Built an agency from scratch — 20 people, 10+ clients, five industries.
A UAE marketing agency built from nothing into a 20-person operation serving hospitality, delivery, real estate, sports and building materials — with all creative assets, systems and client relationships created in-house.
The brief
Create everything: the assets, the team, the client base, and the operating system that keeps ten concurrent accounts from degrading into ten different quality standards.
The situation
- Building an agency from scratch — every asset, process and client relationship had to be created, not inherited.
- Ten-plus concurrent accounts, each with different economics, sales cycles and definitions of a good lead.
- Quality was person-dependent: results varied by whoever happened to be running the account that month.
- Reporting could show what was spent, but rarely what it returned.
What I did
Built the agency and the team
Created all assets and grew the operation to a team of 20 from scratch, covering media, performance, content, design and video.
Built one framework, not ten
Content governance, a shared paid-ads structure and automation pipelines that any account could be dropped into. Category strategy stayed bespoke; the operating machinery did not.
Defined "a good lead" per client, in writing
A padel court booking, a marble project enquiry and an off-plan registration are not comparable. Each account got its own qualification standard before optimisation started.
Analysed consumer behaviour to steer campaigns
Campaign adjustments were driven by observed buying behaviour per category rather than by platform-default optimisation.
Built industry relationships as a growth channel
Relationships with key industry players were developed deliberately, and became a meaningful source of new client acquisition.
What moved
Clients included Viking Restaurant, Bridge Retreats, AlBarq Express, LePadel Club, Marah Inflatables, GoldStone Marble, Akwan Construction and AlBahia Stables.
Same sector
AliaMedia Digital Marketing
2023 — 2024A 21% traffic lift, earned in the parts of the site nobody wanted to look at.
Afkars Digital Marketing
2013 — 2015Leading a team at 23, in a market that barely had SEO yet.
SeoS7
2019 — 2020Agency-side SEO delivery across a mixed client portfolio.
Osisco
2018 — 2020Two years of freelance SEO delivery.