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 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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B2B lead generation only counts when it turns into impact
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 inside 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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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.
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Facebook and Google Ads in Sudan
First published by Sudan Digital when Facebook and Google began lifting the block on Sudan, and republished here unchanged.
Read the article →The Impact Lab podcast has Aziz Musa on building a business in Sudan and the Gulf, in Arabic, with a written piece for each episode.
What running a business in Sudan taught me about being ready
In 2017 I left a public company in Britain and moved to Khartoum. Over the next six years Sudan Digital kept working through internet shutdowns, Covid and a war without…
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Will AI replace jobs, and what does ChatGPT say when Aziz Musa asks?
Why the guest is the machine itself The previous episode set out five ways to make money from AI inside Sudan, and the replies made one thing plain: many people…
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Preparing for the 2026 job market: a guide from someone two years out of university
A law graduate with a degree he cannot use, in a city that is not his, two years later running an agency with four departments. Aziz Musa takes him through…
Watch the episode →The two-minute diagnostic shows which pattern your marketing is 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.