Meta Talks Diversification and Discovery in Ecommerce This Ramadan

Ahead of this year’s Ramadan celebrations in April 2022, Meta has constructed a Meta for Business Webinar to help brands and customers alike take full advantage of this season of transformation and reflection. Touching on topics such as shifts in daily rhythms providing new alleyways for exciting ecommerce discoveries, technology fuelling community and resonating with the charitable spirit that comes with every Ramadan. 

The six main parts of the Webinar were divided up to give the best possible advise not only on how brands should act and what trends they should pay attention to during the transformative season, but also key advice on how they can utilise Meta’s features to push their agenda further. Starting with a talk on how diversity can unlock discovery during Ramadan, Meta shared four key insights into Ramadan shopping trends and their implications for brands. 

Then, moving on to creative guidance during Ramadan for best practices of creative execution and inspiration for future campaigns, as well as an agency showcase, touching on how brands can work with creative agencies to enhance Ramadan marketing campaigns. A segment on cross-border ecommerce was also included, giving insight on “Driving Discovery across Borders” and how to connect with cross-border shoppers this holiday season. 

A segment concentrated on the media agency lens on ecommerce was also included, with some leading names in the industry and their input on partnering and driving campaigns forward. The webinar was tied up with a short talk on measurement for success, talking about why measurement should be “at the core of marketing strategies” and what brands can learn about best practices implemented in Ramadan campaigns.

Dina Ibrahim Saad, team lead for the MENA global business group at Meta kicked off the webinar with some of the main insights and implications of Ramadan on ecommerce. She explained that due to the fact that ‘90% of Ramadan observers wish to see Ramadan content that aligns with their views’, diversifying campaigns during this season is crucial for newly built trust between consumers and brands. Diversity and relatability in campaigns will also help with a more well-rounded approach towards Ramadan campaigns, managing to balance storytelling and product selling, by leaning on key themes during the holiday, such as ‘gratitude, family, community, spirituality’, all of which if used as campaign pillars will give brands possibilities for long-term connection with audiences.

However, as Dina maintains, diversity comes hand in hand with discovery. “Ramadan is more than just a moment in time,” she explained. “It’s also a transformative period, in which we see a sustained shift in habits. 38% of shoppers plan their shoppers as early as 20 days before Ramadan and their habits change throughout the holiday period.” 

Later in the webinar Ahmed Younis Fizo, head of creative shop for Meta’s MENA department echoed these points by expanding more on how brands can flex their campaigning muscles based on how Ramadan’s observers’ habits shift during the period. “During Ramadan day replaces night and night replaces day, which brings behavioural changes that bring opportunities – brands need to plan for these behavioural changes and not take them for granted, as Ramadan is a season very important for creative industries at large,” explained Fizo.

This eight week shift in habits unlocks new alleyways in ecommerce that brands will need to tap into to take full advantage of the holiday and form those long-term customer-brand connections. During the first week of Ramadan conversions peak at 4am during Suhoor and there is an observance of “increasing of likes during the night”, tells Dina. Another noticeable trend is that during Iftar, there is an observed increase of 52% in people looking for and using online recipes. Shopping for health and wellness also sees an increase during the period. However, shopping habits vary over the season, with gift-shopping and cross-border orders increasing towards Eid.

Liliane Assaf, head of product marketing MENA for Meta, explained that “cross-border shoppers are more likely to make spontaneous discoveries during Ramadan from countries that represent their product origins”. In reality, 69% of Ramadan shoppers get excited for trying new products from abroad during this season and Ramadan cross-border purchasing discoveries are taking place more than ever. Later in the webinar were presented three key strategies brands can follow to benefit from the adventurous spirits during the holiday. 

Firstly, “joyful discovery”, specifically focusing on the different motivations of cross-borders buyers. 44% of buyers from APAC and 45% of those from the MENA region are drawn to higher quality and discovering new and interesting products they’ve never even heard of. Meta’s worldwide targeting helps brands study and group multiple countries or regions, in order to find the people most likely to care about your business. Multi-country lookalikes also help – historical Ramadan learnings and leverage of data can inform future campaigns and help brands find highly similar audiences.

Secondly, personalised connections – appealing via diverse and localised content. Specifically, localising language, creative content and general information makes ads more relatable and helpful to numerous audiences. It was found that 67% of Ramadan cross-border shoppers say they need to see themselves represented in campaigns in order to trust them. Meta can help brands here as well with its dynamic language optimisation – delivering ads in the right language to the right person, based on what language they use most on the apps.

And lastly, “delightful purchases”, aka moving shoppers from discovery to actual purchasing swiftly. It is shown that “nine out of 10 shoppers make serendipitous discoveries whilst Ramadan shopping with almost a third of them purchasing immediately”. In order for these shopping experiences to be frictionless and increase the chance of complete transaction, identifying and reducing key hurdles along the purchasing journey is crucial. What helps is targeting and localising, translation on all levels of the journey, a range of locally preferred payment methods, currency exchange elaboration and complete transparency concerning taxing and delivery options. 

It seems that there would be a plethora of opportunities brands can take during Ramadan season, as long as they continuously balance their content output and creative with consistent diversification and localised targeting, but still tailoring their messaging to the ever-changing nature of Ramadan. This might sound like a difficult balance to strike, but with some help and pre-holiday strategizing any business can benefit and establish long-term connections between brands and customers through the creative and adventurous openings provided to it during the Ramadan season.