Here at Muslim Ad Network we have discussed extensively how to promote your business- Islamic or mainstream- to Muslims.

Today we want to take a step back and offer quick but efficient guidance to those of you who are looking to start a business targeting Muslim consumers.

This will take shape in a rapid-fire quick list for you. We recommend that you only use this as a guideline to help you navigate through the steps you need to take. You must make a thorough investigation into each step on your own.

This guide is slightly based on North America but the steps can still be implemented globally with some adjustments and of course, different organizations will be involved.

So here we go:

1. Refine Your Idea

If you’re thinking about starting a business to sell products or services to Muslims, you likely already have an idea of what market you want to enter. Have a look at what current brand leaders in the industry are doing and figure out how you can do it better. 

If your business can deliver something your competition doesn’t , you’ve got a solid idea and are already on the right track.

Know Why You are Doing It

It is a no-brainer that you need to know why you are launching your business. Yet you may get caught up in the excitement and forget this part. Decide between the business serving a “personal why” or a “marketplace why”. A “marketplace why” allows your business a larger scope than a business that is designed to serve a “personal why”.

2. Conduct Market Research and Competitive Analysis

Market research helps you find customers for your business. Competitive analysis helps you make your business unique. Combine them to find a competitive advantage for your business.

Use Market Research to Find Customers

Your market research should uncover Muslim consumer behavior and economic trends to confirm and improve your business idea.

It’s crucial to understand your Muslim consumer base from the outset. It is one of the most complex audiences across industries. Market research will help you reduce risks even while your business is still just an idea.

We recommend you read: The One Reason Every Brand is Failing to Capitalize on the Muslim Consumer Market Effectively

Utilize demographic data to better understand opportunities and limitations for gaining Muslim customers: age, gender, interests, etc.

Once you have the demographic data look into the following:

• The level of desire for your product or service
• The market size for what you are your offering
• Economic indicators: income range and employment rate
• Location: if you are opening a brick and mortar business
• The level of market saturation
• The current average prices for what you are offering

Use Competitive Analysis for Market Advantage

Use competitive analysis to learn from businesses competing for the same Muslim audiences. This will help you gain a competitive edge that offers you sustainable revenue.

Your competitive analysis must identify your competition by product line or service and market segment. Zoom into the following aspects of the competitive landscape:

• Market share
• Strength, weaknesses, opportunity, and threat (SWOT)
• Realistic barriers that may hinder your entrance to market
• Indirect competitors who may impact your success

3. Write Your Business Plan

A solid business plan is the foundation your business needs. You can write a business plan quickly and efficiently with a business plan template or even use a business plan software like LivePlan.

Use your business plan to guide you through each stage of starting and managing your business. It’ll become a roadmap for how to structure, run, and grow your new business. 

It will help you to think through the key elements of your business. But a good business plan can also help you get funding or attract new business partners. 

Pick a Business Plan Format

Most business plans fall into one of two common categories: traditional or lean startup.

Traditional business plans are the most common. They use a standard structure and involve going into detail in each section. They require more work upfront and can be dozens of pages long.

Lean startup business plans also use a standard structure. However, they focus on summarizing only the most important points of the key elements. They can take you as little as one hour to write up and are typically only one page.

4. Assess Your Finances

Starting any business comes with its costs, so you need to decide on how to cover those costs.  You need to plan out how much you need to run your business plus maintain your standard of living for at least the next six months (especially if you are leaving your day job).

Don’t be one of those startups that fail because they run out of money before turning a profit. It’s never a bad idea to overestimate the amount of startup capital you need, as it can be a while before the business begins to bring in sustainable revenue.

Perform a Break-Even Analysis

A break-even analysis will help you determine when your company, product, or service will be profitable.

The formula is simple:

    Fixed Costs / (Average Price – Variable Costs) = Break-Even Point

You should use this formula as a tool that informs you about the minimum performance your business must achieve to avoid losing money. Break-even analysis will help you:

• Determine profitability: The amount of  revenue you need to generate to cover all expenses. 
• Price a product or service:  Understand the fixed rates, variable costs, and actual total cost.

5. Research the Best Place to Locate Your Business

It goes without saying that you will have to register your business, pay taxes, and get licenses and permits in the place you choose to locate your business. So make sure you research the most advantageous location for your business when it comes to tax relief, bureaucracy, etc.

You will also want to locate your business at a location where your Muslim target audience is well-represented. This is especially true if you are starting a brick-and-mortar business. In addition, you should consider business partners, the costs, benefits, and restrictions of different government agencies.

The most important variables to keep in mind besides the concentration of your targeted Muslim audience  are:

Region-Specific Business Expenses:

The following costs can vary significantly by location:

• standard salaries
• minimum wage laws
• property values
• rental rates
• business insurance rates
• utilities
• government licenses and fees

Local Zoning Ordinances

If you plan to work out of a physical property for your business, make sure it conforms to local zoning requirements.

