media to encourage their customers to submit thousands of new product ideas. Proctor and Gamble whose community targets mothers as brand ambassadors for their products, has thousands of members world wide.

“When considering social media trends its important to look back through media history. In the past there were only a number of television channels, radio stations and print publications available to a consumer, fighting to find relevant information.  The past twenty years has seen these mediums fragment significantly. There are now hundreds of thousands of content specific television channels such as Discovery Travel and Leisure and The History Channel. There are over 1M digital radio stations catering for every genre of music and interest group, and one only has to walk into a local supermarket to understand the range of print publications available to users.  The same thing is starting to happen in Social Media, larger platforms such as Facebook, Bebo, Linked In and My Space will seed market share to more niche vertically focused players. Social Media will fragment into specific interest groups, localised groups, and other niches in much the same way seen by the print media industry”

With Social Media fragmenting into niche platforms many companies are seeing the benefits of owning these their own social media publications relevant to their own markets.  By owning the media platform you can benefit from free advertising, access demographic and relevant information assets in the community open up meaningful and effective dialogue with your target market, foster collaboration and community based initiatives and importantly take a real and effective thought leadership position in your target market.

Many of our SMB customers are using social media applications to provide a value add service to their customers whilst automating the sales and marketing process.  The company creates and effective and beneficial social media application for their targeted market; populates it with relevant and meaningful content that the community wants and then automates introductions to their company and services by email when a new user joins the community.  Having access to the data provides a great feed into a customer relationship management system as users joining the community are generally pre-qualified as potential customers or champions for your business.

The benefits of social media are well documented, by using website subscribers’ information to target advertising to specific demographics you can increase your average click through rates to your company’s website by as much as three times, when compared to traditional online advertising. 

Concur Consultants an Engineering Construction and Recruitment Company based in Dubai has been using social media effectively for over a year and Alan Condron the companies CEO is nothing but complimentary when extolling new media’s benefit over traditional platforms.

“We have operated our own social media channel for over a year now with great results, as a business our revenue model is based on placement of candidates into engineering companies in the GCC region.  We needed to communicate with two types of vertical, those engineers seeking jobs in Dubai and those recruiters seeking to employ them.  We created our own social media channel providing a news letter for job seekers in Dubai which has to date received over 22,000 subscribers.  Every week we promote various roles that we have available within our customer base in Dubai requesting referrals and recommendations from our user base, the net result is that we always have a stream of qualified candidates for engineering positions in Dubai.

We also provide value to recruiters in the engineering construction industry by providing a monthly update regarding Dubai employment laws and new considerations to take into account when recruiting for construction and engineering staff such as health and safety issues at work.  When recruiters find the site and sign up for the news letter they are provided with an overview of Concurs engineering recruitment services which more often than not results in our company receiving placement requests from human resources directors looking for qualified staff.  By automating the CV collection and the placement requests we get more time to focus on delivering added value, which is to ensure that staff are qualified, suitable to the position and right for the company.  The result is that our business is booming with a very high level of referrals and repeat business flowing into our business. 

“It took us less than three months and less than 10,000 USD of investment to get our social media platform working for our business, we estimate that it has saved us at least 100,000 USD in sales, promotion and advertising costs over the past twelve months and that is without calculating the time saved by receiving super qualified opportunities.  From the perspective of our business social media just works and delivers significant value to our operations” Alan Condron Concur

Another Dubai based company is utilising social media to expand its business and provide enhanced levels of service to its clients.  DSL Exhibitions are a specialist events, conference and business meetings company that run a number of B2C property show events in the UAE under their ‘Local Property Show’ brand.  “We decided that by using a social community application to provide a holistic online solution servicing both property brokers and consumers simultaneously, we would be delivering significant value to our target clients whilst at the same time promoting our Local Property Show events to those joiners to the community that maybe had not known of or attended the shows before.  The social community aspect of our business has become a core aspect of our customer relationship management strategy and our social community www.propertyfaces.com will launch in November” said Shaun Corrigan, Customer Relationship Director.

He added “Using social media means that we can effectively open a one-on-one dialogue with our core market, automate much of the marketing ‘spade’ work and get much more specific in our targeted messaging.  We already have a large number of agents who realise the obvious advantages of this community and are very keen to sign up to benefit from some of the functionality we have developed with our partner H2O. This includes a dealing room, community messaging, suppliers’ directories and free listings for our agents both individually and for their hot properties. In effect the social community that we are developing with H2O extends our offline events into the online world and offers a one stop shop solution to both consumers and suppliers. The benefit to our business is significant and the ROI is equally significant when you consider the minimal investment required to do something this advanced with the technology available today”

With the social media market in the Middle East expanding the traditional events companies are now starting to cash in on the opportunity. IIR events will be running the New Media event from the 14^th to the 18^th of December 2008 which will see regional experts will get together in one place to discuss how new media can help you build brands and increase brand awareness.  More information www.iirme.com/newmedia; www.h2onewmedia.com