The Role of Personal Branding Strategies in Achieving Professional Success in the Saudi Marketing Sector

This study aims to examine the relationship between personal branding practices and career success among marketing professionals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study adopted five dimensions of personal branding practices: digital presence, professional networking, content creation, demonstrating expertise, and systematic strategy. Career success was measured in two dimensions: objective (monthly income, number of job offers over the past year, number of promotions over the past three years) and subjective (job satisfaction and sense of career advancement). The study followed a descriptive correlational design, and data were collected using an electronic questionnaire via Google Forms from a purposive sample of 155 participants working in the marketing field with at least one year of work experience. The instrument was reviewed by five experienced referees and modified according to their feedback. Internal consistency tests showed Cronbach's alpha coefficients above 0.70 for all dimensions. Data were analyzed using SPSS, and Spearman's rho correlation tests were used to measure the strength and relationship between variables due to the failure to meet the normal distribution assumption. The results showed that all dimensions of personal branding practices were positively and statistically significantly associated with subjective indicators of career success (ρ values ranged approximately from 0.53 to 0.63, p < 0.001). The correlations were less clear for objective indicators; a small, statistically significant correlation was observed with the number of promotions for both digital presence (ρ = 0.19, p = 0.042) and professional networks (ρ = 0.21, p = 0.021), while no significant relationships were found with monthly income level or the number of job offers per year. The study concludes that personal branding practices strongly influence the subjective assessment of career success, while translating these practices into objective gains may require more time or additional institutional factors. The study provides field recommendations for enhancing personal brand management and research recommendations for conducting longitudinal and comparative studies across different professional sectors.