Marketing consultant or agency in Dubai: which do you need?

Hire a consultant first only if you can name the person who'll carry out the plan on the Monday after it lands. If you can't, you're buying a document, and documents don't generate enquiries.

What follows is a table of what each one owns, the four situations where a consultant should come first, and the way each model fails.

What does a consultant own that an agency doesn't, and the reverse?

A consultant owns the judgement and an agency owns the labour, and the rest of the differences follow from that.

When should you hire a consultant first?

Hire one first in four situations, and in each the consultant's job should end with something an owner can run.

• You're about to sign a retainer and can't judge the proposals. A consultant who takes no money from agencies can write the brief, score the answers and sit in on the calls.
• You already have an agency and can't tell whether it's working. A short review of account ownership, tracking and lead quality tells you in weeks what the monthly report may never say.
• A big decision comes before any spend: a new market, a repositioning, a price change, or whether to enter a channel at all. Positioning is the classic case.
• You have people but nobody leading them. That's the job of a fractional CMO, which is a consultant who stays.

In all four, ask the same question before signing: who will carry out what you recommend, and by when? If the answer is 'you'll work that out', the plan is a document.

When should you skip the consultant and hire the agency?

Skip the consultant when you have no team and need enquiries this quarter. A plan with nobody to execute it sits waiting, so hire the agency and put the planning in its first month, with a written plan as the month's deliverable.

Apply one rule of thumb to the price: if the plan costs more than the first quarter of ad spend it will direct, it's too expensive a plan for that budget. The money is better spent running the campaigns and reading the results. Our guide to a freelancer or an agency covers the case where the budget is smaller still.

What should a consultant hand over at the end?

A useful engagement ends with five things on paper, and each one answers a question the agency will otherwise ask you in week one.

• A one-page plan: the target, the priorities in order, and what you're deliberately not doing.
• A measurement spec: how a qualified lead is counted, where it's recorded and who checks the count.
• Costs and owners: each priority with an estimated cost, a named owner and a start date.
• Kill criteria: the result at which each priority gets stopped.
• A handover meeting with whoever will execute, ideally the agency or hire you've already chosen.

If a consultant's draft has no owners and no kill criteria, send it back. A strategy without them is a wish list with a logo on it.

How does each one fail, and how do you spot it early?

A consultant's usual failure is the plan nobody owns. The deck arrives, the team nods, and by month two the work has reverted to what it was. Before you sign, ask for a 30-day action list with a named owner against each line, and ask the consultant to attend the first execution meeting.

The second consultant risk is a conflict of interest. Ask whether they take referral fees from suppliers they recommend, and whether they also sell implementation. Either is allowed, as long as you know about it and the recommendation includes an option that pays them nothing.

An agency's usual failure is the treadmill. Posts go out, ads run, the report is full, and nobody asks whether the work should exist, because the agency is paid for doing and has little reason to propose stopping. Spot it in the report: if three months pass with plenty of activity and no stopped channel, the strategy has become furniture. The fix is a review every 90 days by someone who doesn't take the agency's fee, and the monthly report guide shows what that reviewer should be reading.

Where does Magnetic Keys fit?

We sell both sides, which is a conflict you should weigh. Monthly work with us begins at AED 12,000 a month for most services, before VAT and priced on scope, and the Growth Audit Sprint costs AED 18,000, also before VAT. An audit from a firm that also sells monthly services isn't independent. If independence is what you need, hire a consultant who doesn't implement, and hand them our proposal to score alongside everyone else's.

The name you can't write down is your answer. If nobody would carry out a consultant's plan on the Monday after it arrives, you need the agency first, and our pricing page shows what that side costs.