How to choose a marketing agency in Egypt: 10 checks before you sign

Short answer: judge an agency on four things: who owns your ad accounts and data, whether reporting is tied to cost per result, who is actually on your account day to day, and whether they can show work in a category close to yours. Everything else in a pitch is decoration.

1. Ask who owns the ad accounts

Campaigns should run inside your Business Manager and your ad accounts. If the agency runs them from theirs, you lose the pixel, the audiences and the historical data the day the relationship ends. This is the single most expensive mistake brands in Egypt make, and it is invisible until you try to leave.

2. Ask how they report

Impressions and reach are inputs, not results. A serious report shows cost per lead, cost per acquisition or cost per order, trended month over month, with the losing tests visible too. If the first sample report you are shown has no cost figures in it, that tells you what the next twelve will look like.

3. Meet the people who will do the work

Pitches are often run by founders and senior staff; the account is often handed to juniors. Ask directly: who is the account lead, how many other accounts do they carry, and who writes and designs. Ask for the name.

4. Check category experience, not just logo walls

A wall of logos proves someone paid them once. Ask for two examples in a category with similar buying behaviour to yours: FMCG, clinics, real estate, B2B. Ask what the objective was, what they did, and what happened, including what did not work.

5. Verify the platform partnerships

Meta Business Partner and TikTok Marketing Partner status is verifiable in each platform’s public partner directory. It matters practically, not just as a badge: partners get an escalation path when an ad account is restricted or a page is compromised, which is the difference between a fix in days and an automated form that never gets a human reply.

6. Read the scope like a contract, because it is one

“Social media management” means nothing. Count the deliverables: how many posts, how many original designs, how many videos, how many campaigns, how many reports, what response time on messages. If the numbers are not in the proposal, they are not in the deal.

7. Ask what happens when something breaks

A page gets hacked. An ad account is disabled the week of a launch. A shoot gets rained out. Ask what the process is and who you call. An agency that has never had these happen has not run enough campaigns.

8. Check the exit terms before you check the price

Notice period, ownership of creative files, handover of accounts and assets, and whether source files are included. A fair agency writes these down without being pushed.

9. Be suspicious of guarantees

No one can guarantee a Google ranking, a blue tick, a verification decision or a follower count. Platforms decide those. An agency that guarantees them is either misunderstanding the platform or counting on you not to check.

10. Compare like with like

Three quotes are only comparable if they cover the same channels, the same creative volume, the same production, the same languages and the same reporting depth. Put them in one table with those five columns before you look at the totals. Most price gaps disappear once you do. Our guide to what agencies charge in Egypt breaks the bands down.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a first contract be?

Three months is fair to both sides. It is long enough to set up, test and produce a real report, and short enough that you are not trapped if the fit is wrong.

Should I pick a specialist or a full-service agency?

A specialist if you have one clear problem and an in-house team to coordinate around it. Full-service if you need strategy, creative, media and production to move together, which is usually the case for a launch.

What should I prepare before the first meeting?

Your objective in a number, your budget range, your current results if any, and who the decision maker is. Agencies price uncertainty; the clearer the brief, the lower the risk premium in the quote.

What does SkyFi do differently?

Campaigns run in your accounts, reporting is built on cost per result, and strategy, creative, media buying and production sit in the same team. We are an official Meta Business Partner and TikTok Marketing Partner, with 250+ campaigns delivered since 2018 for brands including SAIB Bank, Oriflame, Unicharm and Halwani Bros.

Request a quote with your brief and you get scope, timeline and a fixed price within two business days.