How to choose a marketing agency in Dubai: 12 questions that expose the difference
The questions that separate agencies who will do the work from agencies who will sell you the pitch — and the answers that should end the conversation.
The short answer
Choosing a marketing agency in Dubai comes down to verifying four things: who will actually do the work, how they are paid, who owns the assets, and what they report. Ask for the named senior person and their account load, insist on flat-fee rather than percentage-of-spend pricing, confirm you own all accounts and data, and require weekly numbers rather than monthly slide decks.
Dubai has an unusually crowded agency market, and the pitch quality correlates weakly with the delivery quality. These are the questions that produce the most information per minute.
On who does the work
- Which named person will work on our account, and can we meet them before signing?
- How many other accounts does that person carry?
- What proportion of the work is done in-house versus subcontracted?
- If the person we meet today leaves, what happens?
The bait-and-switch — senior team in the pitch, juniors on delivery — is the single most common failure mode in this market. Naming the person in the contract is a reasonable request, and reluctance to do so is an answer in itself.
On money
- Is the fee flat, or a percentage of media spend?
- What is included, and what will be billed separately?
- What is the notice period, and is it symmetrical?
- Are there minimum contract terms, and why?
Percentage-of-spend pricing creates a direct incentive to increase your media budget regardless of whether it is working. Long minimum terms usually indicate an agency that expects to be judged unfavourably in month three.
On ownership
- Who owns the ad accounts, pixels, audiences and historical data?
- Who owns the website, the code and the CMS access?
- If we leave, what do we take with us?
Agencies that run your ads inside their own Business Manager are holding your data hostage, whether or not that is the intent. Everything should live in accounts you own, with the agency granted access.
On reporting
- What will you report weekly, and what monthly?
- Which metric do you consider the primary one, and why?
- What would make you recommend we stop spending on a channel?
That last question is the most revealing in the list. An agency that cannot describe the conditions under which it would recommend spending less is optimising for retention rather than results.
Answers that should end the conversation
- A guarantee of specific rankings or a specific ROAS before any audit
- Reluctance to name the person doing the work
- Ad accounts held in the agency's own Business Manager
- Case studies with percentages but no context, timeframe or starting point
- A 12-month minimum term with no break clause
Ask what would make them tell you to spend less. The answer tells you whether you are hiring an operator or a vendor.