For owners and executives in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Ask a founder what their marketing strategy is, and you usually get a list. We post on Instagram, we run ads, we did an event last month, we are starting a newsletter. That is not a strategy. That is a calendar. And the gap between the two is where most marketing money in the Gulf quietly disappears.
A marketing strategy is not a channel list, a logo, or a plan. It is four decisions, made on purpose and written down. This piece walks through what those four decisions are, why the region makes them urgent right now, and what building a real marketing strategy costs in Saudi Riyals. Every number here is sourced.
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Contents
What a marketing strategy actually is
Start by defining the term, because almost nobody does, and an undefined word is where bad decisions hide.
Change your logo tomorrow. Did your reputation with customers change? No. So your brand was never the logo. Change this quarter's campaign. Did your reason to exist change? No. So your strategy was never the campaign. Strip away everything that can change without touching the core, and what is left is the strategy.
Here it is in one line. A marketing strategy is your answer to four questions: who exactly you serve, why they choose you over the alternative, how you move a stranger to a paying customer, and which numbers tell you it is working before the quarter ends. Decide those four and the tactics draw themselves. Leave them blank and no amount of posting will save you.
A strategy is four decisions. Everything else is a tactic.
Strategy is not a plan, and a plan is not tactics
People use three words as if they were one. Keep them separate and the fog lifts.
Michael Porter settled the definition back in 1996 in the Harvard Business Review: "The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do." A strategy is a set of choices that positions you to win, and every real choice closes a door. Roger Martin names the trap most companies fall into: a plan is a list of activities and budgets, and a list of activities feels like progress. It is not. Strategy is where to play and how to win. The plan comes after.
| Word | What it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy | Who we serve, why us, how we win | We win mid-size clinics on trust, not price |
| Plan | What we do, when, for how much | Q3: launch referral program, SAR 40,000 |
| Tactic | The specific action | A WhatsApp broadcast to past patients |
If your "strategy" did not force you to say no to a customer, a channel, or a message, it was a plan wearing a strategy's clothes.
The default: random acts of marketing
Here is how a quarter goes without a strategy, and you will recognize it.
You open the accounts. You post three times a week. You boost the post that did well. You run an ad. You sponsor an event because a friend asked. You print the brochures. You try the tool everyone mentioned. Everyone is busy. The calendar is full. Then you sit in the quarterly review and ask the one question nobody can answer: which of these brought us money?
The honest answer is "all of them, probably." Which is the same sentence as "none of them, provably." That is not a marketing department. It is a group of people generating activity so the silence does not feel expensive.
A full calendar is the best disguise for no strategy.
Why this matters in Saudi Arabia right now
This is not a timeless think-piece. It is timed to a market that changed fast, in two ways at once.
First, the customers moved online, all of them. Saudi Arabia has 33.9 million internet users, about 99 percent of the population, with social reach near saturation. Second, the money became visible. Card-based e-commerce through Mada hit 30.7 billion Riyals in October 2025 alone, up 68 percent in a year. On top of that, Vision 2030 wants small and mid-size firms to carry 35 percent of GDP, up from around 22 percent today, and the private sector to reach 65 percent.
Read that together and the message is simple. The customers are reachable, the spending is trackable, and the national economy is betting on companies like yours growing. You cannot grow on random acts of marketing in a market this measurable. The tools to prove what works are sitting right there.
What the world spends, and how much it wastes
Before you copy anyone's budget, look at what the data actually shows about spending and measurement.
Big global firms now put about 7.7 percent of revenue into marketing, down from 9.1 percent in 2023 and around 11 percent before the pandemic, according to Gartner's CMO Spend Survey. Budgets are shrinking while the pressure to justify them rises: in the 2025 CMO Survey, 63 percent of marketing leaders reported more pressure from the CFO to prove impact.
Now the part that should sting. The Association of National Advertisers, a trade body with no measurement tool to sell, found that of every dollar spent in open-web programmatic advertising, only 36 percent reaches the intended audience, and roughly 23 percent is simply wasted. And most marketers do not know it: Nielsen found 84 percent feel confident in their return on investment, while only 38 percent actually measure it across their channels. Nielsen sells measurement, so weight that number accordingly. The direction is not in doubt.
| The measurement gap | Figure |
|---|---|
| Marketers confident in their ROI | 84% |
| Marketers who actually measure it holistically | 38% |
| Programmatic ad dollars reaching the intended audience | 36% |
One caution before you borrow these numbers: Gartner and Nielsen sample large firms, not Riyadh SMEs. Use the direction, not the ratio. The direction says most spend is unproven, everywhere.
How brands actually grow
There is real science here, and it contradicts the instinct to chase your existing customers harder.
Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute showed across decades of data that brands grow mainly by reaching more buyers, not by squeezing more loyalty from the few they have. You grow by building mental availability: being the name that comes to mind when the need appears. And most of your future buyers are not ready today. The LinkedIn B2B Institute puts it at roughly 95 percent of business buyers out of the market in any given quarter. Talk only to the 5 percent buying now and you are fighting over the smallest room in the building.
That reshapes the budget. Les Binet and Peter Field, across about 1,000 case studies, found the strongest results come from spending roughly 60 percent on long-term brand building and 40 percent on short-term sales activation. Treat 95-5 and 60-40 as directional, not law; they shift for business-to-business and for small brands that need sales first to survive. The warning still holds against the Gulf default, which is 100 percent "buy now" and a cost per sale that keeps climbing.
Be the first name they think of, not the loudest today.
The seven ways a marketing strategy fails
Strategies do not fail in a hundred ways. They fail in about seven, and most companies are living inside two or three right now.
No target. You serve "everyone," so your message fits no one.
Vanity metrics. You report reach and likes, not money.
No position. You sound like every competitor with a different logo.
Copying. Your plan is a screenshot of what a rival did last month.
All activation. 100 percent "buy now," nothing that builds memory.
Sales and marketing at war. Two teams, two numbers, one blame game.
No owner. Everyone touches marketing, nobody is accountable for it.
Kotler and Rackham documented that sixth one in the Harvard Business Review back in 2006, and it still runs unfixed in most companies. Read the list, mark your two, and you have your agenda.
Vanity metrics versus clarity metrics
This is the failure that hides all the others, so it gets its own section.
Eric Ries drew the line years ago: a vanity metric makes you feel good but tells you nothing about what to do next. Impressions. Likes. Followers. They go up and to the right no matter what you do, which is exactly why they are comfortable and useless. We call the other kind clarity metrics: numbers tied to a decision and a Riyal. Cost to acquire a customer. Lifetime value. Conversion rate between two steps. Pipeline created.
The test is one question. If this number doubled, would I do anything differently? If the answer is no, stop reporting it.
| Vanity metric | Clarity metric |
|---|---|
| Impressions, reach | Cost per acquired customer (CAC) |
| Likes, followers | Lifetime value (LTV) |
| Website visits | Conversion rate, step to step |
| "Engagement" | Pipeline and revenue created |
A dashboard full of vanity metrics is not measurement. It is a comfort blanket with a chart on it.
Focus your message, not your audience
Here the experts genuinely disagree, so I will not pretend they don't. It matters for your budget.
One camp, Porter and Ries and Trout, says a small company must focus: own one word, serve one segment, because you cannot afford to be everywhere. The other camp, the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, says brands grow by reaching all category buyers and that narrow targeting is counter-productive to growth. Both are right about different things, and the resolution is this: focus your positioning, not your reach.
Be known for one clear thing and say it the same way every time. A dental clinic can own "painless first visits." But do not shrink who gets to hear it. Every adult in the district should know that promise. Narrow the message. Widen the room.
Sharp message, wide reach. Not the reverse.
The four choices of a real strategy
Now the system itself. A marketing strategy is four choices, made deliberately and written on one page. Miss one and the other three leak.
Who. The specific customer you serve, and the ones you do not. "We serve dental clinics in Riyadh with 2 to 5 branches" is a customer. "Everyone who needs marketing" is not. This is segmentation and targeting, the oldest discipline in marketing, formalized by Philip Kotler.
Where you win. The one reason they choose you, said the same way every time. Ries and Trout called positioning a battle for one word in the customer's mind. You get one.
How you connect. The journey from stranger to paying customer. Draw it: stranger, aware, interested, first purchase, repeat, advocate. Now every tactic has a job and an address. If a tactic serves no step, cut it.
What counts. The two or three clarity metrics that tell you it is working. Not 40 numbers. Two or three, watched over time.
Four choices on one page beat forty slides.
What a marketing strategy costs in Saudi Arabia
A strategy has to be executed by someone. In Saudi you have three doors: hire in-house, retain an agency, or bring in a fractional lead. Here are the real 2026 ranges so you plan against numbers, not vibes. Remember the loaded-cost rule: an employee costs about 1.25 to 1.4 times base salary once you add benefits and GOSI.
| Option | Typical monthly range (SAR) |
|---|---|
| Marketing specialist (in-house) | 4,000 to 15,000 |
| Marketing manager (in-house) | 4,500 to 35,000 |
| Digital marketing manager (in-house) | 9,000 to 28,000 |
| Agency retainer (SMB to mid) | 5,000 to 40,000 |
| Fractional marketing lead (Gulf) | 5,000 to 51,000+ |
Two local facts change the math. From 2026, marketing and sales roles carry a 60 percent Saudization requirement, and a Saudi hire must earn at least 5,500 Riyals a month to count toward it. But the government helps pay: HRDF's Tawteen support covers up to 3,000 Riyals per Saudi employee per month, for up to 24 months, aimed at first-job Saudis. Price the option, then subsidize the Saudi hire.
