Lead Generation and Internet Marketing in UAE

The UAE Internet

The United Arab Emirates, or UAE, is a federation located in the Arabian Peninsular in Southwest Asia and on the Persian Gulf. It shares land borders with Oman and Saudi Arabia and sea borders with Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. It has an estimated population of 8.3 million and a GDP per capita of $US 36,973, higher than the United Kingdom. Internet marketing and lead generation in the UAE have an amazing potential as there are 3.8 million internet users in the UAE and the internet advertising market size is reported as being $US 6.6 billion. According to a recent report 56% of internet users in the UAE perform online research prior to buying a car and 46% claim that they base their decision on which car to purchase from online reviews. This gives incredible strength to the lead generation industry with internet marketers being able to develop price comparison websites with product reviews and user generated content. It also reported that 46% of UAE internet users are influenced by social media networks.

Social Networking Sites

There are 2.3 million Facebook users in the UAE of which 66% are male and 34% are female. There are more 25 to 34 year old Facebook members in the UAE than any other age group and they represent 46% of Facebook users, followed by the 18 to 24 year olds who represent 22%. Facebook users in the UAE generate 2.7 billion page views each month and spend an average of 25 minutes on every visit. Popular interest categories include Philippines, Syria and Northern Africa which seems to follow the pattern of where many foreigners in the UAE originate from. These are closely followed by the categories of Mobile & Wireless and News. Internet marketers could consider the possibility of providing free news feeds relating to these countries and include promotional content relevant to these communities. The Chatphone website attracts far less page views a month (350,000) but reveals an interest in Nepal, Pakistan and Eastern Africa which helps to get an idea about which communities are utilizing particular social networks for certain purposes. The Chatphone website offers, amongst other things, Email & Messaging and Chat features. The highest functional usage of Chatphone appears to be social networking apps and add-ons. Twitter receives 7.4 million page views a month from the UAE and tends to be used more in the audience interest areas of Football, Video Sharing, Mobile Phones and Consumer Electronics.

Search Engine Market Share

Search engine market share in the UAE is led by Google with an 89.9% share, followed by Bing and Yahoo with 3.2% and 3% respectively. Ask and Conduit come last with 1.3% and 0.9% respectively. The top two searches in the UAE are “Dubai” and “Facebook” and the search term “Dubai” is most highly used with the term “mall” which represents a search for “Dubai Mall” and most people already associate Dubai with a rich and rewarding shopping experience.

Ecommerce

In a recent survey 31% of UAE consumers claimed that they online shop online for products that are not available from offline shops and 52% of online shoppers in the UAE said that they spend less than 5% of their monthly spending online. The fact that UAE retailers and stores have failed to embrace online opportunities is blamed for the slow online revenue increases although the internet consumer is increasingly ready. This represents tremendous potential for internet marketers to take advantage of the gap left by UAE stores. Security is also been reported as a big issue for UAE internet consumers so internet marketers should align themselves with a trusted online security software and potentially seek “Trusted Site” approval.

Mobile Internet

There are reported to be more than 11 million mobile phone users in the UAE which represents a mobile penetration rate of 133%. This figure has reduced somewhat over the last 4 years from a more than 200% mobile penetration rate due to the rapid increase in the population due to the influx of foreign workers into an ever expanding economy. The UAE is soon to be the first country in the Middle East to implement an LTE (long term evolution) broadband network allowing mobile broadband speeds of up to 150Gbps. This presents internet marketers with a mobile broadband user easily able to view and download a variety of rich media content. It also suggests a high future uptake of mobile apps and add-ons that can help to spread lead generation content across fixed broadband and mobile broadband markets.