E-Commerce is increasingly used by businesses of all sizes all over the world. Now, people have the chance to compare prices and get the best deals without going to stores and wasting time and energy. According to The National, E-Commerce in the MENA region, same as worldwide, is steadily growing with an expected growth of 16.4% by 2022.

To keep up with this growth, MENA based e-commerce businesses, especially in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are relying heavily on social media marketing. They promote products and offers through social channels, especially using video content to target the right customers and get their attention. Therefore, choosing the right content and channel is mandatory to get your target customers' attention and engagement. Also, you should be careful in matching your marketing endeavors with an appropriate budget in order to get the best results in a cost-efficient manner.

Souq is one of the top e-commerce websites in the MENA region working globally in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Egypt. It has one YouTube channel for all countries and separate accounts for each country on other channels. In this article; we analyzed all videos of Souq’s White Friday campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube in 2017.

White Friday Videos Statistics

We have found the following after analyzing White Friday campaign 2017 video activities for Souq UAE and KSA Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube channels:

• YouTube videos had the highest views rate compared to other channels during the campaign while Twitter UAE account didn’t share any video content at all.
• Twitter and Instagram KSA accounts had a higher views rate than UAE accounts.
• When it came to Facebook, Souq UAE account won the highest views rate.

Top viewed videos

Celebrities played an influential role at the early beginning of the campaign

Before launching the White Friday, Souq promoted videos that featured celebrities from the MENA which had the highest views on YouTube, Facebook UAE, and Twitter KSA. The same video content was promoted by YouTube and Facebook UAE featuring different celebrities. In a short message, celebrities motivated consumers to get ready for the big competitive sales.

Twitter KSA shared the same content but with with a small but highly effective twist; the message was in Arabic using Saudi celebrities Yasser Al Qahtani and Mohammad Sal which attracted more Saudi Twitter audience. It was a good strategy to localize the content for getting higher audience views.

According to Crowd Analyzer State of Social Media report 2017; the UAE online users are more active on Facebook (8.5M active users) than Twitter (2M active users). Moreover, language appeared to be an important factor when it comes to E-commerce activities. In the UAE, content that users actually engaged with was mostly English (59% of activities) while content that KSA users engaged with was predominantly Arabic (97% of activities)

The impact of using micro influencers

Souq UAE used a different strategy on Instagram which featured micro influencers. It featured the Emirati Instagram comedy influencer @naw4f (360K followers) who had high videos views rate (94K views on average). @naw4f posted a video promoting Souq which gained more views and engagements than the re-post on @souquae (see above picture).

Using micro influencers on @souquae is considered a good strategy but it would be better if the content was originally posted on Souq Instagram UAE and reposted on @naw4f page so his followers can redirect to @souquae.

The power of “Thank You”

Souq took to their KSA Facebook and Instagram accounts to express their appreciation and gratitude to their customers for their loyalty. The 7 seconds video thanked consumers for buying from Souq. The celebrities videos were also used in these channels but weren’t the top in terms of views and interactions gained. This might indicate that Saudi users on Facebook and Instagram are more sentimental and attached to the brand.

Conclusion

Relying on one channel or one idea while promoting e-commerce videos is NOT the perfect choice. The brand should use different social networks and different content based on the audience and the engagement of each network. Localizing the content is important for reaching the right audience based on their preferred language and most used network. Also, featuring micro influencers with the right content is important to get the highest interactions from the audience.