MENA Banks: Research of the Digital Presence & Reputation on Google Maps

Zach Pokudov -

Intro

It is no secret that MENA has been a well-known region for its digital innovation over a couple of decades. And the banking sector is no exception. The MENA banking sector is undergoing rapid expansion, fueled by robust economic growth and development across several nations.

  • According to EY, the MENA region is forecasted to become one of the world’s fastest-growing banking markets, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.8% from 2020 to 2023.
  • In 2023, the total banking market in the MENA region is expected to reach US$2.8t, with the top five markets (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Egypt) accounting for more than 70% of the total market.

However, not only the MENA banking sector is rapidly changing, customers' habits are also evolving:

  • With a projected CAGR of 15.39% (2021–2026) coupled with smartphone penetration rates reaching 75% in Qatar, 73% in the UAE, and 60% in Saudi Arabia, the digital payments landscape in the Middle East is primed for substantial expansion.
  • 87% of business leaders identified CX as their top growth engine.

All of that signifies a progressive shift in consumer lifestyle, behavior, and expectations and banks should catch on. Despite some attempts, according to PWC research, the biggest pain points for customers were still slow turnaround time and non-responsiveness. And especially that should be done in channels where customers are looking for banks: online maps where they create routes to reach a physical branch or review services where customers read opinions before putting money on a deposit.

That’s why we’ve decided to analyze MENA’s banking digital presence on Google Maps.

MENA Banks

Banks' digital presence has been analyzed in 9 MENA countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain. The situation with Google Maps for MENA banks has opportunities for significant improvements as 58% of them are missing necessary information about their business on Google Maps. That number was counted by checking data completeness for such fields as address, coordinates, telephone, category, photo, site, description, and attributes. Moreover, they are also not working with reviews and have lots of unclaimed profiles. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, so let’s talk about our research in more detail.

In total, we’ve analyzed 27 402 locations including 14 937 branches and 12 465 ATMs. From all analyzed locations 14 101 or 51,5% are not being directly managed by the brand. To be even more precise from these locations 7 376 branches and 6 725 ATMs. That might lead to negative consequences as clients could come to incorrect locations at incorrect times.

Average data completeness is 58%, where banks mostly miss such information as website information (14 147 locations or 51,6%) or a telephone number (12 287 locations or 44,8%). That could also add to the previous statement regarding brick-and-mortar locations being not directly managed by the brand, as potential clients could come to the businesses with wrong working hours or an incorrect address, which of course wouldn’t make them happy. Lots of locations also miss business attributes and descriptions.

The average rating of the analyzed locations is 3.6., which is based on 281 126 reviews. ​​That might not be enough, as customers view companies with an average rating of 4.0 as more reliable. That is especially applicable to MENA banks’ brick-and-mortar locations, where the average rating for 17 370 locations varies between 1.0 and 3.9. In addition to that 9 510 or 34,7% don’t have any rating, meaning that they don’t possess reviews and therefore not engaged with their customers. That could severely damage their online reputation.

We would recommend anyone working with local SEO to start with these locations as it could bring some immediate results and seriously influence the search engine presence of these companies. That might bring results quickly, as an increase of rating even by 0.1 might boost conversion by 25%. If you are curious how to do that we can recommend one of our articles to start with.

However, the fact that was surprising is that for analyzed locations we found 125 681 photos. Lots of these photos were not relevant, so we would also strongly recommend companies to pay more serious attention to it. 22 318 locations have less than 5 photos. That leads to a lesser engagement with customers as companies’ locations with updated and relevant photos and videos are being opened 15% more often. Analyzed companies could start by uploading relevant photos and filing complaints about irrelevant ones to get rid of them and cement their online presence.

This situation is especially interesting if we compare MENA banks to various regions that we’ve analyzed previously:

Thus, MENA banks with an average data completeness of 58% stand higher than European and Indian banks. Some of the MENA banks even have unified branding.

Conclusion

All of that leads us to the conclusion that MENA banks still have a significant opportunity to grow. And that opportunity could be easily caught on by integrating online maps and review services into banks' digital strategy. These opportunities should be caught on not only on Google Maps but also on various other online platforms. For instance, special focus should be paid to Yango Maps, which is rapidly scaling in MENA.

We at Geojet have experience in providing the following results for banks:

  • Increase the number of created routes from online maps by 44%. That brought more potential clients from online maps to offline branches.
  • Increase discovery visits by 45%, meaning that ATMs and branches became discoverable not only via their names/addresses but also via their categories
  • The number of site visits has increased by 24%

If you would like to get the same results - let us know :) Meanwhile, you can check all our cases here.

If you want to get access to our research data - request it at sales@geojet.io