“Your online visibility is fading away as more websites are being added to the web every day” is nothing but the slogan of Eastline. This firm suggests to other websites some solutions to increase their visibility on the web. Sometimes, it helps them not getting drowned amid the thousands of websites arising on a daily basis. This is online marketing. Eastline Co-founder and General Manager, Marc Dfouni, gives, in his own way, a clear picture of the Internet nowadays. “In the nineties, when you used to type “house” on the search engines, hundreds of websites showed up. Today, there are millions”, he explained.
“Today, creating a website is a very banal thing since everyone knows how to do it. However, the real challenge is to remain visible on the Internet” he added. This young Lebanese man, who lived 22 years in Montreal, finally returned to Beirut in 2006. He founded his own firm in partnership with Nemr Nicolas Badine, also a Montreal expatriate for almost twelve years.
These men in their thirties who respectively majored in business and engineering in Canada decided to break through a “promising” market. “We both worked in the online marketing field. When we came back to Lebanon, we found that this concept was not developed enough in Lebanon and the Middle East in general”, Nemr Nicolas Badine explained.
Taking websites out of the big mass
Eastline saw the light in 2006. The two partners worked, during a full year, with former customers in Canada. In 2008, they launched their company in the Middle Eastern market, in Dubai, Qatar, KSA, and Lebanon. Marc Dfouni and Nemr Nicolas Badine have many customers in the Land of the Cedars, such as INKRIPT, a SIM card specialized company, Nakhal travel agency website
Hoojoozat.com, Gabriel Bocti SAL, and AXA Middle-East.
Moreover, Eastline works for a phlebologist who uses an advanced technique to mask apparent veins. This doctor seeks to be known and aims at attracting Gulf customers to his cabinet. “He contacted us to identify the marketing objectives he seeks. We are creating an adapted website for him now” says Marc Dfouni. The adapted website is the one Google identifies and high-ranks in its search results. Here lays the whole complexity of online marketing!
The website must meet some specific technical criteria, so that Google and other web browsers locate it. Thus, Nemr Nicolas Badine pointed out that “Flash format must be avoided because Google doesn’t recognize it yet”.
Once the technical part is completed, these experts set and identify along with their customers the perfect and exact keywords that will appear in their website content.
Creating web links
Eastline creates a website « network » to make it visible. “Even if the search browsers seem to be the main way to be viewed on the web, however, they are not the sole ones. We also attempt to create multiple links leading to the websites of our customers”, states Nemr Nicolas Badine.
The Lebanese firm proved to be a reference mediator between its customers and Yahoo, Google or MSN. It is the “Paid reach marketing” part, where customers must pay to have their visibility on the web browser. It is no more about working out a strategy to “seduce” web browsers in order to be identified, but it is just about paying out. The price depends on the keywords that customers require. Obviously, the more keywords are desirable, the more expensive they will be.
Online marketing expertise is a drawn-out job, which results are rarely visible prior to six months or one year. “It takes time to have a long-lasting place on the web and have a true visibility” Nemr Nicolas Badine pointed out. Today, Eastline carries out a visibility “follow-up” of former North American customers like Radio Canada and CBC TV channel.
A Long way to run
Their chance to boost prosperity in Lebanon relies on the fact that they are the unique and sole firm to run exclusive online marketing services in the country. Other Lebanese firms do not offer but advisory services in this field and focus their work mainly on web design.
Marc Dfouni and Nemr Nicolas Badine acknowledge that before imposing themselves in a comprehensive way in Lebanon, they must overcome a major obstacle: many websites do not know what online marketing is about. “Most of the customers are still unaware of the importance of internet visibility. We must prove to them that this is a new challenge to take if they want to survive on the web”, Marc Dfouni says.