All local governments zone neighborhoods as either commercial or residential. Zoning ordinances may restrict or entirely forbid specific kinds of businesses from operating in a certain area.

You will experience fewer zoning restrictions if you base your business out of your home, but zoning ordinances can still apply even then.

State and Local Taxes

As mentioned earlier, you need to consider the tax landscape for the state, county, and city. The following tax forms can differ significantly:

• Income tax
• sales tax
• property tax
• corporate taxes

Some states are popular for creating friendly tax environments for certain kinds of companies. That’s part of the reason why tech startups tend to concentrate in a certain area of the country.

Government Incentives

Some state and local governments offer special tax credits for small businesses. To learn more about this, visit local SBA Offices and local government websites.

The federal government also offers benefits to small businesses that contract with the government and are based in underutilized areas. Look into the Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZone) program to see if you qualify for preferential access to federal procurement opportunities.

6. Reach Out to Muslims

After you have taken care of the structural and functional aspects of the business, it’s time to start engaging the Muslim consumer. The first thing you need to do is manage your own expectations.

Have the Right Motivation and Intention

As a start-up, and especially as an Islamic entity, you must have the right intentions. Do not just go after Muslim audiences because currently the Muslim consumer market is booming.

Your motivation must be to offer your services for the betterment of Muslims. Today Muslims have so many needs and if you have the ability to fulfill those needs that (other) mainstream businesses can’t, you will not only be tapping into uncharted opportunities but will be helping out an entire society.

Find the Right Balance

Marketing to Muslims is complicated for the sole reason that Muslims are so diverse in culture and level of practice of the religion. You will need to strike the right balance when communicating with Muslims through your marketing.

It is recommended you use all the mainstream tools and strategies available as long as they are permissible in Islam but make sure that your brand’s messaging has a dominant Islamic identity.

Learn from Mistakes

Running a business that focuses on a complex niche like the Muslim market makes you prone to making mistakes. So keep going back to the drawing board, work, analyze, and repeat.

Keep your brand intent and personality alive when adjusting your messaging. 

You must also keep your eye open and learn from the mistakes of others. That way you can save yourself a whole lot of trouble.

Create an Online Marketing Mix to Target Muslims Consumers

Don’t make the mistake that many companies that target Muslims do: not having a written strategy specifically for targeting Muslim audiences.

An online marketing mix for Muslim audiences will help you shape every element of your Muslim digital marketing process. 

Keep in mind that every business model has different requirements. Your business model may be one that benefits completely from a purely online approach or may need a combination of online and offline tactics.

For more insight please read: What’s Your Online Marketing Mix for Your Halal Business?

It’s an article that will give you insight on how to build a business marketing model to gain Muslim customers solely through online methods. With a few adjustments, you will be able to utilize and implement it for your start-up business. You should be able to benefit from it even if your start-up business is not entirely based online.

You might also want to look at: How to Run a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign to Muslim Consumers

Stick to Islamic Advertising Principles

This part is very important for Muslim business owners for religious reasons. However, it is also important for mainstream businesses that are marketing to Muslims. Not adhering to the Islamic Advertising Principles might repel a large part of the Muslim audience that you are trying to attract.

One of the most important things in a Muslim’s life is not going about business as usual while being ignorant of his or her Creator’s rules and regulations. This is true for all his or her actions, including the business they run, and that would include how he or she advertises and promotes his or her products or services. It is easy for Muslim business owners to get lost in the unethical practices that are deemed standard in advertising. Since a Muslim’s goal is not just success in this world, we must keep the ultimate success in the hereafter in our consciousness at all times.

Source: What You Must Know About Islamic Advertising Principles

Work with Partners Who Know the Muslim Advertising Landscape

Whatever you do, do not go at it alone! You may be tempted to run ads on Google Ads and Facebook Ads, etc. However, this is not only expensive and time-consuming, it is absolutely inaccurate and not transparent. As a start-up, you do not want to waste, time, energy, and especially money.

Muslim Ad Network enables your advertising to reach this highly coveted Muslim online consumer. It’s a platform that helps your brand reach millions of Muslim consumers wherever they are browsing online, including the Internet’s most popular websites, social media platforms, mobile apps, and more.

You can effectively target ads to Muslim consumers instantly across thousands of websites and apps. Based on your input, MAN can configure advertising campaigns to a variety of objectives including brand lift, traffic acquisition, and generating sales.

Just imagine, a single platform that gives you access to over 250 million Muslim consumers every month. MAN has been advertising to Muslim audiences online for over a decade now, long before the Muslim market was recognized as the next big thing when it comes to growth.

