About · Performance & growth marketing
I am Salman Gul. I run the marketing, and I own the number.
Ten years building and running paid media, SEO and ecommerce growth across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for hospitality, real estate, ecommerce and fintech brands. Strategy and execution in the same pair of hands, measured against revenue rather than impressions.
Track record
Numbers I have actually moved
Background
How I got here
I hold a Master of Advertising and Brand Management, and I started on the brand side rather than the channel side. That means I learned campaigns as ATL, BTL and TTL before I learned them as PPC, paid social, email and SEO. It is the reason I think about positioning and offer before I think about bid strategy, and why I am usually more interested in what a campaign says than which button it was launched from.
For the last decade that has played out in the Gulf. I have run paid media and organic growth for hotels and hospitality groups, real estate developers and brokerages, ecommerce and D2C retailers, fintech and banking apps, travel and tourism operators, and F&B brands. The work spans the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and increasingly serves European and U.S. businesses selling into this region.
I work as a dedicated expert rather than an agency. There is no account manager between the person who plans the strategy and the person who executes it, because in my experience that handoff is where most performance is lost. You get the strategy, the build, the creative direction, the measurement setup and the weekly optimisation from the same person.
I also write. Most of what I learn ends up published on this site as market data and playbooks rather than kept as agency IP, which is why there are now hundreds of guides here covering the channels and industries I work in. If you want to know how I think before you hire me, the material is all public.
What I do
Full-funnel marketing, owned end to end
Performance marketing
Google, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and LinkedIn ads run against ROAS and cost per acquisition, with rigorous testing rather than vanity reach.
SEO and AI visibility
Technical and content SEO built for the Gulf, now including how brands surface inside AI answers and not just the ten blue links.
Ecommerce growth
Shopify builds, merchandising, retention through Klaviyo and Mailchimp, and the unit economics that decide whether growth is worth having.
Measurement and analytics
GA4, server-side tracking, attribution that survives privacy changes, and reporting a finance team will accept.
App marketing and ASO
Store optimisation and paid user acquisition, with the install cost and retention work that decides whether an app business scales.
Team building
Hiring, training and structuring in-house marketing teams, including the hard part of deciding what to keep in-house and what to outsource.
Sectors
Verticals I know from the inside
Not a generalist spreading thin. These are the sectors where I have run real budgets and moved real P&Ls in this region, each with a full playbook published here.
How I work
A predictable way in
Diagnose
I audit what is running now: spend, structure, tracking, creative and landing experience. Most accounts have a measurement problem before they have a media problem.
Plan
Budget allocated by channel against a stated objective, with a forecast down to leads and sales. You can see the exact model I use in the free media plan calculator.
Build and run
Campaigns, creative direction, tracking and landing pages built and launched, then optimised weekly against cost per acquisition and return on ad spend.
Report and scale
Reporting your finance team will accept, and a clear decision each month on where to scale, where to cut and what to test next.
Questions
What people usually ask
Who do you typically work with?
Brands spending meaningfully on performance marketing in the Gulf, usually in real estate, hospitality, ecommerce, fintech, travel or F&B. That includes GCC businesses selling locally and European or U.S. businesses selling into the region. I also work with founders who need someone to build the in-house function rather than run it forever.
Are you an agency?
No. You work with me directly. Strategy and execution stay in the same pair of hands, which removes the handoff between the person who plans a campaign and the person who runs it. When a project needs more capacity, I build or train the team around it rather than resell it.
Which markets do you cover?
Primarily the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, with work across the wider GCC. Regional nuance matters more than most international teams expect: Arabic and English creative behave differently, Ramadan and seasonal demand reshape the calendar, and platform mix in the Gulf is not the platform mix in Europe or North America.
What does an engagement look like?
It usually starts with an audit and a media plan, then moves into a monthly retainer covering campaign management, creative direction, measurement and reporting. Shorter project work is possible for launches, audits or team training.
How do you measure success?
Against revenue and cost per acquisition, not impressions or reach. Before a campaign starts we agree what a lead, a booking or a sale is worth, and reporting is built around that figure so the conversation stays commercial.
Can I see how you plan a budget?
Yes. The UAE real estate lead generation media plan calculator is the same allocation and forecasting logic I use in client work, published free. It scores every channel against your objective, market and audience, then forecasts the funnel down to bookings and sales.
Tell me the number you need to move.
If you are spending on marketing in the Gulf and cannot say what it returns, that is the place to start. Send me the brief and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.