Marketing insights
Marketing insights for business owners in the Gulf: what we think about the decisions you have to make, and why. Alongside them, The Impact Lab podcast on business in the Arab world.
Articles
B2B lead generation is not the job. Impact is.
A lead is an input, not an outcome. Most firms buying b2b lead generation agree a volume target, hit it, and find months later that almost none of it closed,…
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The digital marketing KPIs worth reporting, and the ones to stop
The digital marketing KPIs worth reporting are the numbers you would change a decision over. Most monthly reports are full of numbers nobody would ever act on, which is why…
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What a digital strategy should include
A digital strategy starts with the one outcome the business needs, then the buyer, then the argument, then the channels. Most documents called a strategy start at the channels and…
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Social media marketing is one channel, not the whole of marketing
Social media marketing is one channel inside marketing. Treating it as the whole of marketing is the most common structural mistake in Gulf B2B: three posts a week, real engagement,…
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B2B marketing: how companies actually buy
B2B marketing works when it is built around the buying process rather than the marketing process. A Gulf business purchase involves several people, takes months, and starts long before anyone…
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Social media marketing plan: the one-page version
Most firms looking for a social media marketing plan need a marketing plan with social media on it. Here is the whole thing: nine boxes on one page, with what…
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What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is every method a company uses to find customers online and persuade them to buy. This explains what it covers, what each channel is for, what it costs…
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B2B marketing in the food industry
B2B marketing in the food industry is mostly the work of removing risk. Your buyer is a manufacturer, distributor, importer or food service supplier, and much of what decides the…
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Social media advertising in Saudi Arabia: what actually changes
Social media advertising in Saudi Arabia is not a different discipline. Four things genuinely differ from the market you came from, and those four decide whether the budget works or…
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How to choose an SEO company or agency, and when not to hire one
How to choose an SEO company, or any marketing supplier, comes down to a handful of questions most proposals cannot survive. It also comes down to knowing the three times…
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What a marketing retainer should cost a company of your size
A marketing retainer should be compared against the cost of hiring, not against another agency's quote. Here is what each side of that comparison actually contains, and what we charge.
Read the article →The Impact Lab podcast is Aziz Musa on building a business in Sudan and the Gulf. The episodes are in Arabic, and each one comes with a written piece for anyone who would rather read.
Five ways to make money from AI in Sudan, and why none of them pay tonight
Aziz Musa wrote down twenty routes and kept five. Each one is open to someone sitting in Sudan with a phone and a bad connection, and not one of them…
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Why I stopped posting content for a month, and what I found
Aziz Musa took a month away from publishing, went back through more than 200 videos he had already made, and came out with a rule that cuts his own output.…
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Hiring family members in your business: the rule I set, and the day it broke
Aziz Musa ran his company for years on a rule that no relative gets hired. Then a blind recruitment process put his niece in front of him as the strongest…
Watch the episode →Two minutes, and you will know which pattern you are in
The diagnostic asks nine questions and names the pattern your marketing is stuck in. No call, no pitch, and you get the paper written for that pattern.