Same budget, three ways
Take one number, 25,000 Riyals a month, and watch how the right split changes with your stage. The point is not the figure. It is that allocation follows strategy, not habit.
| Stage | Own (strategy) | Rent (execution) | Media |
|---|---|---|---|
| No marketing yet | One part-time lead | Agency for content | Small test budget |
| Selling, no system | In-house manager | Freelance specialists | 40% brand, 60% activation |
| Ready to scale | Manager plus specialist | Agency for spikes | Toward 60% brand |
Notice what never moves to the "rent" column: the four choices. You can rent a video editor, a media buyer, a designer. You cannot rent the decision about who you serve and why. Outsource that, and you have paid someone else to not know your business.
Own the four choices. Rent the hands.
Do you even have a strategy? A five-question test
Answer these out loud, today, without opening a file. If you cannot answer three of them in one clear sentence each, you have a calendar, not a strategy. That is useful to know.
Can you name your target customer in one specific sentence?
Can you say the one reason they choose you, not a competitor?
Can you draw your customer journey from stranger to advocate?
Do you know your cost to acquire a customer this month?
Is one person accountable for that number?
Three blanks is not a failing grade. It is your first agenda. And the first 90 days are simple: days 1 to 30, decide the four choices and write them on one page; days 31 to 60, set up two clarity metrics and instrument the journey; days 61 to 90, run one focused campaign and judge it against the metrics. Decide first. Spend second. Scale third.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan?
A strategy is the set of choices: who you serve, why you win, how you connect, what you measure. A plan is the schedule of activities and budgets that follows from those choices. Strategy is the "who and why." The plan is the "what and when."
Do small companies in Saudi Arabia really need a marketing strategy?
Yes, more than large ones. A big firm can waste budget being everywhere. A small firm cannot. With a limited budget, the choices about who to serve and why they pick you are the difference between compounding growth and expensive motion.
How much should a Saudi SME spend on marketing?
There is no single Saudi benchmark, and anyone who gives you one precise percentage is guessing. Global small-business guidance runs around 7 to 8 percent of revenue, higher for early brand building. The better question is not how much, but whether you can measure what the spend returns.
What are the most important marketing metrics to track?
Cost to acquire a customer (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and the conversion rate at your leaking step. If your lifetime value is not roughly three times your acquisition cost, the model needs fixing before the budget grows.
Can I outsource my marketing strategy to an agency?
No. You can outsource execution, the content, the media buying, the design. You cannot outsource the four choices. An agency that decides who you serve and why is guessing about your business. Own the strategy. Rent the hands.
Sources and method
The figures here are sourced across three rings. International: Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2023 to 2025; The CMO Survey (Moorman, Duke Fuqua) 2024 to 2025; Nielsen Annual Marketing Report 2024; ANA Programmatic Transparency 2023; Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow 2010; Binet and Field, IPA 2013; Porter, HBR 1996. Regional: DataReportal Digital 2025 Saudi Arabia; IAB MENA 2025; Vision 2030 Annual Report 2024. Local: GulfTalent 2026; Saudi agency pricing (Entasher, Digital Gravity) 2026; MHRSD and HRDF 2026.
Stated limits, because a strategy report should measure itself too. Gartner and Nielsen sample large firms, not Gulf SMEs, so we use their direction, not their ratios. The 95-5 and 60-40 rules are directional benchmarks. And the honest gap: no rigorous Saudi survey of marketing-strategy maturity exists, so the core claim leans on global data plus the region's own missing measurement. That absence is part of the argument.
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About BMD
Building Your Marketing Department (BMD) helps executives in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf build marketing departments that produce measurable return, using the BUILD framework. We don't run your campaigns, and we don't hand you a strategy deck and leave. We build the operating system: the four choices, the two clarity metrics, and the one person who owns the number. Delivered in Arabic and English, founder-led.
Redha Alayesh
A marketer with a software engineer's discipline and a scientist's mindset. Across 20+ organizations in the GCC, he built the BUILD framework to solve the problem he kept finding: capable marketers trapped inside companies that never decided the four choices.
Disclosure: BMD sells consulting, a book, and assessments on this topic. Read the argument, then test it against your own numbers.