Marketing Services in North Africa
We help local businesses across North Africa get found, generate leads, and dominate their market.
North Africa is where the gap between the language a business publishes in and the language its customers type in is widest — and where almost nobody builds for the difference. Arabic is official across Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt, but the standard written form is not what people put into a search box. They search in their own dialect, and very often they write that dialect in Latin letters, using digits for the sounds the Latin alphabet has no letter for. Meanwhile business itself runs in French across the Maghreb and in English in Egypt, and a large share of the highest-value demand comes from Europe entirely — French, German, Italian and English searches from people planning a trip, a treatment or an outsourcing contract. So a single site here may need to be findable in three registers at once: the European language the buyer searches in, the business language the company operates in, and the transliterated dialect its domestic customers actually type. We cover 21 markets across the four countries, and that mismatch is the first thing we look at on every one of them.
People do not search in the language your site is written in
Modern Standard Arabic is the written official language across the region. It is not the language of a search box. Tunisians search in Tunisian, Moroccans in Moroccan Darija, Algerians in Algerian, Egyptians in Egyptian Arabic — and those are different enough from each other, and from the standard written form, that a keyword list built in one of them does not transfer to the next. The second layer is script. A very large amount of everyday typing across North Africa happens in Latin characters rather than Arabic ones, with numerals standing in for Arabic sounds that have no Latin letter — the convention where 3 stands in for ع, 7 for ح and 9 for ق. Somebody looking for a market stall types sou9, not سوق. Somebody looking for a hotel in Hammamet very often types hammamet, not حمامات. If your pages exist only in formal Arabic and only in Arabic script, a real share of local demand simply cannot reach them. The third layer is the business language, which is not the same as either. French is the working language of commerce across Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria — contracts, proposals, B2B correspondence. Egypt does not follow that pattern at all; English is its business second language. Treating North Africa as one francophone block is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes we see, and it is usually made by agencies in Paris. None of this is solved by translation. It is solved by deciding, per market and per page, which audience that page is for, and then doing the keyword research in the register that audience actually types in.
Four countries that do not share a playbook
Tunisia — 11 markets
The most French-facing market of the four in business terms, and the most European-facing in demand terms. Coastal tourism from Hammamet to Sousse to Djerba, Saharan tourism around Tozeur, thalassotherapy and medical travel, and an established IT and offshoring sector selling into France all pull demand from outside the country in French, German and Italian. Domestic search runs in Tunisian dialect, frequently in Latin script. Data protection sits with the Instance Nationale de Protection des Données Personnelles, which is the authority to confirm your obligations with.
Tunisia markets → →Morocco — 8 markets
The largest tourism draw in the region and the most varied — Marrakech, Fez, Tangier, Agadir, Essaouira and Chefchaouen are each searched for different reasons, by different nationalities, in different languages. Casablanca and Rabat carry the B2B and offshoring weight, with francophone nearshore services a real export sector. Amazigh is a constitutionally recognised official language alongside Arabic, which matters for how the country presents itself even where it does not yet drive commercial search. The CNDP is the data protection authority.
Morocco markets → →Algeria — Algiers
The largest country in Africa by area and, in digital marketing terms, among the least contested. Business runs in French and Arabic, Amazigh is official, and the competitive field online is thin compared with Morocco or Tunisia — which means terms that would be hard-fought next door are often genuinely open here. The flip side is that fewer buyers are looking, so the work is about capturing a smaller volume of high-intent search properly rather than competing for reach. Personal data is regulated federally, with its own authority to confirm requirements with.
Algeria markets → →Egypt — Cairo
The outlier, and the one most often misread from Europe. Egypt is not part of the francophone Maghreb pattern — English is the business second language, the dialect is Egyptian rather than Maghrebi, and the buyer mix leans toward regional Gulf and international demand rather than French. It is also the largest consumer market in the region by population, with a correspondingly more developed e-commerce sector. Personal data falls under the 2020 data protection law, and the implementation detail is worth checking for your specific processing.
