Facebook is the most popular marketing channel companies invested in last year, Boost

Whatsapp will blowup, as 70% of business leaders agreed that Whatsapp marketing will grow massively next year, according to the survey

Boost, a Leading Performance Marketing Consultancy, 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 comprises 9 sectors namely trade, industry, tourism, financial services, retail, real estate, marketing, auto, agriculture, consulting, education, manufacturing, NGO, logistics and hospitality.

The companies’ number of employees range between 1-10 constitutes 33% of the sample, 50-200 employees constitutes 15.2% of the sample and 10.7% of companies have more than 1000 employees. In addition, 22.3% of respondents have employees range between 10-50 persons and 18.8% of companies include 200-1000 employees. Furthermore, 52.7% of respondent companies have international presence, meanwhile, 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 that companies invested in last year, followed by LinkedIn by 20% of responders, and only 12% of CEOs see that Instagram was the most marketing channel. Additionally, only 36% include Google in their marketing toolbox.

By asking responders about investing in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), only 40% of the responders answered yes.

Most business leaders believe that Facebook will still be an effective marketing tool next year with 52% predicting that itsimportance will increase.

Moreover, a total of 40% of business leaders predict that Tiktok will be the fastestgrowing channel in Egypt next year, meanwhile, whatsapp getting 39% of the votes.

The survey highlighted that Whatsapp will blowup, as 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 effectiveness of video, its high user engagement and its accessibilityacross a number of emerging netwroks.

The survey noted that 33% of responders see that Linkedin came on the top of means where they get the best lead generation campaigns they have ran and the channles that are bringing in the best leads, meanwhile, 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 result 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 with a focus on US, Canada and MENA markets. Deep expertise in B2B growth strategies. Over and beyond, long ecommerce heritage delivering consistent results.