The Muslim Community & The Warm Market Approach

Show Notes

InshaAllah we will always try our best to share the sources for what is discussed during the episode. Please find the sources below.

• @ time: 00:00

  - SPECIAL NOTICE - How's it going. Before this episode inshaa Allah I just wanted to, you know, make mention of uh... Everyone knows what happened in Christchurch, New Zealand and I just wanted to make dua for the brothers and sisters that lost their lives. May Allah forgive them of their sins and have mercy towards them. As well as their family members. The ones that are alive and are still being tested by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. May Allah have mercy and forgiveness towards them and may Allah make things easier for them and guide them and keep them steadfast and firm as they go through this test in this dunya. Aameen. Additionally may Allah guide us all. May Allah, you know make things easier for us and keep us steadfast and guide us towards the truth and the Haqq and keep us firm as Muslims and strengthen our Iman.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription

• @ time: 00:51

  - PODCAST INTRO - Assalaamu Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh. Welcome to 'The Halal Hustle' where we talk about Halal Business, Halal Entrepreneurship, and share stories about Halal Hustlers who are striving towards their place with Allah in the Here-after, by taking the 'Means' in this Dunya.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription

• @ time: 01:15

  - EPISODE OUTLINE - Inshaa Allah on today's episode we're gonna be talking about the warm market and when I talk about the warm market I'm talking about the context of being Muslim, this being 'The Halal Hustle', and conducting business within the framework of what we know, the Muslim community.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription

• @ time: 01:32

  - EPISODE - Before all of that let's take a step back. Let's look at the history of the marketplace. So, at the beginning of time, the marketplace was known as the place where people would literally buy and sell goods. That was 'The Market'. Person A: "Hey where are you going?" Person B: "Oh, I got to go buy some eggs. I'm going to the market." Right, that's where it was at historically. Nowadays that's not really the case you don't tell anybody "oh I want to really buy some nice new clothes, I'm gonna go to the market". Right, you don't say that you say "I'm gonna go to the mall". Even now that's kind of dated. People don't really go to the mall that often at least in North America or Western societies. It's still really popular in other places in the world for sure but they're kind of dying here. When someone wants to buy something they will nowadays look online and if it's available locally they'll probably get it locally because they can get it instantly. That instant gratification of taking it from the store and taking it home with you that very day... If not they'll buy it online and with Amazon it might be a couple of days or a couple of weeks whatever it is but they'll buy it online it'll get shipped to their house and that's the end of the story. So the marketplace has really shifted away from the traditional 'The Market' to wherever you can buy and sell goods so the Internet has become a market a marketplace there is pop-up markets for example there's the... what is it, 'The Farmer's Market'. Right, where they will literally like it will not be that it will not be a marketplace but on specific days they'll set up tables, sellers will bring their goods or farmers will bring their goods and then consumers will come and purchase those goods. So the marketplace is more so a concept of the environment in which goods and services are purchased and sold. 03:33 So that's that. Now let's look at marketing. Well I'll ask a really simple question. Have you ever bought something that you never knew existed? For example, did you buy the iPhone when you had no idea what the iPhone is? Nah. It's impossible right. No one's buying anything that they don't actually know what it is. They have to be informed of it. they have to know that it exists and that's where marketing comes in that part of the concept of the market is that when people go there they get to see what there actually is to buy. If you don't know what there is to buy you won't buy anything. So marketing becomes essential. Almost every medium to large business has a marketing team. They'll have a group of people that just specialize on their marketing strategy. Some businesses do it really well. Other businesses don't really do it that well and it's become such an inherent thing in our society and the culture of business that if your marketing strategy is poor it will really eat into your business's ability to succeed and grow. So marketing is such an important and large topic that I can't really touch on everything but I will touch on one key concept and that's cold versus warm marketing. 04:56 So with whatever strategy you use there's an approach that would be considered a cold marketing approach and a warm marketing approach. Have you ever played the game 'Marco Polo' or have you ever searched for something while someone else had hid it and they'll inform you whether you're getting colder or warmer. Warmer being closer to the target... Colder being further away from the target. It's the same type of thing here so when we're talking about marketing strategies, cold marketing is when you are really far away from your target audience or target customer. You don't really know who they are you're not really close, you're just kind of feeling around in a really large open space. Warm marketing is when you know more about your customer, your target consumer. You know you're pretty close you know it's like within arm's reach but you just can't pinpoint the exact detail of everything that they're looking for in their product or their service. So that's warm marketing nowadays though that's more in a traditional sense. A traditional example of cold marketing would be a company putting out an ad in a newspaper and then the closest that they could get to their specific consumer that they're targeting is by placing it in a particular section of the newspaper. If it's an advertisement relating to sports they will put it into the sports section of the newspaper. If it's an advertisement relating to entertainment it will be put in the entertainment you know section or Arts and Culture section, that type of thing. That's the closest it got. They knew that a large audience you know reads the newspaper so they're gonna put an ad in the newspaper but they can't really target it. It's going to... This thing may only be for 25 to 35 year olds but you have a whole bunch of people across the age demographic reading the newspaper. Now that's not entirely true. Young people or younger people may not have read the newspaper as often and even today not really as apparent but again it's a traditional example. 07:10 A more modern-day example of cold marketing would be your social media advertising or Google ad or search engine advertising. The way this works though is it's not really cold marketing because you're not starting from completely zero in knowing your audience. You do know a bit about them due to these technology companies basically selling out their... You know, their users they're taking the information that they post on their profiles and what they talk about on their social media accounts and what they search for through the search engines and the like and they're funneling advertisements to those users that are relevant to the content that they search for in the content that they're interested in or that they talk about. So in that respect these types of advertising platforms... They're not really completely cold but they're not really warm either, you could call it or I'll call it lukewarm. You know, it feels kind of gross it's not really what you want it's not warm it's not cold we'll call it lukewarm but that's something that's apparent nowadays. Warm marketing would be again when you know your audience. So if you have... I like sports... I'm running a basketball tournament. I know there's a group of basketball players that would probably want to participate in the tournament so I'm going to go to the team and I'm gonna market towards them. I know them. They know me, and so the likelihood that they will actually become a customer and you know pay to register and participate in the tournament is a lot higher than if I just ask someone who's actually a soccer player. Right, if I just put out an advertisement that captured a whole bunch of soccer players and badminton players and volleyball players and tennis players, the likelihood that they're actually going to you know convert into a customer and participate in my basketball tournament is not very high. 09:19 So with every metric in