MAN gets your ads on the biggest Muslim-based website. Your ads will also feature on the mainstream’s most powerful websites like CNN and ESPN.

They will also appear on social media platforms, apps, and more.

So let’s talk about working together to get your start-up in front of millions of relevant Muslim consumers online.

The post 6 Easy Steps Guide to Starting a Business Targeting Muslims appeared first on Muslim Ad Network.

Here at Muslim Ad Network, we care about you and your business. We are still offering free online advertising to help your business cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

I figured we are now in a situation where you, my dear reader, are not interested in some generic, actionable blog post. If we are to offer you content it should be practical to what you are going through.

Just remember, if you are healthy and well while reading this article, be grateful to The Almighty as your health is more important than any business you may own.

The title of this article is ‘Your Business After the COVID-19 Pandemic’ because I want you to focus on the future. After every hardship comes ease but there are phases in between and for your business, they look as follows:

Phase 1 Confusion and Anguish

This stage has passed already. It was at the time when you heard that COVID-19 was on its way and you did not know how to distinguish the truth from myth. The President/Prime Minister was playing things down while scientists were warning of the impending doom. The ever-changing counter-measures left you unsure of whether it was safe to keep your business running or if you needed to shut it down.

Phase 2 Acceptance & Adaption

At the time of writing this blog, we are in this phase. Almost everybody is working from home. Some businesses have made changes to their strategies. You might be that restaurant that now only serves takeaways instead of on-location. Or you might be the beauty salon owner that has decided to sell hair products online until the crisis goes away. Whatever you are doing, you are coping the best you can and the future can only be better than what it is now God willingly.

Phase 3 Preparing for a Bright Future

You can’t wait to get back to your normal life. Ow, wow, all those things you took for granted. You are itching to go. But hold on just a bit more, patience is a virtue. If you are still well and healthy, the time will come. However, you need to start preparing now. What is your game plan for when all of this is over? Have you learned anything from working from home, running your business differently than you would usually do, the compassion and utmost attention that you now show your customers? The list goes on and on. There are lessons from which you could come out of this shining on the other side as a human and as a business person.

Phase 4 When it’s All Over

You have taken the lessons you have learned, you are licking your wounds, and you are ready to take a breath of fresh air and get your business running again. After three months you are back to your old habits? Of course not. You have put your ideas, the lessons learned and inspiration down in your enhanced business plan or action plan and you are going to make sure you adhere to it. Because now your business is more than just a business. It is about community, it is about humanity facing adversity and coming together again to build our communities and offer our customers the best of who we are as people and as business owners.

Say: “Nothing shall ever happen to us except what Allah has ordained for us. He is our Maula (Lord, Helper and Protector).” And in Allah let the believers put their trust.

Quran 9:51
If you feel that free online advertising can help your business go past the four phases, contact us by filling in the form here: https://update.muslimadnetwork.com/small-business-signup/

The post Your Business After the COVID-19 Pandemic: Going Through The 4 Phases appeared first on Muslim Ad Network.

Without technological adaptation, no company can maintain its competitive advantage. Moreover, no company has time to lose in the face of this rapid transformation. Every day we witness the birth of a new digital platform and device. Generation Y and Generation Z can not only anticipate the needs of the generation and determine their needs, but also create the need to keep up with the pace of change. In order to understand the impact of technological developments on consumer behavior and predict the changes that this change will bring across the entire value chain, companies need to focus on the issue of digital transformation. At this point, companies have to develop comprehensive digital strategies and restructure their businesses.

In an environment where customers discover, compare and buy products without leaving home where customers shop with multiple digital devices, companies will be doomed to disappear in this rapid transformation unless new business models can be established where interaction between customers, suppliers, employees and investors can be established.

The point of technological developments in our age is spreading information much faster than in the past and the response time to this new information is getting shorter. In fact, at this point, it is mentioned that technology trends have started to spread out of linearity and exponentially. In other words, a new technology that is emerging immediately reaches maturity and is rapidly beginning to disappear in the face of the destructive effects of another new technology.

Digital Demolition, Continuous Innovation, and Valuable Brands 

When we look at the common points in the success of names such as Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk, we see that they are all names that have quickly brought up companies and brands they have established in the last decade. When we look at the world’s most valuable brands today, it is no coincidence that Google and Amazon are at the top of the list.

According to Diamandis and Kotler, the concept of exponential entrepreneurship lies at the heart of this success. Kotler argues that the way to achieve exponential entrepreneurial spirit is to understand the growth cycles of exponential technologies. Kotler and Diamandis also call this cycle of 6 phases a digital destruction cycle. 

