Ramadan Marketing Campaigns Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

Ramadan is the optimal season for every business to thrive, and the prime way they can reach their goals for the season is by using everlasting Ramadan marketing campaign ideas. This year, the holy Islamic month begins in April 2022 and preparations have already started.

The Competition Is Fierce! Are You Ready?

Ramadan in the digital world is actually an advertising competition where most businesses aim to win the season and make the best trend for the season before a second campaign from another brand takes over. Marketers compete on who makes the best Ramadan marketing campaign that catches people’s minds.

On the other hand, people do not switch channels or scroll through ads anymore. Instead, they watch to the end in order to keep track of the season’s trends. For people and digital marketers alike, it’s the busiest season of the year.

In addition, if your brand succeeds at creating a memorable campaign once, it can last until the next Ramadan season! And if you’re too good, it lasts for years and years ahead.

The key? Catchy, relatable, and emotionally triggering: (Nostalgia, laughter, sadness) campaigns.

No further search for Ramadan digital campaign ideas is needed since they’re all here ▼

Content Discussion:

• How to Plan Your Ramadan Marketing Campaigns
• Ramadan Advertisements During Lockdown 2020

How to Plan Your Ramadan Marketing Campaigns

Since content is the core of any advertising campaign, it is imperative to pay more attention to some basics to produce professional and distinctive content. Check the below 5 keys to mastering content in the next Ramadan marketing season. 👇

1. Prepare Your Industry Insights Ahead of Time

Use the insights and previous years’ Ramadan peaks to prepare your Ramadan promotion ideas ahead. Make accurate and data-driven Ramadan marketing campaigns that are prone to go viral using industry insights.

Last year’s Ramadan took place during COVID-19, but it hasn’t stopped people from shopping and practicing their traditional celebrations normally.

The highest active regions during Ramadan 2020 are the MENA and the Asia Pacific, according to Statista. 👇

Heads up: 🔔

Open your eyes to industry peaks during Ramadan. Yes, your planning doesn’t stop at collecting insights and planning ahead. It actually never ends.

You’ve got to stay attentive to the topics people search for during the month. It’s a great way to inspire your creative Ramadan social media campaign ideas during the month.

In addition, make use of social media tools like Google Trends and Social Bakers. Tools like these help you keep an eye on real-time people’s interests and help you optimize your approaches throughout the month. YouTube’s trending feed should also be beneficial during the month.

2. Plan Your Advertising Approach

So you’ve leveraged the data-driven insights and now you have laid a background and a forecast of how the season should probably go. The next step is to plan your advertising approach. To plan accordingly, you must take a look at Ramadan’s top advertising themes.

Ramadan ads all-time winner cards:

• Including catchy folklore songs from the heart of the culture.
• Celebrities who are starring in TV shows during the month.
• Playing on the nostalgia factor — the old-is-gold theme.
• Remaking old ever-loved songs into an advert for your brand.
• Presenting family love and togetherness has gained more power in the pandemic.

😍 Let’s watch together this emotional ad created by TATA Motors and launched in Ramadan 2019.

3. Study Your Audience

A study by scarletmedia showed six audience personalities appear each Ramadan. We break them down in detail:

1. The Dedicated Watcher: This personality is a lover of ads, gaming videos, and broadcasts, and his major views take place from mobile.
2. The Spiritual Faster: This audience personality mostly uses his mobile device to complete his worshipping habits, from Quraan reading to Haj and Umrah searches.
3. The Foodie Personality: Loves watching food videos and recipes online. Most searches in Ramadan include restaurants or new Iftar and Sohour recipes.
4. The Ramadan Groomer: This searches for beauty tips and salons and cares to look at his/her best during Iftar and Sohour gatherings. Also cares about healthy eating during Ramadan.
5. The Traveler: Some people cook, some care about their looks and health, and some spend it gaming and watching videos. But this personality searches for traveling destinations, hotel bookings, and the best travel trips. Usually, this kind of search increase to the approach of Eid break.
6. Gift Givers: Those are the shopper spirits. Usually likes to shop for Ramadan and Eid gifts for their loved ones and care to plan their Eid looks and celebrations ahead.

Hint: 🎩

YouTube plays a major role in Ramadan, from people watching missed TV drama episodes to cooking recipes and gaming viewers. It’s the mutual platform for all six personalities.

4. Determine Your Media Plan

There are particularly four concepts you want to focus on while planning your Ramadan marketing strategy

• Attract new audiences into noticing your content and liking your brand
• Influence a purchasing decision to those in the consideration phase by emphasizing their buying intent
• Assist those who already purchased from you and have shown loyalty to your brand

While planning the media plan for your Ramadan social media posts, you need to focus on your audience’s 3 stages and work on attracting new customers, influencing casually browsing visitors, and assisting the loyalty of already loyal customers.