business... Sorry with every aspect in business there's always an attempt and a pursuit to measure it, to determine a metric of success. With regards to marketing that would be conversions. Rate of conversion, where someone will market, they'll pay X amount of dollars for their advertising and they want to see how many customers, how much money do they get back from that. It's a great way to understand that how much money you put in into advertising to get your product or service in front of people will help determine how much money you get back. If I put in $200 to advertise my product I'm going to get maybe $300 worth of purchases but because people want to buy my product. So cold marketing, very low percentage of conversion because you are targeting a lot of people that may not be interested at all in your product or service. Lukewarm marketing, pretty good but the best one is always warm marketing, where you know the consumer and the consumer already knows you and has a relationship with you. That's what I'm focusing on here. 10:36 There has been a consistent trend towards the global market. That the world is becoming more globalized. There's a term that I learned in school called globalization. I still don't really know what it means but I feel like it encompasses all this. That the world is becoming more and more interconnected. In that respect the marketplace is becoming more global. You can buy something from a country that you've never been to or from a store in a country that you've never been to and it'll be shipped to you. You're no longer limited to your locality or your region in order to purchase something. You can purchase something from anywhere in the world and it'll be sent to you know in shaa Allah if everything goes well. That becomes really appealing to a lot of consumers because they may live in an area where the product selection is very poor. So businesses that appeal to the global market have started to emerge and they've really taken uh you know a huge percentage of sales away from local businesses. An example is that big-box stores have started to destroy local small mom-and-pop shops because the selection is a lot greater, there's more consistency, and someone who comes from a different part of the country will be able to move to a new part of the country and still have the same selection of products without having to do much work. Oh there's a Walmart in Toronto, there's a Walmart in Calgary, there's a Walmart in Vancouver, there's a Walmart in Montreal, Winnipeg, LA, you know Atlanta, Minnesota, Columbus... You get my... You get the picture here right. There's a Walmart everywhere so every Walmart that you go to its fairly the same. It's pretty consistent. There may be some you know differences within regions or across the country but for the most part it's the same. But there has been a consistent push by a lot of people to support local. To not cave into the global marketplace and all of the big-box players but to support your local businesses because you know them, because they're a part of your community, because supporting them means that you are supporting money going back into your community not to an organization or a business that will take your money and might invest it somewhere else. So there is a genuine appeal. I'll be honest, if I'm going to spend my money I would like to know that it's going to someone who will in turn spend it somewhere else in the community. So the money is staying within the community. It's not that I'm working and making money and then that money leaves the community and I never see it again. 13:29 So there is a genuine appeal. With that being said, why do I talk about the Muslim business? Again because this is 'The Halal Hustle', I am Muslim and in shaa Allah most of the listeners if not all are Muslim. So here's my 30 second elevator pitch as to why as a Muslim you should really consider starting a business that caters and targets the Muslim community. The first part is that the Muslim community is mainly untargeted with everything that goes on in the news and the way that Islam has been perceived by so many. You know unfortunately and you know kind of unjustly. The Muslim community has been largely untargeted. There have been little things that have been done here and there by big-box players but for the most part large companies avoid the Muslim community. Large companies do not go out of their way to target or cater to the Muslim community and the reason why is that it's not the best PR move. A lot of people don't really like that. Allahu Alam (Allah knows best). There may be multiple reasons but the Muslim community is mainly untargeted. The second point is that it's a huge market and it's continuously growing. No matter all of the things that people do. No matter how much slander on you know the news or anything like that there is against Islam, there are more and more Muslims every single year. Whether it be that they're born and Muslims generally have more kids than non-muslims or people are converting or reverting back to it Islam. More and more Muslims continue to exist so the market for Muslim products, Muslim services continues to grow. And the third one is that even if the large companies wanted to get into it, it's really hard for them to be genuine about it. Right, it's hard to shift and focus on the multitude of cultures and the you know huge change that comes with serving a Muslim community that is big on Islam. That's not something that's very easy for large companies that are fairly inflexible to do immediately. So that's my pitch. There's a really really good market here and it's because of those things that it's untapped. So there's not really a monopoly over it, it's constantly growing and it exists everywhere, and it's not targeted. So what do they say: 'One man's garbage is another man's treasure'. A lot of people view the Muslim community as blehh but there's a huge opportunity. Muslims make a lot of money, Muslims are educated, Muslims you know are motivated, they're very well-spoken, they have a lot of talents and skills and abilities. masha'Allah barakallah feehum but there's no one really doing much for them. 16:19 I'll give you an example of a couple of players that are dope alhamdulillah masha'Allah but it's very few. I know in Canada, recently within the past couple of years a company I think it's called Zabiha Halal they started selling chicken, halal chicken, at big box stores like Walmart and the real Canadian Superstore for those of you that know it and and the like but before that there's always the local Halal meat shop that you would go to in order to order your halal meat right. To get your beef, goat, chicken, whatever it is. It's somewhat surprising because there's Muslims all across the country whether it be in Canada, the United States, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, wherever it is... There's Muslims generally all across the country yet you gotta know a guy who knows a guy or you got to look up the halal meat store