When Maddie Skillen moved into the Middle East, one of the first things she had to unlearn was something most experienced marketers are rewarded for having: a strong point of view.
After years of building strategies, choosing channels and taking products to market, you naturally develop a sense of what good looks like. The problem is that experience can quietly become assumption.
“The biggest thing I had to unlearn was the idea that experience automatically gives you the answer.”
Her move changed the question she started with. Instead of asking “How do we execute this strategy in this market?”, she began asking “What does this market tell us the strategy needs to be?”
That shift sits at the heart of everything else she has learnt about working in the region.
The buyer may look familiar. The route to trust may not.
The fundamentals of B2B buying don’t suddenly disappear when you cross a border. Buyers still want to understand whether you can solve a meaningful problem, whether they trust you to deliver and whether the value justifies the investment and risk.
What changes is how that confidence gets built.
“Where buyers look for information, whose opinion carries weight, how consensus is formed, the importance of relationships and senior sponsorship, and even the pace at which decisions are made can all vary significantly.”
That’s why having a global customer profile doesn’t necessarily mean you have a global buyer journey.
“Your ideal customer might look remarkably similar on paper across two markets, while the route to earning their trust and influencing the decision can be completely different.”
For B2B marketers, especially those running ABM or regional demand programmes, that distinction matters. The account might look almost identical in your CRM and the buying group might contain many of the same functions, but who carries influence, how decisions move and where trust is built can vary considerably.
In the Middle East, hierarchy can be more pronounced and access to senior decision-makers more structured. At the same time, influence isn’t always obvious from title alone. Someone with deep credibility, strong relationships or the ear of a senior leader can carry far more weight than their position on an org chart might suggest.
So the question becomes less about who looks influential on paper and more about how the decision will actually get made.
Context is useful. Assumptions are dangerous.
There’s an obvious risk when talking about regional buyer behaviour: turning patterns into stereotypes. That’s something Maddie is deliberately cautious about.
“Some people conform to established business-culture patterns and others completely defy them.”
Patterns can give marketers useful context, but they can’t replace understanding the individual people and organisations in front of you. Her experience in the region has made curiosity and humility much more important in how she works.
She entered the Middle East conscious that she spoke English and French, but not Arabic. There are situations, particularly in Saudi Arabia, where Arabic can be a significant advantage, but she has also learnt not to confuse speaking the language with understanding the market.
Being properly briefed matters, as does listening before forming a view and understanding somebody’s priorities. Showing that you are genuinely invested in the region, rather than appearing only when there is an opportunity to pursue, matters too.
Over time, living and working in-market gives you access to smaller signals that are difficult to capture in a research report. The conversations happening around you, the references that resonate, what feels authentic and, sometimes, what is better left unsaid all start to shape your judgement in a different way.
That is where meaningful localisation starts.
Localisation should happen before the copy
Global marketing can still treat localisation as an execution task: translate the asset, change the imagery, use a local reference or adjust the campaign calendar. Sometimes that is enough.
Sometimes the idea itself doesn’t travel.
She has seen global campaigns built around humour, wordplay, idioms or cultural references that feel completely natural in the market where they were created and lose their meaning elsewhere. At that point, translation is not the answer.
“The strongest global platforms are built around a human or commercial truth that can travel, with enough flexibility for markets to express that idea in culturally relevant ways.”
Language matters here in a much broader sense than deciding whether something should be in English or Arabic. Humour, metaphor, idiom and cultural meaning are not universally transferable.
“If the creative device is so specific that it only works in its original language or culture, you haven’t really built a global campaign.”
For global marketing teams and agencies, that means regional thinking needs to happen much earlier than asset adaptation. If the underlying idea doesn’t travel, no amount of localisation at the end of the process is going to fix it.
The channel mix can change too
Working in the region has also made her less interested in reach for reach’s sake. Some of the strongest returns she has seen have come from activity that creates closer proximity to the people a business is trying to influence, whether that is executive roundtables, curated events, community building or targeted ABM.
“In some markets, the influence and relevance of the audience matters far more than the overall number of people you reach.”
She is also a strong advocate for building the profile and authority of regional leaders.
“A credible executive with a genuine point of view can create authority and open conversations that are difficult to replicate through a corporate channel alone.”
Communications matters too. Reputation is a commercial asset, and traditional and print media still carry considerable influence in some Middle Eastern countries, particularly with senior audiences and in more established sectors.
Partners can play a bigger role as well, especially when co-marketing or co-branding sits within a broader commercial relationship. Looking at that activity purely through a campaign lens can miss the wider value of the partnership.
