Effective Marketing in Oman
Marketing is not to run ads or to sell a product and it is definitely not to invent something new.
Marketing is simply to make change and impact. If you’re not proud of the change you’re making, then you aren’t marketing right.
Effective marketing is providing solutions with the right work for the right people in the right way to make an impact and a powerful change.
Real marketing, is the marketing that adds value to people’s life and spreads by word of mouth. Especially in a market like Oman with only 3 million citizens as potential clients.
If you need to persuade someone to take action, you’re doing marketing. Even taking a selfie on your social media profile or trying to talk your way out of a speeding ticket, you’re marketing.
Marketing is much more advanced than advertising, In fact, marketing has nothing at all to do with money.
If someone says, “I don’t do marketing,” they most likely mean, “I don’t spend money on ads.” And those are very different things.
Our culture is driven by marketers. The links we click, the shows we watch are all marketing artifacts.
As soon as we take responsibility for the marketing we do and the marketing that’s done to us, we have a chance to change things to the better and add value to people’s lives.
Marketing in a small and young market like Oman is not easy if you don’t go lean and flexible. In such a small market, launching a new product without thoroughly studying the market needs is not a good idea.
In Oman many companies fail in marketing because they do not research the market’s needs, and do not follow a methodology, which would involve testing and iterating the market response.
Many Omani companies focus on maximizing profit and advertising to get direct profits without understanding the importance of marketing the brand name and story before spending heavily on advertising.
International brands boycotting Facebook
Hundreds of companies have started to halt advertising on Facebook and Instagram as part of month-long boycott which began on Wednesday 1st of July, according to the civil rights groups behind the protest.
The boycott is over the social network’s handling of hate speech and misinformation.
Based on market research, 3 of the 25 largest spenders on Facebook ads have publicly confirmed their plans to pause marketing on Facebook for the month of July.
Research revealed that these top 25 businesses account for an estimated $2 billion of Facebook ad spending, or nearly 3% of Facebook’s 2019 revenues.
Don't buy fake likes and comments for your social media page!
💡 Why pages with 20k+ likes don’t even have more than 2k+ likes?
💡 Is your DM spammed with Influencer accounts?
💡 Ever wondered why Accounts with more than 200k likes votes for your stories?
🔍 Well, these are the aftermath of users who try to artificially inflate their stats! Fake Likes and comments are all over the place and it’s beyond annoying!
💯 Facebook’s latest legal action is great! They will be taking down the Spam account, Fake likes, and comments!
👎🏼 This may help you short term but it’s always advisable to stay away from fake engagements! Create & Curate potential audiences with good strategy!
✔️ Stay away from the risk and start building your online presence authentically with Mirrors LLC for amazing social media strategies and campaigns!
Should You Use Instagram Stories for Your Business?
Instagram Stories have been around for a while now, and the effect of it is huge.. but businesses in Oman are not using it much as yet. The reason could be that it has left many brands, influencers, and content creators confused: should we be using Instagram Stories for business?
In our opinion, since Instagram in General and Stories, in particular, are huge in Oman Social Media, If you’re not using Instagram Stories for business, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity. Not only are Instagram Stories fun and creative, but they’re one of the best ways to grow your engagement, build brand awareness, and even drive sales!
Social Media Marketing
Yes, you need Social Media Marketing.
It might be an obvious statement in a few years, but for now it is a period of transition, in which the old internet generation and new internet generation still discuss how were things before and how they are now. In fact, for renowned brands the Social Media marketing is growing with a little help of the struggles of the past.
The free access to promote the brands made those names reach every corner of the world, but also increased their efforts to renew their products/services constantly, considering that their competitors got the same benefits.
It isn’t only about the free accessibility, the reason to be on Social Media is that “everyone is there”, looking for something. You are able to target your audience, guide them to your website and boost your content among other tools available.
The Social Media channels aren’t only good for renowned brands, it can also be an effective tool for new companies, because of the interaction with the customers that can provide them with valuable information such as, what products they are buying, what are their hobbies, what kind of content they share etc. That allows the companies to customize their products and services to the trends, therefore gaining visibility in this new world.
Within the last 5 years people in Oman have been using Social Media for business matters as much as for their personal use.
Advertising Agencies had a sudden switch from their previous majority of press media jobs to Social Media due to the rapid growth of this market.
Everything You Need to Know About Facebook's New Upcoming Cryptocurrency
June 25, 2019
Facebook has just revealed that they are working on releasing a new cryptocurrency to the market of digital currencies. This cryptocurrency is known to be as Libra and is expected to launch publicly to the market sometime in the beginning of 2020. To confirm this, Facebook has already created their own White Paper on Libra, which speculates everything that the public needs to know about this currency. Once it’s published on the White Paper the information in there cannot be undone.
Click here for the link to Libra’s White Paper
Facebook’s new cryptocurrency will be having partnerships with many of the big known companies such as Visa, PayPal and Uber so this will help boost their currency out to the market very effectively. What’s great about Libra is it will let you purchase things or transfer funds to people with nearly no fees at all! Libra will also be available at local exchange points such as grocery stores to be able to cash out your Libra online. Facebook has confirmed that it will have its own Calibra wallet that will be built into Facebook messenger and WhatsApp as well. With this, it will increase its awareness of the currency drastically through international countries like Oman. Majority of the population in Oman use WhatsApp as a source of communication, and by having Libra be built into WhatsApp can be quite effective for the sake of awareness. Not only that, Libra will also be used to spend using other third-party wallet apps which will help increase flexibility when using the currency and to be used in the most efficient way without any complication. Facebook did not confirm if whether Libra will be available in the United States only or whether it would be available for use internationally. Cryptocurrencies are seen as the future of currencies and since many are not yet aware of the idea of digital currencies, by having safe online transactions between corporates and individuals here in Oman and other international countries can help push the awareness of cryptocurrencies out there. We are hoping to get more news of that sometime soon.