The easiest way to do this is to start by attracting the foodies, gamers, and spiritual fasts at the beginning of Ramadan. And as you move closer to Eid, target travelers, givers, and groomers, that’s when they’re thinking of giving gifts and makeup and traveling tips and products.

Check this bar chart presenting the search percentage for each category in Ramadan 2019

 

Ramadan last year was the most digital season of all. eCommerce applications download percentage increased by 13% year-on-year during the first couple of weeks while grocery delivery applications got a 78% year-on-year increase.

Key learning points for retailers this Ramadan:

• • Get eCommerce ready if you haven’t already.
  • Use our special app-building integration to build your own eCommerce app.
  • Enhance the performance of your website to be more user-friendly.

👉 Check also: Top 10 Digital Marketing Tips To Grow Your Business In Ramadan

Ramadan Marketing Campaigns During Lockdown 2020

Ramadan in 2020 began around 23 April and ended on 23 May, in the midst of quarantine, so advertisements were dominated by emotional sadness that spoke to people’s hearts but still tried to spark motivation.

View the below collection of ads created in the midst of the pandemic:

• • • • Brand: Switz’s
      • Country: United Arab Emirates

• • • Brand: Etisalat
    • Country: Egypt

Etisalat Egypt combined four of our ever-winning Ramadan promotion ideas: the nostalgia for unattainable togetherness, a top favorite celebrity, and a catchy song. 

They knew how sad people were, having to spend the holy month away from their families, so they eased the pain on everyone with a sarcastic, funny ad that makes everything feel “fine” just as the song implies. It sure was tricky as it is now, but Etisalat Egypt handled it perfectly.

• • •  Brand: Almosafer
    • Country: Saudi Arabia

This Ramadan we can visit our families while keeping a distance, wearing our masks, and keeping the sanitizer nearby. So yes, life has started to take a normal shape with the surrounding pandemic without the panic that took place in 2020.

Therefore, make sure you plan your approach perfectly. You have the choice of whether to mention the tricky health conditions in your Ramadan marketing campaign or choose to avoid them. To make that decision, we recommend looking at how brands plan their campaigns today in your country.

Ramadan Marketing Campaigns in 2022 (StartUps)

This season, we saw marketing during Ramadan from both well-known and established brands and startups; we saw several new firms compete in the Ramadan race of advertisements with amazing campaigns.
It is unquestionably a great triumph for a startup to be able to compete against all of these major companies during Ramadan and get notoriety. So, today, we’ll show you the best Ramadan marketing campaigns for Startups that have released advertisements throughout Ramadan.

• • • Breadfast

Breadfast is one good example of ideas for Ramadan campaigns. It’s one of the most well-known startups nowadays.
Since the brand’s inception, everyone has adored it, and many have even commented on how good the service is. Breadfast has already impressed us with advertisements, and it has designed advertisements that are able to reach the intended demographic.
Because the brand had such a good debut, it had to participate in Ramadan, and we can say that its advertisement is lighthearted and innovative.

• • • Rabbit

Rabbit is a grocery delivery service that also delivers cosmetics, electronics, and other items. It was launched in October 2021 and has been a tremendous success ever since. This is Rabbit’s first Ramadan campaign, and it’s called Rabbit In 20 Minutes. The campaign is one of Ramadan brand activations and includes two copies, both of which are quite imaginative and capable of capturing your attention in a matter of seconds.

Rabbit solved this problem with their advertising, which promotes how Rabbit can deliver your purchase in only 20 minutes, while everyone struggles with the delivery service during Ramadan.

• • • Healthy and Tasty

Healthy and Tasty is a supermarket with locations throughout Egypt, including Nasr City, Maadi, Downtown, Shoubra, and others.
This Ramadan, the brand, is one of the startups that took part in a unique and attention-getting advertisement. The advertisement is built on a jingle, and its concept was easily understood by the target audience, as many individuals struggle with diet and healthy eating habits throughout Ramadan.

Final Words

As we previously mentioned, Ramadan’s engagement and activity rates remain for the rest of the year and probably the following one if your campaigns are powerful enough.

To achieve that, you can walk on the same path as your previous year’s Ramadan campaign (only if it was a success) so when people see it, they’d relate to the past year’s campaign and connect the dots, more like storytelling marketing.

In addition, this means that your brand’s presence isn’t only counted during the holy month, but before, during, and after it. Planning ahead is pretty crucial to preserve your conversions.