Algeria AgencyDigital marketing
Advertising, social, content, reputation, conversion: five spends doing different jobs
Five very different services are sold under one name. The most useful spend is nearly always the smallest invoice.
A director deciding to "do digital marketing" receives five proposals that carry the same name on a quotation and do not do the same job: advertising, a social presence, content, reputation management, conversion optimisation.
They do not act in the same place, they are not paid for in the same way, and they cannot be judged over the same period. Yet they arrive in the same conversation, presented as levels of ambition for one thing.
That is the commonest cause of wasted money we meet, and it is not technical. A failed campaign is nearly always a good campaign run on the floor that was not leaking: advertising poured into a business that does not answer its messages.
This article will not tell you which to choose — that depends on your own numbers — but it will give you the question that settles it, the order that works, and the things we refuse to sell even when asked.
The five things sold as "digital marketing"
Advertising buys attention. You pay and it arrives; you stop paying and it stops the same day. That is not a fault, it is exactly what you bought, and confusion on this point produces more disappointment than any targeting mistake.
A social presence is something else: it means occupying a place where people are already looking for you. An up-to-date page, correct opening hours, messages that get answered. It fetches nobody, but it keeps the people everything else sends you.
Content answers a question asked before anybody knows you. It costs at the start, returns almost nothing for months, then goes on answering without your paying again. It is the only one of the five that accumulates.
Reputation is not produced by you. It is written by your customers, under your posts and under those of your competitors, and it exists whether or not you look at it. What you can do is not write it but read it, then answer for the next reader.
Conversion, finally, brings nobody. It changes what happens to the people already there: the page they read, the reply time, the number of fields to fill. It is the least sold of the five because it is the least billable, and it is nearly always the first to do.
The question that settles it: where you are losing
One question separates these five spends properly, and it is about neither fashion nor budget: at exactly which point are you losing today?
There are only four possible points, and that can be checked: between a first contact and a second sale there are only four places where somebody can disappear. Nobody arrives. People arrive and leave without asking anything. People ask and do not buy. People buy once and never come back.
Each one names a different spend, and only one. The first calls for advertising or content; the second, the page and what it promises; the third, the reply time and what happens after the message; the fourth, the relationship, which cannot be bought as advertising.
Money placed on a floor that is not leaking produces nothing, and it even produces a misleading impression of movement: more visits, the same sales, and a false conclusion about the quality of the campaign.
The good news is that the answer is not a matter of opinion. Your own numbers already contain it — visits, messages received, quotations sent, sales closed — and it takes an hour to line them up on one sheet.
The order that works starts with the smallest invoice
The order that works nearly always starts with the spend that pays us least, and that is why it is rarely proposed. That is not an accusation of dishonesty: a supplier proposes what they know how to do and what they can bill for, and conversion work sometimes amounts to three decisions that will not fill an annual contract.
Take a business receiving forty messages a month and closing three. Doubling the advertising costs twice as much and yields six sales, at best, and only if nothing else degrades along the way.
Answering those same forty messages within the hour, with a price and an availability, often yields ten. The budget is nil, the work is real, and it concerns people who had already written to you.
That calculation can be redone with your own numbers in ten minutes, and it nearly always gives the same result: the first gain is downstream, not upstream. Advertising becomes profitable afterwards, once what it feeds actually works.
A supplier who starts with advertising starts with the largest line on their quotation. That does not mean they are wrong — sometimes the loss really is at the top — but it does mean you should ask why, and listen to the answer.
Advertising rents attention, content buys it
The five spends do not run on the same clock, and judging them all on one clock is the commonest mistake after picking the wrong floor.
Advertising is judged in days. It gives an immediate, measurable and entirely rented result: the day you stop, you are back at zero, and that return to zero is not a failure of the campaign.
Content is judged in months, and it gives almost nothing during the first few. Then a page written once answers for three years a question you used to take by telephone, and its cost does not start again.
Conversion is judged in weeks and only once: a shortened form stays shortened, a reply time that is kept becomes a habit. It is the only one of the five whose effect is not paid for twice.
The rule that follows is dull: do not go more than a year with advertising as your only source of arrivals. Its price is set not by you but by the other bidders, and a business with that single channel no longer decides its own cost of acquisition.
