Ownership of the account and the pixel comes before the proposal
Start with one question: will the ads run from my Meta Business Manager, my ad account, my pixel, my Snapchat and TikTok pixels, and my own store dashboard? If the answer is that they run everything from the agency's account because it is faster, that is them keeping the asset, not doing you a favour. The day you leave you lose every custom audience, every purchase event, and every bit of learning you paid to build. Fashion brands in Kuwait change agency every eight to twelve months on average, so plan for the exit on day one.
What good looks like takes ten minutes: you stay the owner of the Business Manager and the ad account, and the agency gets partner access that you can revoke yourself. Same for creative. The Reels, the raw footage and the product shots from a shoot that cost you 250 to 600 KD belong in a shared folder handed over monthly, not on a freelancer's laptop. Same for the store: if your checkout still lives inside somebody else's dashboard, move it to your own Shopify store with KNET and Tabby so the customer list and the order history stay yours.
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Six answers that should end the meeting
First, any guarantee of sales. Nobody controls a Snapchat or Meta auction in Ramadan, and an agency that guarantees revenue is either guessing or planning to buy cheap traffic that never converts. Second, a monthly report built on followers, reach and impressions. Ten thousand new followers with no revenue line is a bill, not a result. Ask what the report will show before you sign: spend, orders, cost per purchase, and the money that actually landed in the bank. If they cannot describe that report in the meeting, they have never produced one.
Third, reported ROAS with no view of returns. Meta will happily show 4.2x while a third of your cash-on-delivery orders get refused at the door in Jahra and half your size exchanges come back the same week. Net matters, gross does not. Ask them to reconcile their number against your store orders and your KNET settlement at least once a month. Fourth, no e-commerce or fashion experience. Selling abayas, denim or resort wear is a size-and-returns business, not a lead-generation business, and an agency whose case studies are all clinics and restaurants will learn on your budget.
Fifth, refusing you admin access to your own ad account and pixel, usually dressed up as company policy. Sixth, a twelve-month contract with three months notice and no exit. Ask for a ninety-day initial term, then rolling with thirty days notice on both sides. A team confident in its work does not need to trap you, and a team that needs a full year to show a result on a 300 to 800 KD monthly spend is telling you plainly that it has no plan for months one to three.
Price the retainer against your ad spend, then judge it in ninety days
Rough Kuwait bands, from what brands actually pay: a competent freelancer runs 150 to 350 KD a month, a small agency handling ads and content 400 to 900 KD, and a full-service team with in-house shoots and real Arabic copy 900 to 2,000 KD and up. The rule that saves most brands money is simple. The management fee should not exceed the ad spend it manages. If you are putting 300 KD a month into Meta and Snapchat, a 900 KD retainer is upside down, and a freelancer plus a proper shoot every quarter will beat it.
Set the ninety days before you sign, and set them against the calendar. Month one is setup, tracking and a baseline. Month two is creative iteration, usually eight to fifteen new pieces. Month three is the verdict, measured on cost per purchase, net revenue after returns, and repeat purchase rate. Do not start a trial in July or August when half of Kuwait is travelling, and do not judge one that runs through Hala February or the last ten days of Ramadan without comparing it to the same weeks last year.
Hold us to every line of this. Before you hire aahfil, ask us to name the fashion brand we ran and what its cost per purchase was in the third month. Ask us to put you as owner of your own Business Manager on the first call. Ask what happens in month four if the numbers are flat, and ask for the thirty-day exit in writing. If we hedge on any of those, hire somebody else. An agency that wants a year of your money before it shows you a reconciled number has already given you its answer.