Performance Marketing
2026-10-01 · 9 min read
Sapun Lamichhane
Founder & CEO of Arcetis
Almost every digital marketing agency in Nepal calls itself the best, the top, the leading. The word is free, so it tells you nothing. What tells you something is evidence you can check without taking anyone's word — and a careful buyer can run most of these checks in under ten minutes.
There are five markers worth judging on: verifiable partner or certification status, a real and specific figure for money managed, work you can open and see running, how results are tracked, and whether the agency can build the systems behind the campaigns or only run ads. An agency that scores well on these is a safer bet than one with a louder tagline.
“The right question is not who says they are the best digital marketing agency in Nepal. It is who passes checks you can run yourself — and who tells you what you need to hear, not what is easiest to sell.”
Anyone can put a Google or Meta logo on a page. The ones that mean something are statuses the platform itself re-evaluates: Google Partner status, for example, is listed in Google's own public Partners directory and is reassessed against managed spend and account performance, so it can be lost. Ask where to verify it, and check. A badge with no verifiable source behind it is decoration.
'We do ads' is not a credential. A specific, honest figure — how much real ad spend the agency has actually managed — is. It signals experience with real money and real stakes, which is exactly the experience you are buying.
More important than the figure is what the agency measures. The weak version of digital marketing reports impressions, reach, and likes — numbers that always go up and rarely mean revenue. The strong version installs proper conversion tracking, connects a CRM, and reports leads and closed business. Ask directly: how will I know this is working, and in what numbers? If the answer is reach, keep looking.
Ask for work you can visit, not a slide. Live websites, real products, named projects you can open in a new tab are worth more than a portfolio of screenshots, because they cannot be faked. An agency that also builds the website and CRM behind the campaigns — not just the ads — can close the leaks where most Nepal marketing budgets are actually lost: a slow site, an unanswered enquiry, a lead that never reaches a follow-up.
This is the difference between an agency that runs ads into a broken funnel and one that owns the whole revenue path. For a business that wants growth rather than activity, the second is usually the better partner.
Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed results by a fixed date: no one controls Google's or Meta's algorithms, and a guarantee is a sign someone is selling certainty they cannot deliver. Reporting that is only ever vanity metrics: if you never see cost per lead or return, the results probably do not survive that scrutiny. No clear answer on who owns your accounts and data: you should own your ad accounts, domains, CRM data, and creative, with clean handover if you leave — an agency that keeps them hostage is a risk, not a partner. And a rate card with no discovery: a serious agency scopes to your goal rather than selling a fixed package regardless of fit.
Five questions cut through most of the noise. Where can I verify your partner status? How much real ad spend have you managed, and how do you report results? Can I see live work you have delivered? Who owns the accounts, data, and creative, and what happens if we part ways? And who, specifically, will run my account day to day?
A good agency answers all five plainly. Arcetis is built to: a verified Google and Shopify Partner with $270K+ USD in managed ad spend, live products and client sites you can open, CRM-verified reporting, client-owned accounts with clean handover, and a dedicated lead on every account. Judge us on the checks — that is the standard the whole market should be held to.
Choosing on price and tagline instead of verifiable evidence. The cheapest retainer that reports likes often costs more per real result than a slightly higher one that tracks leads and revenue. Judge on what is measured, not what is promised.
For execution quality, process and discipline matter more than a street address — good work travels over a call and a shared account. Local context helps for market judgement. Weigh both, but don't pay a premium purely for proximity you won't use.
You should. Insist on owning your ad accounts, domains, CRM data, and creative, with clean handover if the relationship ends. An agency that keeps these under its own control is a risk if you ever want to leave.