The same applies after acquisition. Marketing shouldn’t disappear once the customer has been won, particularly when retention, expansion and advocacy depend on continuing to demonstrate value.
For her, it is less about asking which channel is universally best and more about knowing where depth matters more than scale.
Global consistency needs clear limits
None of this means every regional marketing team should get a blank sheet of paper. The brand still needs consistency, the core proposition still matters and shared resources and ideas create obvious efficiencies.
But consistency and uniformity are not the same thing.
“Global protects what should be consistent; regional has enough autonomy over what needs to flex.”
That requires clear decision rights. If a business hires experienced regional marketers because they understand the market, they need enough room to exercise that judgement.
At the same time, local nuance shouldn’t become an automatic reason to change something.
“The role of a regional leader isn’t to defend local nuance at all costs. It’s to know when that nuance is commercially material and make it easier for the business to act on it.”
Sometimes the case comes from customer insight, sometimes from performance data and sometimes from proposing a stronger alternative. Where the evidence isn’t there yet, a controlled test can often be more useful than an argument.
The job isn’t to protect “local” from “global”. It is to know when the market is telling the business something that should genuinely change the plan.
Marketing needs to hear the market before it gets the brief
That becomes much easier when Marketing is close to Sales, customers and partners. Working in the Middle East has meant spending more time in front of customers, and it has changed how she thinks about the relationship between Marketing and Sales.
“I don’t want Marketing receiving the brief once the commercial conversation has already happened. I want us close enough to customers and Sales to understand what’s changing, what we’re hearing and where we can genuinely influence the outcome.”
That doesn’t mean Marketing becomes an extension of Sales. Marketing still needs to bring a different perspective, challenge where necessary and help shape the approach.
The closer both teams are to the customer, though, the better the decisions tend to be.
Partners make that even more important in the region. A co-marketing activity may be one small part of a much broader commercial partnership, so understanding the value both organisations are trying to create matters more than treating it as an isolated campaign. Again, the point comes back to proximity. The closer Marketing is to what is actually happening in the market, the better placed it is to influence the strategy rather than simply execute it.
Moving markets changed how she thinks about expertise too
One of the more personal lessons from working in the Middle East has been the idea that ambition and kindness are not in tension.
She has worked with highly ambitious people who are equally willing to give their time, make introductions, share what they know and help others succeed. That has influenced how she works elsewhere too: you can hold a high bar, move quickly and challenge people without losing warmth.
Her definition of expertise has shifted in a similar way. Earlier in her career, she says she probably equated expertise with having answers. Today, she is much more comfortable finding the people who understand the context better than she does and asking the question early.
“I’ll actively seek out people who understand the context better than I do and ask the questions early, rather than allowing assumptions to fill the gaps.”
She also tries to assume good intent when somebody challenges a view or takes a different position. That doesn’t mean avoiding disagreement; it means spending less energy trying to interpret somebody’s motives and more energy solving the problem in front of you.
In many ways, that connects back to the biggest lesson from moving markets. Experience is useful, but it becomes much more valuable when you know when to question it.
Three things to take from Maddie
Don’t confuse a global ICP with a global buyer journey
The account might look the same on paper, but how trust is built, who carries influence and how consensus forms might not. Understanding how the decision actually gets made matters just as much as identifying who should be involved.
Localise the thinking before you localise the asset
Changing copy, imagery or language won’t fix an idea that doesn’t travel. Regional insight should be able to influence channels, buying groups, creative and, when it genuinely matters, the strategy itself.
Use market patterns as context, not assumptions
Regional knowledge matters, but people will not always conform to the pattern. Stay close to customers, Sales, partners and people who understand the context better than you do, and ask the questions before assumptions fill the gaps.
The final question
As part of our MQL series, we’re asking every guest the same final question:
B2B marketing in 2027 is…
“…about exercising the creative muscle.”
AI can analyse data, create efficiencies and accelerate the journey from idea to execution. She wants marketers to take advantage of all of that, but she doesn’t want us to outsource the thinking.
“Creativity is a muscle, and I worry that if we continually ask AI to make the first leap for us, we’ll gradually exercise that muscle less.”
For her, the value marketers bring will increasingly sit in originality, imagination, taste and the ability to make connections that aren’t immediately obvious.
“AI can make us significantly faster and more efficient. I think creativity is what will continue to make us valuable.”
About Maddie Skillen
Madeleine Skillen is a senior international marketing leader with 10+ years’ experience across technology, fintech and SaaS. Based in Dubai, she has led marketing across the Middle East and Africa for global brands including PayPal and X, specialising in regional growth, GTM and global-to-local strategy.