Which screen your advertisement is judged on
There is a material constraint media plans rarely mention, and it can be measured. It is not about which network to choose, on which everybody has a view, but about the physical conditions in which the thing you paid for will be looked at.
The internet market observatory published by ARPCE counts, for the second quarter of 2025, some 59.10 million internet subscriptions in Algeria, of which 88.71% are mobile and 11.29% fixed.
The usual reading is budgetary: "put the budget on mobile". That is not the interesting consequence, because everybody already draws it. The interesting consequence is about what you show.
Your advertisement is judged at arm’s length, with the sound off, in a queue, between two messages, by a moving thumb. It gets two seconds and a frame smaller than a business card.
The test is free: look at your last advertisement on your own phone, sound off, at normal distance. If you cannot tell in two seconds what it sells and to whom, no media budget will repair that — it will only pay for more people not to know either.
- Mobile subscriptions88.71%
- Fixed subscriptions11.29%
ARPCE, internet market observatory, second quarter of 2025
Where your audience is, and why platform figures are not here
Next comes the platform question, and it produces more pointless conversation than anything else. It is nearly always asked backwards, as "should we be on this network", when the only thing worth knowing is whether your buyers are there, and in what proportion.
We are not putting the per-network user counts here. They exist, they are dated, and we quote them in the article on advertising budgets — but placed in a decision article they invite the one reading that is false: that the biggest network is the right one.
A platform with millions of users may contain almost none of your buyers. If you sell industrial pumps, the widest national audience will cost you a great deal for nothing, while a list of two hundred addresses will earn.
The useful question is not "where are the people" but "where am I already being looked for". Those are two different places, and the second is smaller, less flattering and far cheaper.
It has a free answer: ask your last ten customers where they saw you. Ten concrete answers beat a national ranking, and they arrive within a day.
Reputation is not built, it is already written
Reputation is the only one of the five spends that exists before you have decided anything about it. It is already written, under a listing you may never have claimed and under your competitors’ posts.
The first job is therefore not to answer but to read. Note what recurs: the delay, the price quoted then revised, the telephone nobody picks up. Three repeated complaints describe an organisational problem, not an image problem.
The answer that works is not addressed to the person complaining. It is addressed to the next reader, the one hesitating, and it contains a checkable fact rather than a courtesy formula.
What cannot be bought: deletion. A truthful review does not come off, and the attempts leave a heavier trace than the review itself — the screenshot circulates, the takedown request becomes the story, and you are now answering a graver charge than the original one.
We refuse to buy reviews, and not only on principle: the regularity of their rhythm and vocabulary is legible, and on the day it is seen, a repairable reputation problem becomes a permanent one.
The market you are spending into is moving
One last thing shifts the decision, and it is outside you: the market you are spending into is not the one of two years ago.
Over one year the number of online merchants grew 26%, card transactions on the internet 38%, and the amount paid online 179%, while the card base grew only 9%.
The useful reading is in the gap between the last figure and the other three: the cards already existed, what is changing is usage. The public you reach can now conclude without travelling, which it could not do as easily two years ago.
That moves the floor where the loss happens. A campaign bringing visits without sales in 2023 because nothing allowed a purchase to be concluded does not carry the same diagnosis today, and running it again unchanged is not absurd.
It also means a campaign judged against your earlier numbers is judged against a different market. Take the measurement again now, over one month, before concluding anything about a channel you abandoned.
GIE Monétique, 2025 annual balance sheet
What can be measured, and the three figures shown instead
Three figures will be shown to you in almost any report: impressions, reach, followers. None of the three says whether you sold anything. They still occupy the first page, in large type, often with an upward arrow comparing this month with the previous one rather than with anything useful.
They are not false, they are upstream: they describe the supplier’s work rather than yours. Reach that doubles while the number of messages holds steady is a piece of information, and the information is bad.
Three other figures are enough. The number of messages or calls received. The share of those messages handled within the hour. The number of sales closed and, for each one, its origin — asked of the customer, not inferred.
The question that puts a report back in its place is five words long: how many sales, and which. A supplier who cannot answer it is measuring their own activity rather than your result.
