The first 90 days with a new marketing agency: what good looks like

The first 30 days show how an agency works, not how well your marketing performs, so judge process first and results from month three. SEO is the exception. Our published timing is that most sites see movement in 3 to 4 months and competitive terms take 6 to 12, so for SEO judge shipped work and indexing through day 90 and leads after that.

Put the UAE calendar beside the plan before you start. A start in the second week of November 2026 runs through National Day, which the UAE government portal lists as a public holiday on 2 and 3 December, then the Dubai Shopping Festival from 4 December 2026 to 17 January 2027. It ends close to the date Ramadan is expected to begin, 8 February 2027, subject to moon sighting. Peaks flatter or punish early results, so don't treat what happens inside one as your baseline.

What should the 90 days look like at a glance?

Three phases, each with a test you can apply without asking the agency's permission.

Days 1 to 14: no tracking, no spend

Spending should wait until tracking passes a test. By day 7, every form, call and WhatsApp tap should be test-fired and seen arriving in the CRM and in the report. By day 10 the baseline is on paper: last quarter's spend, leads, qualified leads and cost per qualified lead, plus the agreed definition of a qualified lead. By day 14 the first brief is approved and the 90-day calendar is agreed.

Our plug-in marketing department for UAE real estate goes live within 14 days, so ask any agency you're considering what its own number is. The conversion tracking entry explains what a proper test covers, and the handover checklist lists the assets whose ownership you should confirm in week one.

If your sector needs a permit before ads run, ask on day one who applies, because lead times decide when the first launch can happen. Property advertising in Dubai goes through the Dubai Land Department's Trakheesi system, and DLD said in October 2020 that advertising without the required permits brings progressive fines starting from AED 50,000, so confirm current rules with DLD. The Trakheesi entry explains the permit.

Days 15 to 45: launch small and hold the budget flat

A good first launch is one offer, one audience, a small number of creatives and one landing page, so that any result has an obvious cause. Sales sends a weekly verdict on lead quality, and the first monthly report arrives in the week after day 30. Our guide to the monthly agency report lists what page one should hold.

Resist judging automated bidding too early. Google's Smart Bidding help page suggests waiting until a campaign has logged 30 conversions, or 50 for Target ROAS, over a month or more before judging it. Say your account produces ten conversions a month: then 30 takes three months, and a verdict at day 45 would be a guess. Judge lead quality on whatever volume you have, and keep the budget level until both quality and cost per qualified lead are visible.

In week three, run a mystery-enquiry test of your own side. Submit the form and send a WhatsApp message from a phone nobody knows, on a Thursday evening, then time the reply. The agency can't fix a slow reply, but it can tell you what the delay is costing, and speed to lead is the number to watch.

Days 46 to 90: stop one thing, scale one thing

By day 60 something should have been stopped, and by day 90 something should have been scaled. Stop a campaign when it has had a fair test and missed the target. Say you agreed that a qualified lead should cost no more than AED 400, and a campaign sits at AED 1,100 after enough conversions to judge: allow one round of changes to the offer, audience or page, and if it's still above target two weeks later, switch it off.

Scale one thing at a time, in steps, and wait for data between steps. The agency should arrive at day 75 with a proposal on what to scale and the evidence behind it. For SEO, expect leading indicators only: technical fixes shipped, pages indexed, content published, and rising impressions in Search Console, with leads arriving later.

How do you score the agency at day 90?

Score five lines as pass, partial or fail, and let the scores decide what you do next.

• Access: you own and can open every account, and the agency holds user rights only.
• Tracking: the leads in the report match the leads in your CRM.
• Reporting: page one shows spend, leads, qualified leads and cost per qualified lead, on time every month.
• Learning: at least one thing was stopped and one scaled, each with a reason on record.
• Communication: questions are answered within a business day, and approvals aren't stuck on either side.

One fail means a written fix with a date. Two fails means reading the exit terms in your contract before the next invoice. Book the day-90 review in the diary on day one and attach this scorecard to the invite, so that the review happens whatever the results look like.