How MENA Is Shaping to Become the New Marketing Hub by 2025

How MENA Is Shaping to Become the New Marketing Hub by 2025

Number of projects send to agencies in MENA from Sortlist

Most wanted marketing expertises in MENA

If there is one word to describe this region in marketing is: potential.”

— Karim Saadoune, MENA sales manager Sortlist

DUBAI, UAE, June 1, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Sortlist investigated how marketing trends in MENA are making it a hub for both clients and marketing agencies alike, but also forecast what the next years will look like based on the current growth trend.

For many years, the MENA region (Middle East and Northern Africa) has been overshadowed and overlooked in the world of business and marketing. With over 90% of companies

around the world focusing their marketing and business expansion in Western Europe and North America, international agencies didn’t used to turn to MENA for investments, or to advertise in.

However, things seem to be taking a turn…(and your Instagram feed has probably made you notice)

In recent years, the region has seen exponential growth in the world of marketing and is currently the second-fastest growing market of eCommerce in the world. For example, digital advertising expenditure was at 1,156 million USD in 2018 compared to the 5,579 million USD expected this year.

At Sortlist, this is something we have observed over the past few years in our own data via thousands of agency projects in the region.

Not only have we seen this significant growth in marketing expertise investments via the number of projects we receive in the region (an increase of 285% in 3 years) but we can also notice it via the 374% growth in MRR in the past 3 years that now accounts for 5% of our total business revenue.

Growth of MENA in Numbers:
- Between January 2018 and January 2022, our top 5 countries in the MENA region (UAE, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt) went from 63 total projects to 7719; a 12,152% growth in just 3 years.
- In the past 3 years, Sortlist went from 277 claimed agencies in our top 5 MENA countries, to 2484 in January 2022. A 796% increase in the same amount of time.
- The top current top 5 marketing expertises in the UAE, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt:
1. Advertising
2. Event
3. Social media
4. Digital strategy
5. Branding & Positioning
- With 637 total digital strategy projects in 2020, and 795 in 2021, Sortlist saw an increase of almost 25% of projects in just one year.
- The food industry is one of the most demanding industries in marketing. After just the 1st quarter of 2022, Sortlist already received 59 projects coming from the food industry; the largest amount ever received in previous years in the same time period.

Source: https://www.sortlist.co.uk/blog/mena-marketing-industry/