Sources:
Instagram update will appear influencers in your feed even if you DON’T follow them
With the new Instagram update, influencers and will be forced to appear in your feed even if you don’t follow them. This is because Instagram is now updating so advertisers can pay them to promote their branded content.
Instagram is having this update so that advertisers can promote their content and products to the users feed and will be displayed in both the users posts and stories as shown above. Previously, influencers had to use hashtags to ensure that they were being paid by their sponsorship, and they were of course many ways to do this but this was one of the known methods of doing this. With this new update, Instagram wants this content to be specialized so it can be easier for both the influencer and the sponsor to push their way through out to most users as possible. What has been causing the huge fuss about this new update is that if users only follow friends and family, influencers can still be able to appear on your feed even if you don’t follow these users. For instance, a brand could pay to show you a sponsored post by Will Smith for instance whether you follow him or not and whether the users account is private or not. This could be a huge win situation for Omani influencers and company corporates in Oman to have their awareness be spread to a much broader audience, but can be quite bothersome for users who choose to keep their circle limited to just family and friends. As Instagram explained in a post announcing the new format, “With branded content ads, businesses have an opportunity to tell their brand stories through creators’ voices, reach new audiences and measure impact. Using the tools available on the Facebook ads platform, businesses can reach targeted audiences beyond the people who follow the brand and creator accounts. And by running ads, they’ll have access to measurement and can optimize and test their campaigns against their set goals for more effective marketing campaigns.”
Black Mirror TV series to highlight topics related to humanity's relationship to technology
Season 5 of Black Mirror has finally been confirmed on Netflix and will be officially released on June 5, 2019, and fans are thriving for its release! For those who don’t know what Black Mirror is, it’s a sci-fi anthology series that goes to show how technology can be threatening to our lives, and shows how impactful and dangerous it could be if misused. Black Mirror guides to show its viewers some of the worst-case scenarios of how technology could drive our lives to the near future if we people of the current generation are not cautious enough, and despite it being an entertainment show, this is definitely eye opening for many of us viewers. It’s useful to observe and take in some of the important highlights that the show dives deep into and how some of the episodes could have a possibility of coming to reality. The new upcoming season will have Miley Cryus cast in one of the episodes where it would be about a lonely teenager that yearns to connect with her favorite pop star who would be Miley Cyrus here but her charmed existence wouldn't be as quite as it appears it to be.
Many individuals here in Oman have mentioned how some of the great shows on Netflix are not offered to some regions and Oman tends to be one of those regions. Well, we have exciting news for some Omanis but Black Mirror will be available to watch here in Oman by the time it is released on June 5th! So expect to have your streaming devices, membership plans, and snacks ready! We are just a couple of weeks away from its release! Below is the trailer of the latest upcoming season of Black Mirror.
Trailers of the previous seasons for viewers who have not caught up with the show and would like to know more about the show.
Season 3
Season 4
Production of A'Saffa Foods Athan Al Maghrib Ramadan Video
May 14, 2019
We started working with A’Saffa Foods – one of the major food providers in Oman. The task assigned to us was to create a 10-second spot ad for Ramadan.
During the month of Ramadan, it is the most time of the year that Oman TV is viewed, and the reason behind that is to keep track of the Athan Al Maghrib where Muslims break their fast and Oman TV tends to be their great reliance for announcing that.
Because of that, this tends to be the best, most crucial time to work on an awareness ad. Having to place an ad during this time of the month, especially in that time is by far one of the most expensive and effective approach for food companies such as A’Saffa so we wanted to be creative with this ad.
During this time, viewers would be waiting to break their fast as they watch the commercials to hear the “Athan” which is the best opportunity to show the products of A’Saffa chicken is the best quality of food and chicken you can get. You may think do people still watch TV? Well, in Oman, it’s almost like a tradition here that every household during Ramadan has Oman TV channel on especially before “Maghrib” Since all eyes are on TV during that moment, it is important that we consider making this commercial appealing to our audience, we had to make sure we would be creative with this and fast!
- The first 3 seconds of the ad spot, we had Mutrah one of the most well-known areas in Muscat display as the background to have the touch of the Omani culture. Alongside we had a voice over of: “We wish you an acceptable fast and a delicious Iftar meal”
- From 3-6 second of our ad spot, we created a nice transition twist to our plot, as we display the Mutrah Corniche as the viewer being there, we then zoom out of Mutrah, which then transitions, to being a painting of Mutrah instead. So as the viewer first sees the ad he/she would not know it’s a painting until they watch the next 3-6 seconds of the ad. As it zooms out, we then have delicious visuals of special dishes presented alongside with the Mutrah painting being as the background. We thought this would be a great technique to have our viewers ready for their meals and as a way to increase the viewers appetite before their first meal, at the same time this gives credit to A’Saffa for providing the best quality of food and best source of chicken.
- Finally, from second 6-10 we display the credits of A’saffa foods as the concluding of our ad spot.
Check out of our ad spot below!