Should a perfume store in Qatar spend on ads or retention?

Compare cost per new customer against cost per repeat order. If the first is more than three times the second — and it usually is — the next unit of budget belongs in retention, whatever the growth plan says.

Ads or retention, decided with a number

This is not an argument against advertising. It is an argument for advertising to fill a bucket that holds water, because acquisition into a store nobody returns to is a subscription to a treadmill.

Winning a customer costs money and selling to them again costs almost nothing, and most budgets are spent as though the reverse were true. For a perfume store in Qatar, the answer turns on one thing in particular: Bought as a gift as often as for the buyer, which makes the seasonal peaks sharper than most categories.

What is different about Qatar

Small, wealthy and concentrated — a store can reach most of the addressable market without a large budget.

Card payment dominates and delivery distances are short.

What is different about a perfume store

Discounting to grow trains people to wait for the discount. It works once.

Where a mobile app comes into it

Gifting peaks reward a channel you can reach without paying — the week before Eid is not the week to be bidding on ads.