I get this question constantly, and nearly always in the same form: I have been on the same salary for two years and my workload has grown, how do I ask for more? The usual answer is advice about confidence and phrasing. That is not the answer, because in most cases the problem is not the delivery. The problem is that there is no argument.
I am not going to tell you what number to ask for, because I cannot see your work or your employer. What I can give you are the figures that turn this from I deserve it into a conversation your manager can either agree to or refuse for a stated reason. The first one is the figure people forget exists.
The first number: inflation, because a raise below it is a pay cut
There is a wide gap between my salary went up and my purchasing power went up. The thing in between is inflation, and it is an official published figure rather than an estimate.
The most recent reading as I write: annual urban inflation in Egypt was 13.9 per cent in September 2026, down from 14.5 per cent in August, according to CAPMAS figures published in October 2026. Monthly urban inflation came in at 1.3 per cent in September against 0.1 per cent in August, and the nationwide annual rate was 12.8 per cent. CAPMAS attributed the monthly rise mainly to a 15.1 per cent increase in vegetable prices.
Apply that to your own salary. If you took a 10 per cent raise while inflation ran at 13.9, your salary rose and your real income fell. That is not wordplay, it is the arithmetic you feel at the end of the month while wondering why the raise disappeared.
It also changes how you frame the request. You are not asking for a reward, you are asking for an adjustment. That distinction changes the response, because adjustments are something organisations understand and already do.
One more useful piece of context: the central bank has held interest rates and is targeting 7 per cent inflation, plus or minus 2 percentage points, in the second half of 2027. The official expectation is that this pressure persists for a while, so asking once and never returning to it is not a plan.
The second number people lean on wrongly: salary site averages
The most common move in these conversations is to open a job site and say the average is X. I went and looked at those figures myself while writing this, and the result shows why the argument collapses so quickly.
The Indeed Egypt salary page for Marketing Specialist shows an average of roughly EGP 8,836 a month, and the page itself says the figure rests on just 20 reported salaries, last updated in May 2026. On the same site, the Arabic title for marketing specialist averages EGP 5,671 and the more junior marketing employee title averages EGP 4,164.
Look at the problem. Three titles describing broadly similar work, a gap between them approaching double, and a sample of twenty people behind one of them. Walk into a manager who employs twenty people with that figure and you have brought them a sample smaller than their own team.
So use those averages for yourself, as a rough sense of the market before you go in. Do not build the request on them. The number that works inside the room is the number attached to your own work.
The argument that does work: work that can be measured
A manager who approves a raise has to repeat the reason to someone above them. Your job is to hand them that reason in writing.
What can be measured in marketing is not complicated: four numbers you can defend beat twenty slides. I set that out in how to measure marketing results, four defensible numbers, and the same logic is exactly what you take into a salary conversation.
The other thing that moves it is scope that grew. If two years have passed and you are now doing work that was never in your job description, that is your strongest card, provided it exists as a written list rather than a feeling. It is the same logic as a portfolio, which I covered in how to build a marketing portfolio with no experience yet, and it works after you are hired just as well as before.
And if you are not sure what the role you are actually doing is called in the market, the different jobs in digital marketing sets out the differences. That matters, because a good share of these conversations fail with both people discussing two different roles under one name.
Timing, which is half of it
The same request with the same wording gets two different answers depending on the day. Budgets are set on a calendar, and if you ask after yours has closed, the answer is no for a reason that has nothing to do with you.
So ask one question before anything else: when are budgets set? It is not an awkward question, and it gets you asking well before the date rather than after it.
The second piece of timing is yours: after a clear result, not in the middle of a bad quarter. And not straight after a disagreement, because the request then reads as a threat.
How to run the conversation
Two things only. First, ask for a number. I would like a raise invites an open answer, a figure invites a decision. Second, if the answer is later, ask for a date and a condition. What would have to be true in the next three months for the answer to be yes?
That question does two jobs. It converts an open promise into an agreement, and it shows you when there is no answer available. A manager who cannot name a condition is usually not stalling, they are usually not the person deciding.
If the answer is no
There is a difference between no, we cannot and no, we are not convinced. The first is a fact about the employer, the second is a fact about you, and they call for different responses.
If they cannot, other things carry real value at lower cost to them: wider responsibility, a more accurate title, paid training, a flexible arrangement. Take the ones that raise your value in the market rather than the ones that make the next month more comfortable.
If they are not convinced, and you return after a clear result to the same answer, the conversation is finished and the decision is now yours. Some people move to freelancing at that point, which is a real path with arithmetic of its own, and I wrote about it in how to start freelancing in marketing: client and price.
And if you are already freelancing while reading this, your version of a raise looks different: you are not asking a manager, you are repricing clients you already have. BDG Labs has a piece on raising prices with existing clients without losing them, written from the business side rather than the employee side, and the underlying arithmetic is the same.
The limits of all this
Two things to say plainly. First, the inflation figure is a strong argument but it is not money. An employer whose revenue does not cover its costs will not pay more because the official rate is 13.9 per cent, and all that happens is you learn the truth earlier, which is genuinely useful on its own.
Second, a raise does not fix the wrong job. If the real problem is that the role teaches you nothing or the environment is exhausting, more money buys you two more months of tolerating it before the same feeling returns. This conversation is about correcting the price of work you are content to do, not about compensation for work you are not.
One last thing: ask. Most people who say nobody valued me never asked, or asked with no number, no argument and no sense of timing. Those three are what decide it, not courage.