Before You Sign With a Dubai Marketing Agency: 10 Questions That Show Whether You’ll Get Buyers or Just Clicks

The ten questions below tell you, before you sign, whether a Dubai marketing agency will be judged on buyers or on clicks. The most important are who owns the ad account, how leads are counted and whether you see every raw lead yourself. A good agency answers all of them plainly; if the answers are vague, the monthly reports usually will be too.

Why ask before signing, not after

Once a contract starts, the agency controls the account, the reports and the story. If results disappoint, it is hard to tell whether the market was tough, the budget was too small or the campaigns were simply aimed at the wrong people. Asking the right questions first sets the terms on which the work will be judged, and most good agencies welcome it, because it protects them from unfair blame too.

Many UAE agencies do excellent work. The questions are not an accusation. They are how you find the agencies that are confident enough to be judged on what matters to you: enquiries that turn into customers.

The 10 questions

1. Will the ad accounts be in my name?

Your Meta and Google ad accounts should belong to your business, with the agency added as a partner or user. If the agency runs your ads from its own account, you lose the history, the audiences built from your customers and the pixel data when you leave. The right answer is “yes, you own them and we work inside them”.

2. Who pays Meta and Google, and is there a fee on top of spend?

Some agencies charge a fixed fee. Others take a percentage of ad spend, often alongside a minimum monthly retainer. A percentage means the agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not results improve. Ask for the fee in AED, written down, and ask whether the ad spend goes straight from your card to the platform or through the agency’s invoice.

3. What exactly counts as a lead in your reports?

A click is not a lead. A WhatsApp chat opened is not always a lead either; sometimes the person sends nothing. Agree in advance that a lead means a person who left a name and number, or who sent a real message. Then ask how they count them: on the day the lead arrived, or on the day the person first saw the ad. The second method can move leads between days and weeks and makes comparisons confusing.

4. Will I see every lead, not just the totals?

You should get every name, phone number and message, quickly, in a place you control. Totals in a monthly PDF tell you nothing about quality. If half the numbers are wrong or are people outside the UAE, you need to know in week one, not month three.

5. Who are you trying to reach, in plain words?

Ask them to describe your target customer without jargon: who they are, where they live, what they earn, why they buy. If the answer is a list of platform settings rather than a description of a person, push back. Campaigns aimed at a topic rather than a buyer bring people who like the subject but never pay. A villa painter wants villa owners in specific communities, not everyone who follows home décor pages.

6. Which languages will the ads run in?

In the UAE, many campaigns need both Arabic and English, and sometimes Hindi, Urdu, Tagalog or Russian, depending on the customer. Ask who writes and checks the Arabic. A careless translation tells an Emirati customer the business does not take them seriously.

7. What will you check before anything goes live?

The answer should include: the form or WhatsApp link works, the landing page loads on a phone, the tracking fires, the daily budget is high enough for the platform to run the campaign properly, and nothing in the ad breaks UAE advertising rules or needs a permit (health, finance and property ads often do). Mistakes here waste the first weeks of budget silently.

8. How will you tell me when something is not working?

Every campaign has weeks that disappoint. What matters is whether you hear about it early, with a reason and a plan, or find out from a report that leads with reach and impressions. Ask for an example of a campaign that underperformed and what they did.

9. How long is the contract, and what happens when I leave?

Six- and twelve-month minimums are common. A short first term, or a trial month, lets both sides see if it works. Ask in writing what you get back when you leave: account access, the ads and images they made, the lead lists and any landing pages. If any of these stay with the agency, you are starting from zero next time.

10. How will we judge whether this worked?

Agree a number before you start. The best one is cost per customer: ad spend plus fees, divided by the customers who actually paid. If you cannot track sales yet, agree on cost per real lead and the share of leads that answer the phone. Avoid targets based on clicks, reach or followers, unless awareness truly is the goal.

When an agency is the right choice

An agency earns its fee when you need things a tool does not do: video shoots, influencer work, a brand launch across many channels, a large monthly budget across several countries, or someone to sit in strategy meetings. If you have the budget and want a team, a good UAE agency that answers the ten questions well is worth paying for.

When a fixed-price tool is the better fit

For many businesses in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, the work is a few well-built campaigns on Meta and Google, kept running and reported honestly. That is what Adyft does, and it answers the same ten questions this way:

The fair comparison is not tool against agency in general. It is what each option charges for the work you actually need. Ask both the same questions and compare the answers.