Boost, a leading marketing performance tracker, has conducted a survey where hundreds of Egyptian CEOs and Business leaders speak about their marketing efforts.
The survey included 312 CEOs and business leaders in several sectors, namely trade, industry, tourism, financial services, retail, real estate, marketing, auto, agriculture, consulting, education, NGO, logistics, and hospitality.
The participating companies whose employees range between 1-10 constitute 33% of the sample, 22.3% of respondents have 10-15 employees, 50-200 individual companies constitute 15.2% of the sample, 18.8% of companies have 200-1,000 employees, and the rest 10.7% of participating companies have more than 1,000 employees. Furthermore, 52.7% of respondent companies have international presence, while 47.3% of the responders have only local presence.
The survey said that 20% of responders seem to rate their current marketing efforts as less than 2 out of 5.
It mentioned that 64% of responders see that Facebook is the most popular marketing channel last year, followed by LinkedIn by 20% of responders, and only 12% of CEOs see that Instagram was the most popular marketing channel. Additionally, only 36% include Google in their marketing toolbox.
By asking respondents about investing in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), only 40% of the respondents answered yes.
Most business leaders believe that Facebook will still be an effective marketing tool next year with 52% predicting that its importance will increase.
Moreover, a total of 40% of business leaders predict that Tiktok will be the fastest growing channel in Egypt next year, with whatsapp getting 39% of the votes.
The survey highlighted that 70% of business leaders agreed that Whatsapp marketing will grow massively next year.
The responders believe that video marketing is exploding. A whopping 68% of CEOs are planning on using more videos marketing next year than they did this year.
They elaborated that this is mostly driven by the video’s effectiveness, high user engagement, and accessibly across a number of emerging networks.
The survey noted that 33% of respondents see that Linkedin comes on the top of means where they get the best lead generation campaigns, while 29% of them believe that Facebook came as a close second. Nevertheless, 15% replied that none of the online channels are driving quality leads for their business.
A shocking 60% of the businesses that reported doing online lead generation campaigns confessed that they do not know their cost per lead.
The survey said that 60% of organizations ran their marketing with an in-house team, while 40% used an outsourced agency. Accordingly, 60% of organizations that are outsourcing their marketing expressed plans to in-house their marketing in the near future.
Only 51% of organizations reported integrating their marketing campaigns with a customer relationship management software.
This shows the huge potential of such technology to highly improve campaign results and tracking.
Regarding the responders’ biggest marketing challenge, 42% of CEOs reported that accurate targeting is their biggest pain. This is reflected in the quality of leads and poor campaign results they sometimes get.
Creative designs and messaging was reported as the second pain point for most organizations with 20% reporting it as their biggest issue.
On tracking results, 17% of respondents explain that tracking marketing results is an issue they constantly have to deal with.
Furthermore, campaign optimization ranked 4Th with 14% choosing it as their major pain.
Sherif Makhlouf, CEO of Boost, Adjunct Professor of Digital Strategy at the American University in Cairo and member of Egyptian Junior Business Association, said, “We were very interested in this survey to explore the digital marketing tools being used by the business community in Egypt and how effective they were as well as their outlook with regard to the future of digital marketing in the upcoming year.”
Makhlouf added, “Boost conducted this survey on the occasion of 10 years of helping leadership grow their businesses, with global experience focusing on the US, Canada, and MENA markets. Over and beyond, a long e-commerce heritage delivering consistent results.”
