CASE STUDY-How Productive Muslim found success helping Muslims with spirituality-productivity balance

Illustration: Productive Muslim doodle of the month - 12 tips from the Sunnah to communicate effectively with others

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Productive Muslim was launched in 2008 with the aim to boost productivity in the Muslim world, helping balance spirituality and day-to-day life through articles, webinars and infographics. The company also offers personalized coaching and in-person presentations. 

ACHIEVEMENTS

1. Since inception in 2008, the company has now scaled to reach over 1.3 million Facebook fans, 4.1 million Youtube views and over 105,000 twitter followers.
2. The company has also successfully gained traction in developing and selling premium products, including personal coaching and online classes, and is now venturing into the business training market.
3. The company founder, Mohammed Faris, has been invited to speak at conferences in Switzerland, UAE, Malaysia and the U.S., signaling international recognition.

OPPORTUNITIES BEING ADDRESSED

Significant market potential: Muslims in total contributed around $107 billion to the global digital economy, accounting for about 6 percent of the total digital economy, according to the State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2015/16 produced by Thomson Reuters in collaboration with DinarStandard.

The report further identified 2,168 consumer-facing digital Islamic services, and of 396 services that met a threshold of usage, 13 percent were productivity tools helping users adhere to Islamic spiritual practices.

Addressing a niche within productivity tools: Productive Muslim seeks to address a niche area within productivity, helping users integrate spiritual practices into a productive working life. According to Mohammed Faris, “It was a niche market, as we were bringing together spirituality and productivity and made it our core focus.”

COMPANY STRATEGY: STAYING FOCUSED ON A SPECIFIC, UNMET NEED

Helping Muslims stay productive personally and professionally: Productive Muslim has served a largely unmet need among Muslim professionals to incorporate spirituality and maintain productivity in their lives. They extract lessons from the Quran, Sira and history of Islamic civilization and collate them with modern tips and tools to equip Muslims to live a productive lifestyle.

They distribute content through weekly articles, newsletters and online resources that are available for free, including creative infographics and videos that help attract readers to the site.

Remaining focused on its core purpose: The Company remained focused on productivity to truly differentiate itself in the vast digital Islamic services market and avoided expanding into other Islamic content areas, recognizing the breadth of service offerings already available. To support him with content creation, Faris has over 10 volunteer contributors.

“We were often encouraged to look at other areas other than productivity but chose to make productivity our core focus and forced ourselves to produce three to four articles a day, day in and day out to help us grow and develop in this area,” said Faris.

BUILDING A BRAND THROUGH FREE ONLINE CONTENT

Widely accessible material: Productive Muslim’s materials are accessible for free on their website, in addition to active social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn where key insights are shared on a regular basis, and other free resources are available.

“Distributing our content for free and showing our expertise was key to building our brand in the market and helping upsell to our other products,” Faris said.

DEVELOPING A DIVERSIFIED PREMIUM PRODUCT OFFERING 

Multiple premium product offerings: A key driver of revenues for the company has been its premium offerings, which include online courses, attracting over 2,500 students, and a personalized coaching service, which is relatively new, but has been attracting “one student a month”, according to Faris.

New branding and product development: Productive Muslim recently started offering classes through its Productive Muslim Academy. It has launched a subscription service allowing access to premium content and has developed a product for the business training market.

OPPORTUNITIES

Growing its online personal courses: The Productive Muslim Academy aims to host many of the world’s best Muslim teachers and authors and host self-development courses on productivity, health and goal-setting, helping drive revenue and active user growth for Productive Muslim.

Corporate market: Faris is hoping to develop a strong offering targeting businesses in the Islamic Economy with productivity training, commenting that Productive Muslim is seeking to differentiate itself by helping employees lead productive lives.

New languages: The platform will be launching courses in Arabic and French as key next priorities. “Right now, with our English language services, we’re only targeting 15 percent of our potential Muslim market,” said Faris.

CHALLENGES

Marketing a niche area can be difficult: Marketing the productivity content had been a challenge and not considered an exciting area but Faris has been convinced at its importance and potential. “Productivity is not easy to sell but we persevered and made our content free to build awareness,” said Faris.

Resource constraints: The company has faced challenges in scaling the team, struggling to find the right mix of technical and creative talent, with a lack of resources, according to Faris, but despite these constraints has been able to scale without the need for funding.

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