and oftentimes you know... now Google alhamdulilah but prior to that you had to talk to someone at the Masjid who will inform you... oh yeah there's this person here, there's another one here, there's another one there. It's a very personable, everything is based off of who you know environment. That's the Muslim community in a nutshell is that you have to know people in order to get information about what's going on. If you don't know anybody, if you're not a part of the Muslim community it's really hard to get information about the Muslim community. That's why a lot of you know people look at it as like it's an enigma. We don't know what is going on... but there's the opportunity. There is the you know leverage that you have being a Muslim and being a part of the Muslim community is that you got the inside knowledge. You got the inside scoop as to what is going on and how things work. 18:10 But there is.. there are some challenges that come with it as well. There's three main ones that I've heard a lot. The first one being that... and my dad has said this himself. That man when you go and you you know you have money and you're looking for an electrician or a plumber... you have some problem and you try and find the Muslim you know business. and you you go talk to them. and you go to the guy and he says okay I'm gonna come this time, this time, this time and then he's late. And then when he comes you know he over charges you. And then when he comes he doesn't do the best job. and you feel like you've been cheated and slighted. and you're just hurt that a Muslim would do you like that. and the next time when you need help you go to the non-muslim because you had such a bad experience with the Muslim and you don't have to find any of those problems. Now this may be Shaytan, this may be that it was just the wrong person like it you know that person just wasn't doing the best job but either way there is a stigma that there are times where Muslims don't do as good of a job as non-muslims or that they're very unprofessional when servicing Muslims. Like Muslims will treat other Muslims worse than they'll treat non-muslims. This is something that's kind of common and in shaa Allah the stigma changes but that definitely is a challenge that may exist. The second one is that as I was saying before the Muslim community is pretty old-school. It's not like oh we gotta get our business on Google, it's more so that my business is gonna be my business and it's going to be because people know me at the masjid alhamdulillah. That's tough, that definitely is, the Muslim community in general is not really the most friendly towards innovation now I'm not talking about in the religion, do not get me wrong please don't misquote me on that, I'm talking about technological innovation and you know like getting involved in the tech scene. Being the ones that are pushing how our society functions and improves upon things like transportation or communications and the like. We're not really there... it's not a slight, not everybody is... It's just something that exists and that may present a challenge. 20:27 And the last one that I've heard a lot of which I really disagree with, is that the Muslim community is too small of a market. When I start my business I don't want to limit myself to the Muslim community. I want to be able to target everyone. I want to have a large market, you know as my target audience. Well I'll say this first and foremost. Everyone thinks like that and everyone wants to have everyone as their customer because we're living in a global market - why limit yourself. It's not that you're limiting limiting yourself, it's that you are giving yourself a competitive advantage. Cold marketing is when you market to everyone, warm marketing is when you market to a targeted audience that knows you and you know them. You have the inside scoop. Right, Which would be easier in an example getting your friends on board with an idea that you have or getting a complete stranger on board with an idea you have. Sometimes it might be easier to get the stranger on board but by and large if you have you know pretty solid friends it's going to be a lot easier to get your friends on board with the idea that you have in shaa Allah. So don't think of it that it's too small of a market think of it that it's the best place for a Muslim to start off their business. It's not the end it's the beginning but let's talk about this a bit more. Challenge number one was that the fitna that Muslims treat other Muslims bad. Here's a basic solution be the best if you are looking at servicing the Muslim community specifically there's a problem there. You are targeting the Muslim community specifically but that does not mean that you're limiting yourself as I said you know like just before. If you're the best, if you know that your competition... that a Muslim has the option... they're not limited to go to a Muslim. I'm sure their preference is to go to a Muslim if there is a choice between equal products of equal quality someone will choose the person that is more closely associated with them to buy their product from... and that's because they want to support that person more. If my brother and my... if my brother is is selling something and then there's a stranger just beside him that's selling something... that's.... I'm biased 100 percent I'm going to buy the thing from my brother. if it's the exact same quality... I'm gonna buy it, but the question now is whether it is the exact same quality. If it's not the exact same quality then the muslim has the case. That well... why should I buy this subpar product from you instead of buying the superior one from you know the non-muslim. The reason for that obviously, you know is that you should support me I'm your Muslim brother you know we're brothers in Islam... Support me don't give your money to the non-muslim and then what am I gonna do? How do I feed my family?... All of that.... This is business! If your product isn't the best then you don't have a very strong case for someone to purchase from you instead of someone else. Now... If you're working on it... If you know that you're working to improve and you could offer things that benefit the Muslim more than someone else, then there's no problem here but ultimately Muslims should be the best. Muslims are the best, in shaa Allah and you just have to prove it. A Muslim business should be the best run business. There's no question about it. Why it's not... Allahu Alam (Allah knows best). but Islam sets us up perfectly. 24:00 Second challenge. We're old school and you know we limit in innovation and technology and all that stuff within tech, not Islamic innovation just to be clear again. This is a challenge that you have to address by thinking about it as 'How do I educate my consumer?' If you have a brand new product or a brand new service that you're offering to a consumer you have to educate them on how it works and how it will benefit your life. If you can't sell them on how it will benefit them in the real world not just the fact that oh everybody's doing it. They're never gonna buy it. If you could present them with real-world value 100 percent they're gonna get on board. If you sell them something that will benefit them they will purchase it. If you can't explain how it will benefit them, they're never gonna purchase it. So there's not really much of a challenge there. Prove it, put your money where your mouth is. Show them why this works. in shaa Allah. 