Top TechRead the portfolio differently
Every agency shows you its best work. The skill is not in liking it — it is in knowing what it tells you.
- Look for projects your size, not the biggest logo on the slide. An agency that worked with a global brand on a large budget may not know how to work with yours.
- Ask exactly what their role was on each piece. "We worked with this brand" can mean strategy and production, or it can mean three post designs.
- Look for consistency, not peaks. One brilliant piece is easy. A coherent account across a year is what you will actually be buying.
- Ask to see Arabic work. If every example is English, Arabic is probably an afterthought there.
Test their thinking before their design
The clearest signal of a good agency is the order of its questions. One that opens with "how many posts do you want per month?" is selling production. One that opens with "who buys from you, and why do they choose you over the alternative?" is selling marketing.
In the first meeting, watch the ratio: how much did they listen versus present? An agency that spent the whole meeting showing its work has not gathered enough to propose anything.
A useful question: "What might not work in our category?" — anyone who answers honestly about the limits of what they can do is more trustworthy than someone assuring you everything will work.
Communication: who will you actually deal with?
One of the most common frustrations is that the person leading the first meeting disappears after signing. Ask directly: who manages the account day to day? Who writes? Who designs? Are they employees or freelancers?
- How often will we speak, and in what format — monthly meeting, weekly report, a message group?
- What is the expected response time on something urgent?
- Who is the single person accountable if things go wrong?
- How are approvals handled — in batches or piece by piece?
Reporting: see a sample before you sign
Ask to see a real report from another client, anonymised. The request alone reveals a lot.
A weak report displays numbers: impressions, reach, followers. A good one answers three questions — what happened, why do we think it happened, and what changes next month because of it.
If you are running paid campaigns, the report should reach your business metrics rather than the platform's: cost per lead, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend. We go into this on the media buying page.
Does industry experience matter?
Less than people assume, and more than some agencies claim.
It genuinely matters where there is regulation, advertising restriction or a long buying cycle — healthcare, education, real estate, financial services. Elsewhere, an agency that learns fast and asks good questions usually beats a "specialist" recycling the same solution across every client in the category.
The practical test: ask what they think the most important difference is between your audience and a neighbouring category's. A good answer is specific; a weak one is generic.
Red flags
- Guaranteed specific results. "We'll get you 10,000 followers" or "page one of Google in a month" — nobody can guarantee that.
- A price before the questions. A number given before the scope is known means a standard package that will be revised later.
- Refusing to separate ad spend from fees. Vagueness here is never accidental.
- They own the accounts. If the ad account is created in their name, you are building history you do not own.
- A contract with no written scope. "Social media management" is a title, not a scope.
- Portfolio with no context. Nice images with no mention of objective, role or what happened next.
- Pressure to sign quickly. An offer that "expires today" is a sales tactic, not a partnership.
What to expect in the first three months
- 1
Month one: foundation
Audit, strategy, tracking setup and the first batch of content. Do not expect commercial results here — expect clarity and structure.
- 2
Month two: learning
Content becomes regular and campaigns gather data. Differences start to show: which formats work, which audiences respond.
- 3
Month three: signal
This is where a real signal should appear, and where you should hear decisions based on what was learned rather than a repeat of the original plan.
If three months pass with no clear learning and no change to the plan, the problem is not the timeframe — it is the way of working.
Questions
Frequently asked
Is a local agency better than a remote one?
What matters is market understanding, not geography. An agency that understands how your audience buys and how they search in Arabic is more useful than one in the same city that does not. That said, proximity has real value when work needs on-location filming or frequent face-to-face meetings.
How long should the contract be?
Three months is a reasonable minimum, because anything shorter cannot cover both foundation and learning. But be wary of long contracts with no review point — ask for an explicit review after month three where either side can reassess.
Should we ask for free trial work?
We do not recommend it and do not offer it. Free trial work is produced with no strategy and no knowledge of your business, so it does not represent what you would actually get. It is more useful to ask for a detailed case study, or a session where they walk through how they would approach a real challenge of yours.
What if we already have an in-house marketing team?
Define the gap first. Often the gap is not thinking but production capacity — design, video, editing. In that case you need a production partner rather than a full agency, and that changes the scope and cost of the contract substantially.
