Sometimes people ask what we do, what’s Halal.Ad. In Halal.Ad, we do lots of things. One of the most important things we do is help Muslim startups and companies to grow and acquire customers mostly 100 times cheaper. Today, we will be sharing one of those stories on how we are helping one of the startups in the Muslim ecosystem to acquire customers effectively at a very cheap rate.
So let’s start. We recently joined forces with a startup, a very special one called Marhaba. Marhaba is working in the frontiers of the Muslim Islamic Finance ecosystem. Unlike traditional finance, Islamic finance is already a new field, but Marhaba is taking it to another level.
So what they do in Marhaba is that they are working on Web3 which we call crypto or blockchain, and they are trying to create an ecosystem for Muslims by creating a blockchain-agnostic network allowing it to work on multiple different chains. To make it easy to understand, it’s not bound to Ethereum or Binance, it can work in many chains. At this time, there are probably around 6 chains and it’s going to keep growing, insha’Allah.
How We Started
So this is how we started. Around 3 or 4 months ago, the Marhaba team reached out to us to see if we could work together. In terms of the blockchain, we have been following the blockchain, bitcoin, and all the hype with many other things for quite some time now. From what we knew, we were very skeptical about this project.
After talking a couple of times with the CEO, with the advisors, and with the team of Marhaba; the more we talked with them, the more we could sense their sincerity and openness. They want to do good by trying to build something interesting for the Ummah. So we finally decided to join in and start working together just at the start of Ramadan, Alhamdulillah.
Key Challenges & Solutions
There are of course both pros and cons to this approach. If we look at a couple of things, for example, Alhamdulillah, Marhaba has already raised around 5 million dollars. They have been building new features day and night – some of them you will soon begin to see. However, there are also some downsides like their coin Marhaba tokens didn’t perform well due to many reasons. One of the main reasons is that the crypto market is taking a downturn right now.
What we initially do when we start working with companies is that we try our best to understand what the product is and what customers are actually looking for, because sometimes, companies are too immersed in developing or improving their product without assessing its product-market fit. They do not know what exactly customers want from their products. So the first thing we did was ask people about their thoughts on Marhaba, and in general, what they think about crypto, web3 – is it halal or not, etc.
Here’s what we found:
The majority of the people, 80 to 90% of the people, especially Muslims are not even sure if the crypto was halal or not, so it was obvious for us and the team as well that we need to tackle this part of the problem first. We have to educate people if what we are talking about is halal or not because some of them are permissible and Sharia-compliant while some are not. If people are not sure whether our product is halal or not, they wouldn’t take the next step, right? It’s as simple as that.
Here’s what we did to tackle this issue of dispute:
Within a short period, we created a special campaign specifically addressing that we are offering a non-custodial halal wallet which means, you own all your data – we don’t own anything. You have the option to take your data and open another wallet so that you can connect with another wallet as well. In a nutshell, you own everything, we have no control over your wallet. Using this very specific feature, we began to promote the wallet by highlighting it. We introduced Marhaba as a place to learn about halal coins and halal tokens, not just analyzed by random people but real Shariah scholars in Islamic finance who are reviewing them. People can also find out why they are halal or not halal as well.
The Result?
Just to give you a context, Marhaba from their previous campaign efforts, when we get the quick calculation, they were spending around $10 per app install, just keep this in mind, 10 dollars. Once they started their ad campaigns through Halal.Ad using our special Muslim audience, in the first couple of days, it’s usually a testing period, but after a week or two, we began to see the costs going down to $0.15 to $0.10. That’s where we are sitting right now.
Here’s a screenshot where you can see the stats:
As you can see, once you understand what people are looking for, it’s easy to reach the right audience. Marketing is all about the right message, the right people, and the right time.
Before, they were spending around $10 to acquire one customer. It wasn’t scalable. It took a really long time. But now, we have come up with a scalable solution where we are acquiring customers for about 10 cents per app install. That’s 100 customers for $10!
This is exactly what we do at Halal.Ad. We are going to impact at least 1 million people and hopefully, our evaluation is to at least reach 1 billion dollars in the coming next five to seven years.
If you have a product or service that’s specifically designed for Muslim audience and you are struggling to find the right people to reach out to, this is where we can help you grow at scale. We have done it over and over with many startups, and Marhaba is one of the recent case studies, Alhamdulillah.
And we are not done yet. We just did one paid campaign. Moving forward, we will be implementing other growth strategies like SEO, creating a blog, forums, etc. So whenever you think about halal and crypto, Marhaba should come to mind.
What’s Next?
In a month or so, we will be first launching our first Shariah-compliant staking platform where you can be a part of the system by staking your Marhaba tokens. You can vote, you can create proposals, you can engage with the audience and you can even get paid based on your engagement.
In 2 to 3 months, we will be launching another feature where you can stake your stable coins and earn an income. It’s a halal income, not percentage based. It’s based on fees between 5 to 15 dollars yearly/annual return. They already have some platforms where you can go in right now, for example, Sahal wallet, where you can swap any tokens, you can buy Marhaba tokens, and you can even buy commodities and metals like gold and silver on the platform.
In the future, insha’Allah, we are aiming to bring a Marhaba token to at least one dollar, because Marhaba will be generating 1 billion tokens, so our goal is to reach that unicorn level. Maybe it will never work out, maybe it will, only time will tell. We do our best and the rest is with Allah (SWT).
Final Thoughts
What do you think about what you just read? Is there anything you learned? Anything we can do better?
If you want to get similar results and stories, you are most welcome to join forces with us. Marhaba is just one of the many startups we are working with right now. We have other startups in the pipeline as well.
Insha’Allah, we are hoping to share more stories, not just when they made it, but also when they are in the process of struggles, because every time someone did, there are hundreds, maybe thousands who didn’t. So it’s important to show the other side as well. The most important thing is what we learn from the challenges in the process – what’s working, what’s not, how we are reacting, and how we move forward in dealing with those challenges. This is very important.
The question at the end is, will it work? We do not know. Only Allah (SWT) knows the future. But what we can do is, we can put in our best efforts and be a part of the journey. As the saying goes, the journey is more important than the destination.
Want to learn the fundamentals of Marketing to Muslims and launch your ads in 30 days? Take a look at our Marketing 101 course now: https://deenpreneurs.net/marketingtomuslims101
Got some questions? Book a time with Maruf here for a free consultation session: https://www.halal.ad/maruf