Dubai businesses collectively spend hundreds of millions of dirhams on Google Ads each year, yet surveys consistently show that fewer than 40 percent of advertisers know their cost per lead or whether their account even has conversion tracking. Asking the right 10 questions before you hire an agency takes 20 minutes and can save you months of budget going in the wrong direction. This guide covers the questions, explains what a good answer sounds like, and highlights the red flags to watch for.
1. Who owns the Google Ads account?
This is the single most important question. Some agencies create the account under their own Google Manager account and give you a login with limited access. When you leave, they keep the account and everything in it.
A good answer: "The account is created under your own Google login, and you have full admin access from day one."
With Markamo Marketing's Google Ads service, the account is always yours. You keep the campaign history, the audience data, and all conversion data permanently, regardless of what happens next.
2. Is your pricing flat or a percentage of spend?
Percentage-of-spend pricing ties the agency's revenue to your ad budget. The higher your spend, the more they earn, which creates a conflict of interest when it comes to recommending budget changes.
A good answer: "Our fee is flat and published. It does not change as your ad budget grows."
Flat pricing means the agency's only incentive is performance. You can check our Google Ads pricing page to see the full breakdown: AED 2,950 for Launch, AED 3,500 for Grow, and AED 6,500 and up for Scale.
3. Do I pay Google directly, or do you collect and pay on my behalf?
Some agencies bundle your ad spend into their invoice and pay Google themselves. This arrangement makes it difficult to verify how much actually reached Google and creates an accounting grey area.
A good answer: "You pay Google directly from your own billing account. We invoice only our management fee separately."
When your card connects directly to your Google Ads account, you see every transaction in real time inside Google's dashboard. There is no ambiguity about where the money went.
4. What will your reports show, and how often?
Clicks and impressions are easy to produce in large numbers. The number that matters for a service business is cost per qualified lead, and then cost per booked customer once sales data is available.
A good answer: "Weekly updates cover spend, leads, and cost per lead. Monthly reviews go through search term analysis, wasted spend removed, and next steps."
Ask to see a sample report from a real (anonymised) account. If the sample shows only traffic metrics with no conversion data, that agency is not tracking the right thing.
5. Is there a lock-in contract?
A 6 or 12-month lock-in is common and it is written to protect the agency. A confident team should be comfortable with a 30-day notice period because the results keep clients coming back.
A good answer: "There is no long-term lock-in. You can cancel on 30 days' notice and take everything with you."
Always read the exit clause before signing. Confirm in writing what happens to the account, the campaign data, and any creatives if you decide to move on.
6. Do you set up conversion tracking before the campaign goes live?
Conversion tracking is what tells Google which clicks turned into calls, form fills, WhatsApp messages, or purchases. Without it, the bidding algorithm has no idea what a good click looks like, so it optimises for cheap clicks with no signal from real customer behaviour.
A good answer: "We set up and verify all conversion actions, including call tracking and WhatsApp clicks, before we spend the first dirham."
Ask them specifically what conversion actions they track by default. Call tracking, contact form submissions, and WhatsApp clicks should all be on the list for a standard Dubai service business.
7. Who manages the account day to day?
Some agencies have a senior team that pitches you, then hand the work to a junior account manager or an overseas team with no local market knowledge. The Dubai search market has its own patterns, seasonality, and audience behaviour that benefit from local experience.
A good answer: "Your account is managed by [name], who has X years of Google Ads experience in the UAE market. Here are three accounts they currently run."
Ask for the name and background of the person who will be doing the actual work, and ask whether they have run campaigns in your specific industry in Dubai.
8. Have you run campaigns in my industry in Dubai?
Healthcare, real estate, legal, and e-commerce each have different cost structures, conversion cycles, and local regulations. A real estate campaign requires a RERA permit number on every ad and landing page. Medical advertising in Dubai operates under DHA rules. An agency that has never worked in your category will learn on your budget.
A good answer: "Yes. Here is an example campaign in your industry, the approximate cost per lead we achieved, and what we did to get there."
They do not need to name the client, but they should be able to speak specifically about cost per lead benchmarks, typical conversion rates, and the targeting and bidding approach they used.
9. How do you control wasted spend?
In a competitive market like Dubai, broad or loosely targeted keywords burn budget fast. A large portion of wasted ad spend comes from irrelevant searches that trigger ads because match types are too wide and the negative keyword list is thin.
A good answer: "We use phrase and exact match as our primary match types. We review the search terms report every week and add negatives for anything that will not convert."
Ask to see their negative keyword process. A good agency should be able to explain how many negatives a typical account accumulates in the first 90 days and give examples of the kinds of searches they block.
10. What happens if I leave?
This question reveals the agency's confidence in their own work. An agency that makes leaving difficult, by holding the account, charging steep exit fees, or refusing to hand over campaign files, is relying on friction to keep clients.
A good answer: "You take the account, the full campaign history, and all data with you. There is nothing to hand over because it was always yours."
A clean exit policy is a sign that the agency is confident enough in their results to let the work speak for itself. It also means you are never trapped if circumstances change.
These 10 questions take less than half an hour in a first conversation, and the answers tell you almost everything you need to know about how the agency operates. A transparent team will answer all of them comfortably and back up the answers with specifics.
If you want to see how your current account or market stacks up, Markamo Marketing offers a free Google Ads audit with no obligation. We show you account ownership status, conversion tracking health, wasted spend, and the real cost per lead potential for your keywords. Reply within one business day.
