How One Muslim Startup Doubled Their Monthly Revenue with Halal.Ad

Ten months ago we launched Halal.Ad, an ad tech startup focused on delivering relevant advertising to Muslim publishers and consumers. Muslim publishers who want to monetize their content have faced the problem of working with Google ads and placing content on their sites that can offend Muslim consumers. This is the problem we set out to solve with Halal.Ad and since our launch we have seen this platform take off as we have delivered more than 80 million ads.

There have been some incredible success stories in this short time since we launched. One of our favorites is the Understand Quran Academy, a Muslim startup that teaches the Qur’an to Muslims via interactive and fun digital courses.

Most Common Mistake Every Advertiser Fall Into

Do you know the most common mistake every advertiser makes with their ads? We do. Because we have seen it over and over.

Due to lack of time or knowledge, many advertisers create ads and link to their homepage. This was the same case with Understand Quran Academy.

Before

They used the banner ad below linking directly to thier homepage at www.understandquran.com

This banner ad was linking to their homepage with too many links. The visitor is overwhelmed and without a clear call to action, he or she leaves the site most of the time.

After

We wanted to help the academy to improve their ad spend. Instead of jumping into the task by creating a better design, we took some time to look at the task on a broader scale.

Sure, we could design a better ad banner. Linking to a landing page instead of a homepage was a no brainer.

However, coming up with a special landing page and a campaign idea was the hard work.

Thinking is hard work. This is why so few do it.
–Albert Einstein

Please, don’t get us wrong. We are not pointing fingers. Each of us has been there. It is a human nature to always look for a shortcut.

We imagine there is an ad network out there where you create an ad. All your problems are solved. The reality is that it takes hard critical thinking, coming up with a strategy to get potential customers on board and convert them into paying customers.

Sure, Halal.Ad targets only Muslims on websites and mobile apps. We do our best to get relevant customers and deliver on your website. However, if you don’t have an engaging landing page with a clear call to action, then it is no use.

So we came up with the following ad banner design:

As you can see, the result is a different ad design that features a young boy reading Quran. This will invoke emotions like we all as a Muslim who want to read Quran only if we had more time.

Timing

Timing is one of the most important aspects of ads. In our case, it was the end of the year of 2015. Instead of just sending people to a sign up landing page, we created a Quran Challenge 2016.

As you know many of us commit to New Year Resolutions. We wanted our visitors to include Quran study on this list as well.

We also created a special landing page for this Quran Challenge 2016:

As you can see, this page has only text and one button. We even removed the top navigation not to distract the visitors.

Putting Yourself in Customers Shoes

This alone would increase the number of sign ups to the course at least 3 to 4 times.

However, our end goal is not getting people to your site. Not even signing them up. In the end, what really matters is how many of them end up being a customer who buy your product or service.

Keeping this in mind, we went even further to discover the customer journey how to increase the return on investment.

The best way to do this is to place yourself in the shoes of the customer.

In our case, we knew that all Muslims if not all respect Quran. They really want to dedicate more time, but somehow somewhere they fall short.

We have asked academy students about their main challenges before sign up.

Working with the Understand Quran Academy we discovered the top 4 main obstacles for most academy students and here they are:

Time
Students assumed it takes years and years to learn Quran

Difficulty
The Quran is in Arabic so it must really difficult to learn Quran

Proof
They needed a solid proof that academy courses really works

Money
Some students really wanted but didn’t have money to purchase our courses.

The academy already had solutions for all of these challenges. All we needed to do was to communicate each one of them. For this, we used email as a main communication tool.

By the way, if you are looking for a budget email marketing tool, you should check out Cloudy.

We sent 1 email every day for 4 days to tackle each challenge.

15 Minutes a Day for 3 Weeks
Understand Quran Academy courses are self-paced digital courses which takes 15 minutes a day. Their first course has 19 lessons. We communicated this on Day 1 for those who thought it would take years.

Learn 50% Words of Quran in 9 Hours
We also let our students know that our course uses a special approach to teach Quran. Muslims pray 5 times a day. Most of the prayer is in Arabic. So students already know these words by heart, but don’t know their meaning.

Understand Quran Course teaches the meaning of these most repeated 125 words and some basic grammar. It is a revolutionary approach. I myself took this course years ago so I have a first hand experience.

It has worked for 100,000's of thousands of Muslims around the world.
So it will for you as well. When a customer is asking if it will work for them, they are interested it is really worth their time and effort. We have shared video and written testimonials.

Money, Money, Money
Last but not the least, the money was the challenge for some of them. They couldn’t afford the course fees. Understand Quran Academy’s mission is to spread the knowledge of Quran. Of course, earning from courses makes this effort expand.

However, for those who can’t afford, we needed to do something. So we have enabled Free Courses if you can’t afford. We believe in the goodness in people. We believe they will use this only if they can’t afford it.

The Result
The results were amazing. Here you can see the stats:

Please, let us know what you think. Looking forward to hear your feedback. You are welcome to share your tips as well in the comments below.

Sign Up for Halal.Ad here