Creating a viral following can seem like a daunting prospect. It’s a fluid, mysterious, ever-changing landscape out there—but we’ve got you covered. Read on for the latest word in securing massive online marketing results.
There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. Technology—and the Internet in particular—have allowed founders with good ideas and very little capital to start companies from scratch and grow extremely quickly, reaching millions of users. The vast majority of successful startups have used scalable, online channels to achieve rapid growth.
The problem is that the majority of the advice circulating in the startup/marketing world comes from the U.S. While this can be a great resource for developing your growth strategy, what is currently working in the U.S. may not work in Bahrain. Why? At the moment, Bahrain’s online landscape is radically different from countries with huge populations, advanced e-commerce economies, and deeply ingrained content-marketing cultures.
For Bahrain’s startups, this represents both a hindrance and an opportunity. In this article, I’ll look at the growth channels with the most potential in Bahrain today, and offer some ideas about how to take advantage of them.
What are Online Growth Channels?
- There exist a limited number of online growth channels on that scale. Here are the main ones:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- SEM / Display Advertising
- Social Advertising
- Viral and Word of Mouth
- Sales / Partnerships
Other channels, which tend to be slightly less scalable in this region, include public relations, e-mail marketing, affiliate programs, and influencer outreach. All channels have the potential to become viable means to accelerated growth, and they often overlap.
The problem is that the majority of the advice circulating in the startup/marketing world comes from the U.S.
How to Choose the Most Effective Channels?
There are two key factors to consider when assessing growth channels.
- Is the channel appropriate for your product? For example, if your product is not naturally social, focusing on viral as your main growth channel probably won’t get you very far.
- How saturated is the channel currently?
The single most effective strategy to gain customers quickly is to discover growth channels that no one else is using. Being first in any given channel is usually the best tactic for explosive growth.
This is because all online marketing channels degrade in effectiveness over time. As any single channel becomes competitive and saturated, costs rise and click-through rates decrease, which means higher user-acquisition costs.
With this in mind, here are my top four choices for growth channels in Bahrain for you to test out and explore.
1. Middle Tail and Local SEO
In more mature markets, companies constantly compete for that coveted number-one spot in Google’s search rankings. High-value, fat head keywords like ‘car insurance’ are extremely hard to rank for. As a result, standard advice suggests ranking for many lower-volume, less competitive, long tail keywords like ‘car insurance for tour guides.’
In Bahrain, organic search competition is far less competitive, and anyone with some SEO chops should be able to rank for more common, middle tail keywords in any given niche, especially if the business is for local services.
For example, when I was editing Gulf Broadcast’s local information blog, mybahrain.me, we created a very simple list post called ‘10 best gyms in Bahrain.’ The post took a couple of hours to research and write. Once posted, it immediately shot to the top of Google for the common keyword ‘gyms in Bahrain’, and quickly started receiving more traffic than the homepage. This shows how low SEO competition currently is in Bahrain and demonstrates the huge potential it offers to the canny marketer.
Making It Work for You
One thing to bear in mind is that search volume in Bahrain is low. Before you jump into any SEO strategy in Bahrain, you have to be certain you can get enough relevant search traffic to make it viable. This will depend very much upon your niche. Think creatively about terms you can rank for that will give you enough search volume to scale.
2. Arabic Content Marketing
This one follows SEO. Sure, a content marketing strategy will improve your organic traffic—but the real the power of content is in transforming the viewer into a customer. Very, very few companies do content marketing in Bahrain, and competition for content is extremely low. For Arabic content, it is almost nonexistent.
Bahrain’s online landscape is radically different from countries with huge populations, advanced e-commerce economies, and deeply ingrained content-marketing cultures.
For my money, useful and sharable Arabic content is the single biggest potential growth channel in Bahrain. Many startups go for 100% English in their communications, and it is easy to see why: decent Arabic content is much harder and more expensive to produce, but if it suits your product, it is worth the time and effort.
One of our Bahrain-based clients, the Al Ghareeb Medical Center, was able to go viral with Arabic medical advice videos. One video they produced received over 35,000 likes on Instagram. This allowed the clinic to reach an entirely new audience, and to hugely increase new patients and inquiries at the clinic.
Making It Work for You
A good place to start with content strategy is helping to solve your target customers’ problems. Once you have a handle on this, draft your strategy in Arabic; don’t create it in English and then translate. Research your target market on social media, and you will most likely find that the Arabic content being shared is different from the English.
Local social media thrives on humor, so if you’re a B2C company, experiment with adding humor to your campaigns. It could be your secret weapon.
3. Digital Advertising: Google Display Network
Many startups have scaled their business with paid traffic. While this is undoubtedly a channel every company should consider, it is also the most saturated. As a result, the cost of acquiring a customer though digital advertising has risen drastically over the last few years. You need to test and chose your channels wisely.
Facebook has extremely powerful targeting options, but since the platform is so easy to use, competition is extreme. This doesn’t mean you should ignore Facebook however. For B2C companies it’s still the platform with the largest and most targeted reach and a well optimized campaign will get you results.
The smarter money is in Google’s ad networks, which in Bahrain are still relatively uncompetitive. Adwords is definitely cost-effective, but low search volumes make scaling tricky. For the best mix of cost and volume, Google’s Display Network currently looks to be a good bet for companies in the growth stage.
Making It Work for You
In a saturated marketplace, getting the most out of paid traffic requires expert knowledge. While it might be easy to run Facebook ads yourself, consider hiring a digital advertising professional who will be able optimize your campaigns. This can make the difference between positive and negative ROI from your ad spend. If you are not hiring a specialist, you’ll need to be up to speed with advanced targeting options and ad-testing best practices.
4. Viral
For startups, viral marketing means getting your existing users to refer other people to your product. Creating viral loops inside your product can drive huge growth with very low customer-acquisition costs. Viral loops work by leveraging distribution platforms like e-mail and social media to reach the friends and followers of your existing users.
Making It Work for You
Understanding which platforms your potential customers use is the first step. Once you have identified the key platforms, you can design referral or invitation systems that suit the context. Newer platforms with many users (that are still reasonably novel) are a good place to start. Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat are popular platforms currently seeing high levels of engagement that few marketers are harnessing creatively.
When I worked on the photography app Spark Mode, the simple introduction of auto Instagram hashtags and follow buttons inside the app drove thousands of new followers in a matter of weeks. With viral loops, a few minor technology changes can have more impact than an army of social media managers.
In Bahrain, competitions are a reliable go-to tactic. Try introducing a viral loop in your competitions rather than just a simple sign-up box.
What compels people to share will depend on your industry, but it’s usually a complicated mix of service design, entertainment, value, and branding. This means testing different copy, removing hurdles, and providing excellent customer service with a view to optimizing every stage of the customer journey.