25:02 The last one is that again the Muslim community is huge and it is not really targeted. There's so much opportunity there and this is a great place for any Muslim to start. Don't get mad if people don't purchase stuff. Don't get mad if they're skeptical about what you do... But know that that is the safest place for you to get real feedback and real support, it's from Muslims. Most Muslims don't want bad for their brothers and sisters in Islam. So start there in shaa Allah. All right you may be disagreeing with me and thinking that all the Muslims... you know that it ain't that good. You know, you're selling a pipedream or something that has so many flaws in it. 25:47 Check this out. Vegans! How has that come about? Was that a large market? Is that a large market? Not really, but somehow it's become such a big thing that stores will actually be you know pushing to have at least one product that's vegan friendly. Is the vegan market that big no... but there are businesses that have specifically started to target the vegan market. Now what happens when you start off targeting the vegan market... right, consumers that do not eat outside of the vegan diet will... You start working with them and then you learn more about your consumer and find out that perhaps there are people that eat your product because they like it better or it's better for them. It's healthier and now instead of it just being the vegan market you now have the health food market and then you come to find out that you actually make a product that isn't really out there and so you have people that are just foodies that are just interested in trying new foods that want to taste your food... Not because of it being vegan or because of it being healthy but because it tastes good. Do you see where I'm coming from if you started a business that targeted the Muslim you know community or the Muslim market it doesn't mean that it's limited to the Muslim community or the Muslim market it's just that's where you started. That's what you were targeting initially. If you shoot for you know if you shoot for one thing and you end up hitting something else along the way is that a fault is that a problem no that's a benefit. Alhamdullah and this is something that really exists but the first place that you should start is the place where you're most likely to achieve success. Depending on your business it may not be the Muslim community but for a lot of businesses it can be the Muslim community but we kind of write it off like nah I'm not really doing business with Muslims like nah Muslims aren't, Muslims make money too. 27:39 Second one is eco consciousness. You know environmentalists, things of that nature. That's become a real market, renewable energy... There's solar powered everything now right. Before it was a laughing stock, like it was a joke. It was for a quote-unquote tree huggers or something like that. They didn't take it seriously but now it's become a real market. It's crazy... I'll see in Canada you know you think of Canada snow cold all of that and house after house after house there's solar panels on them it's a growing trend. So it's something, it's something real. All I'm saying is that 100% you could start a business in a market that there's a whole bunch of competition but when there's a whole bunch of competition as the new guy you stink and you're not as appealing. Where as in an environment where there's very little competition and you are 'The new guy' not just a new guy, You are the only new guy... You're the only one offering the service or one of the few... You have a real competitive edge. You can be the one that, you know monopolizes it so to speak. You can be the one that starts everything off and that's dope. So in shaa Allah, you know you get the opportunity to do this but there's a real opportunity for you in the Muslim community. There may be challenges along the way but that's in every business. There are always challenges along the way. Think about it, its just a thought. The Muslim community is your warm market. 29:17 I just want to end on this one you know analogy. Muslims, they carry a lot of baggage. There's a lot going on, there's a lot of cultural differences, there's a lot of political stuff going on, there's a lot of stuff that Muslims have gone through historically. So there's a lot of baggage but making it easier to carry that baggage offers you the opportunity to start a successful business. Any time that there is some difficulty in which you can provide an ease there's an opportunity for you to start a business. There are many difficulties in the Muslim community in which you can successfully start a business that provides them with an ease. In shaa Allah it's food for thought a lot of these are just my opinions that I hold and I'm a nobody. But think about it... 'The Muslim Community' it may be you know, a hidden treasure trove for you to live and succeed in your halal hustle in shaa Allah.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription

• @ time: 30:22

  For more information about this episode and to get all of the transcripts and all of the resources used you can check out the show notes at TheHalalHustle.com and in shaa Allah for those of you that are listening on any of the podcasting platforms like iTunes, Google Play, Spreaker and the like... whatever else we get on In shaa Allah you know please it'd be much appreciated if you could give us a review, blessed, really appreciate it. Jazak Allah khair. Thank you be sure to follow us on our social media and to like our Facebook page. You can check us out on Instagram and Twitter using the handles _thehalalhustle and on Facebook we're called 'The Halal Hustle'. So yeah, Jazak Allah khair. I appreciate it and it's been great and we're gonna keep it we're gonna keep it up and in shaa Allah. I'm currently traveling but in shaa Allah that's an opportunity to check out a lot of new hustles. So stay tuned in shaa Allah Jazak Allah khair. until next time, Assalaamu Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh.

  Sources:
  • Jamal Ahmed - Audio Transcription

Please note that that all information related to Islam in this podcast is intended to be without a position. Although we strive to provide factual information (from the Qur'an and Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ‬) that is taken from an authentic source, we are not scholars nor students of knowledge. Therefore, please understand that our mistakes are not intentional. We are not a valid source for finality regarding any matters pertaining to Islam.