Choosing a marketing agency in Syria usually starts with a recommendation from a friend or a page that looks good on Instagram. That's a fair start, but it tells you little about how the agency will treat your money, your accounts and your customers. These ten questions take one meeting to ask, and the answers will tell you more than any portfolio.
1. Have you worked with businesses like mine?
An agency that has run a restaurant's page knows menus and delivery offers. One that has sold dresses knows that a single good photo can bring fifty messages. Ask for two or three examples close to your sector, then open those accounts yourself and look at them today, not at screenshots from two years ago.
Be wary of a portfolio full of logos with no names, or of work the agency can't link to.
2. Who will actually work on my account?
Many agencies in Syria are one person who passes work to freelancers. That can work well, but you should know it. Ask who writes the posts, who designs them, who manages the ads, and who you call when something goes wrong. If the person in the sales meeting is not the person running your page, ask to meet the one who is.
3. Do you start with a strategy, or with posts?
A good agency asks questions before it posts anything: who your customers are, where they live, what they buy and why, and what you want in three months (more orders, more wholesale buyers, more visits to the shop). If the first thing you're offered is "30 designs a month", you're buying decoration, not marketing.
Ask to see what a plan looks like: goals, audience, channels, the kinds of content, and how often you'll review it together.
4. Who owns my pages, ad accounts and files?
This is the question most business owners in Syria forget, and the one that costs the most later. Your Facebook page, Instagram account, Business Manager and ad account must be owned by you, with the agency added as a partner or admin. The same goes for your domain, your website and your design files.
It happens more often than you'd think: a page created on a freelancer's personal account, and lost when that freelancer stops answering. A trustworthy agency will set things up in your name without being asked.
5. How are ads paid for, and how will I see where the money went?
Paying Meta or Google from inside Syria is still not simple, so ad spend often goes through a card held abroad or through the agency itself. That's normal. What isn't normal is not knowing how much went to ads and how much went to the agency.
Ask for the ad budget and the management fee to be written separately, and for a monthly report taken from the ad platform itself, not a table typed by hand.
6. How do you measure success?
Likes and followers are easy to inflate and easy to buy. Ask what the agency will report every month and how it connects to your sales: messages received, orders, visits to the shop, wholesale inquiries, the cost of each inquiry from ads.
If an agency promises a set number of followers in the first month, ask how. A real audience grows from content and well-targeted ads, not from packages.
7. What will the content look like, and in what language?
Your customers in Damascus, Aleppo or Homs read differently from Syrians in Germany or Turkey. Ask whether the agency writes in Syrian dialect, in standard Arabic, in English, or a mix, and how it picks for each audience.
Ask about photos and video too. Will they shoot your products, use your photos, or rely on stock images and AI visuals? Each has its place, but your customers should recognise your real products and your real shop.
8. How will we communicate, and how quickly do you reply?
Most work in Syria runs on WhatsApp, and that's fine. Agree on the details: a shared group or one contact person, who approves posts before they go out, how quickly the agency replies to you, and who answers your customers' comments and messages.
Also ask what happens during power or internet cuts. An organised agency schedules posts ahead and has a plan for busy seasons like Ramadan, Eid and the wedding season.
9. What exactly does the price include?
Ask for a written offer that says how many posts, stories and videos you get each month, whether ad management is included, how many rounds of edits you get, and what costs extra. Also ask about the currency (dollars or Syrian pounds), the contract length and the notice period.
A very low price usually means templates copied between clients. A very high price with no clear list of deliverables means you can't hold anyone to anything.
10. What happens if we stop working together?
Ask this before you sign, while everyone is friendly. The answer should be simple: you keep your accounts, your files, your designs and your ad history, and the agency hands over access and removes itself within a few days. If the answer is vague, that's your answer.
Warning signs
- Guaranteed numbers of followers, likes or sales.
- Pages or ad accounts created in the agency's name, not yours.
- No written offer or contract, only a voice note with a price.
- No reports, or reports with likes and nothing about sales.
- The same designs you've seen on other businesses' pages.
How we answer these questions
At Al-Hendi Media we start with a strategy, set up every account in the client's name, write the ad budget and our fee separately, and report what matters to sales. We work in Arabic and English for businesses in Syria and for Syrian brands abroad. You can see what we did for Tasawak, Life's Joy and SAVA, or read what our services include.
If you'd like to ask us these ten questions yourself, send us a message and we'll answer each one in writing.