Egypt markets → →What transfers across the region, and what does not
Build once, works across all four
Changes country by country
What a North African site needs that a European one does not
Two kinds of customer, and most sites only serve one
Almost every business we work with in this region has two distinct customers, and a website built for only one of them. The first is domestic. They are on a phone, they search in dialect, often in Latin script, and they are comparing you against three competitors who have a social page and no website at all. That is an unusually easy competitive situation — a real site that loads fast and answers the question will out-rank a social page without much of a fight. But it only works if the page is findable in the register the customer types in, and if the conversion path matches how they actually buy. In much of the region that means completing without a card: a phone number that is answered, a messaging handoff, or cash on delivery where the sector works that way. A checkout that demands an international card is a wall, not a funnel. The second customer is in Europe, and worth considerably more per transaction. They are planning a holiday in Marrakech, a thalassotherapy week in Hammamet, a Sahara trip through Tozeur, or they are a procurement manager in Lyon or Milan evaluating a nearshore supplier in Casablanca or Tunis. They search in French, German, Italian or English, months ahead, and they will read the whole site before contacting anyone. They need evidence — real credentials, real addresses, real prices, real photographs of the actual property rather than stock — because they have no local reputation network to check you against. Those two audiences need different pages, in different languages, making different arguments. The common failure is a site that picks one and hopes the other adapts. The second common failure is a site that tries to serve both on the same page and convinces neither.
North Africa marketing questions
Should our site be in Arabic, French or English?
It depends which of your customers you are answering, and the honest answer for most businesses here is more than one. If you sell to people living in the country, you need content that matches how they search — which is the local dialect, frequently typed in Latin characters, not formal written Arabic. If you sell to European visitors or European clients, you need their language, and for Tunisia and Morocco that is often several. If you sell B2B within the Maghreb, French usually carries the commercial pages. Egypt is the exception across the board: English rather than French. We would rather map that properly at the start than build a site that has to be rebuilt in a year.
Why does searching in Latin letters matter so much?
Because a page written only in formal Arabic script cannot be retrieved by somebody typing the same word in Latin characters with numerals in it — sou9 rather than سوق, or hammamet rather than حمامات. That is not a fringe habit; it is ordinary everyday typing across the region. Handling it is not about writing badly. It is about knowing which spellings people actually use for your service in your city, and making sure your pages can be found by them.
Our competitors only have a Facebook page. Do we even need a website?
That situation is the argument for a website, not against one. When your competitors have no site, the search results for your category are wide open and a properly built page can take them with comparatively little effort — which is rarely true in Europe. What you should not do is abandon the social page: discovery genuinely happens there in much of the region. The site is where you win search and where a European buyer evaluates you. The social presence is where a local customer first hears about you. They do different jobs.
We get European tourists. How far ahead do we need to be visible?
Much further ahead than most operators plan for. A European booking a week in Morocco or Tunisia typically starts researching months before travelling, and the research is done in their own language, comparing several properties or operators in detail. That means the content has to exist well before the season, in their language, with real evidence rather than claims. Seasonal marketing that starts when the season starts has already missed the decision.
Do the European privacy rules apply to us?
Each of the four countries has its own personal data framework and its own authority — Tunisia's INPDP, Morocco's CNDP, Algeria's federal regime and Egypt's 2020 law — and those are the ones you are answerable to, so confirm your obligations with the relevant one rather than assuming a European template covers it. Separately, if you market to people in Europe, European rules may also reach you. In practice we build the consent and analytics layer to the stricter of the two standards you are exposed to, because maintaining two is more expensive than building one properly.
Is Algeria worth investing in, given the smaller online market?
It depends entirely on what you sell, and we will tell you if the answer is no. The competitive field online is genuinely thinner than in Morocco or Tunisia, so visibility is cheaper to win. But fewer people are searching, so it only pays where each customer is worth enough to justify it, or where you are building a position early in a market you expect to grow. It is a poor fit for a business that needs volume immediately, and a good one for a business that can wait.
Selling in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria or Egypt?
Tell us which country you operate in and whether your customers are local, European or both, and we will map what your site is currently unfindable for — usually in the register you were not building for.
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