We will quote no cost per lead for Algeria: we know of no dated, checkable series. Foreign benchmarks serve to understand a shape — which sectors cost more than others — never an amount, and the budget article says which market they come from.
What you must not rent: the accounts
There is a part of this spend you can lose entirely, and it appears on no quotation: the accounts. It is the one item in this article whose mistake is paid in years rather than in money, because it is only discovered at the moment you want to change supplier.
The advertising account has to be yours. It carries the history, and the history is what lowers your cost over time; leaving it with a supplier means starting again from zero on the day you change.
The page, the domain name, the measurement tag installed on your site and the administrator accounts have to be in your name, with a company email address rather than an employee’s or a relative’s.
The address list is the only audience you genuinely own. A platform can change its rules or close an account overnight; an exported list stays a list.
The test fits in one message, this week: ask for an export of the list and administrator access in your own name. How quickly that comes back will tell you more than any presentation.
What to check before signing
Five questions sort suppliers, and the first is the hardest to dodge: which of the five spends do you recommend, and which do you refuse to sell me today?
The second is about measurement: which figure will you show me each month, where does it come from, and who entered it. A figure whose origin cannot be described is a decorative figure.
The third is about the accounts, described above, and it is checked by making a concrete request rather than by reading a clause in a contract. Ask to be added as an administrator before the first invoice is paid; the request is routine and how long it takes to be granted is already information.
The fourth is about leaving: what notice period, and what stays with you when the supplier goes. The honest answer is short and given without hesitation.
The fifth is a test: ask what they would refuse to do. A supplier who accepts everything does not have a method, they have an order book, and you will be the next line in it.
What we do, and what we will refuse to do
What we will refuse: selling advertising to a business that does not answer its messages. It is the spend that pays us best and is most certain to be wasted, and the refusal belongs before the quotation rather than after it.
We will also refuse to deliver a follower count as a result. It is a number that can be pushed up without a single sale taking place, and billing for it would be selling you the appearance of the thing you asked for.
We will refuse to buy reviews, to attempt to erase truthful comments, and to promise a cost per lead before a month of measurement — a figure announced before the measurement is an estimate dressed as a commitment.
What we do: the leaking floor identified before any proposal; the accounts, the tag and the list in your name and exportable; one figure a month with its origin; and the cheapest channel tried before the most expensive, even when that shrinks our invoice.
And what you should do without us this week: count the messages received last month and how many got an answer within the hour. Then ask your last ten customers where they saw you. It is free, it takes a day, and those two figures will settle the conversation better than any media plan.
Frequently asked questions
Where do we start if the budget is limited?
With the floor where you are losing, which is nearly always downstream: the time you take to answer messages you already receive. It is the smallest spend and the quickest to verify, and it makes advertising profitable afterwards.
Do we need to be on every platform?
No. The question is not where the people are but where you are already being looked for, and that is a smaller place. Ask your last ten customers where they saw you: the answer costs a day and beats any ranking.
How long before content pays back?
In months, not weeks, and it returns almost nothing at the start. In exchange, a page written once goes on answering for years without the cost starting again — it is the only one of the five spends that accumulates.
What does a lead cost in Algeria?
We quote no figure: no dated, checkable series exists for this market. Foreign benchmarks serve to understand which sectors cost more than others, never to set an amount, and the market they come from has to be stated.
What should we do about a negative review?
Read it first: if it recurs three times, it describes an organisational problem. Then answer the next reader rather than its author, with a checkable fact. Do not try to delete it: the attempt leaves a heavier trace than the review.
Do the accounts have to be in our name?
Yes, all of them: advertising account, page, domain, measurement tag and address list, with a company email address. The advertising account’s history lowers your cost over time, and losing it means starting again from zero.
Where we come in
The four-number sheet takes an hour to fill in. What it does not say is which of the five expenses answers the drop it shows.
- We read the sheet with you and name the floor where you are losing.
- We point at the expense that answers it, and the ones that can wait a quarter.
- We put a figure in hours on what each option costs your team, not only us.
If the drop sits between the quote sent and the sale closed, none of the five will change it, and we say so before selling you anything.
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