6 D Model in Digital Transformation 

6D Model in Digital Transformation (Diamandis & Kotler, 2016) 

1. Digitization: No idea or technological innovation enters the exponential expansion trend without being digitally expressed. The rate of spread of everything digitized from music to biotechnology is much faster than that of the non-digitized.

2. Deception: Technological trends are not exponentially propagated at a linear rate. Although the diffusion rates of exponential technologies are not noticed at the beginning depending on their usage rates, the destructive effects of these new technologies, which are becoming more and more popular day by day, are in proportion to the diffusion rates.

3. Disruption: New technologies begin to spread and rapidly replace their predecessors. One of the best examples of this could be the devastation that DVD technology inflicts on the VHS market.

4. Demonetization: A large part of the industry starts to use the new technology and it is getting cheaper to produce/develop.

5. Dematerialization: Technologies are made easier to achieve physically.

6. Democratization: Technology is increasingly cheap and accessible to everyone. It can completely disappear under the destructive effect of a new technology.

Although Kotler and Diamandis have defined the digital destruction cycle as 6 phases, we should also know that this cycle starts and ends very quickly. At this point, the reasons for the failure of brands that make successful brands even more successful or are exposed to destruction and disappearance meet in a common area. The most important reason that makes brands valuable and successful is to understand the importance of providing continuous innovation and continuous innovation. If Amazon, which is an undisputed success, remained only as an online selling website, would it be possible to reach this point? By constantly improving its service, Amazon Prime has changed people’s understanding of shopping, and thanks to the technologies it uses, it has revolutionized the creation and use of Big Data. With the data she collected, she was able to analyze consumer behaviors in detail and produced entertaining technologies that would lead the consumer to buy again. Last but not least, Dash Button and Alexa have been developed by Amazon, giving the consumer the message that they already know what they need and this adds stability to the brand loyalty of Amazon users.

Winners and Losers in Continuous Innovation

Behind the success of Google, which became the second most valuable company of 2019, similar to Amazon’s success secrets are available. When we consider each of its products, such as Google Chrome, a browser designed to be fast enough for a mobile application or the modern web, we see that Google takes into account the speed of each new product. In fact, Google’s main strategy is to make things even faster. Every new technology is used brutally, quickly digests and the new masses waiting for the new audience to meet the different needs, satisfying the different problems, the fastest way to introduce the market, quickly update and market again better. In short, it has realized the speed of the digital transformation and has no problems at the point of fitting.

Most Valuable Brands List of 2019 (Forbes,2019)

The opposite of Google and Amazon success examples, which we can look at an example of failure, which is the sad story of how Kodak ended in 2012. Although Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975, it did not invest enough in new developing technologies, or it was too late for these investments. Although Kodak developed a digital camera in 1975, the first of its kind, the product was dropped for fear it would threaten Kodak’s photographic film business. In the 1990s, Kodak planned a decade-long journey to move to digital technology. Kodak continued its traditional camera and film production with a sweaty strategy. However, Kodak didn’t realize the answers to the question of why people take photographs changed. Indeed, people did not take photographs just like they used to save memories for themselves and their loved ones. People took pictures of themselves to show people what they are doing, how they spend time and how they enjoy life. There was a new medium called social media, and now people were using their cameras unrestrained to see and be liked. The most ironic part of this story was that Kodak invented the digital camera, but didn’t take his hand quickly and took no risks to complete the whole digital transformation process for their brand. In short, Kodak has always tried to be an innovative company, but has not been able to take the necessary steps fearlessly and timely, taking into account the speed of digital transformation.

In short, in a world where customers buy image, reputation, service quality, speed and lifestyle rather than just products and services, Muslim companies have to put the issue of digitalization at the top of their agenda in order to build closer relationships with their customers and achieve higher profitability. Companies should understand the importance of digitization, develop new business models, follow new technologies and implement them at full speed, and Muslim business owners should be aware of this necessity. Otherwise, they will lose their competitive advantages and will be sentenced to be deleted from the market by being far behind their competitors who are rapidly adapting to this new order.

As known, digital advertising and marketing are two of the most significant components of recent digital transformation. In this digital transformation age, people are always online and it makes digital advertising tools much more crucial than before. In other words, as part of the digital transformation, Muslim business owners need to use digital advertising and marketing tools to reach their target audiences and let them know their product, brand or services because of higher competition and fast-paced environment in Muslim consumer market just like other markets. Muslim Ad Network helps Muslim business owners attract and keep their customers with a holistic suite of advertising solutions service. By partnering with Muslim Ad Network, you will be provided an opportunity for your digital advertising to reach the highly coveted Muslim online consumer and to adapt to this era of digital transformation 

Go ahead and contact us to reach a wider range of Muslim audiences. 

The post Why Should Muslim Business Owners Adapt to Digital Transformation? appeared first on Muslim Ad Network.