Digital marketing agency

About the business

The biggest mistake in this business happens in the first line of the accounts. The money a client hands over for advertising is not your income - it belongs to Facebook or Google. Your income is only the service fee or the monthly retainer. Running a one-lakh-taka boost and calling it one lakh of work misstates the business, and it misleads the bank as well. The market is not small: on the government's own figures, roughly Tk 7,400 crore a year of digital advertising transactions take place in Bangladesh, of which about Tk 1,100 crore of VAT goes uncollected. VAT on digital advertising is 15 percent. For years the real work of many Bangladeshi agencies was intermediation. Advertising on Facebook needed a dual-currency card and a passport endorsement, which most small entrepreneurs did not have, so they boosted on the agency's card and paid a premium on the dollar. In August 2026 Meta began piloting bKash as a payment method on Facebook ad accounts. An entrepreneur can now run ads in taka straight from their own wallet - which closes that intermediation income. An agency whose money came from selling access to a card now has to sell actual work. The rules are changing too: under the Ministry of Commerce's draft Cross-Border Digital Commerce Policy 2026, published on 22 July 2026, foreign platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Google must take DBID registration and pay VAT and income tax before advertising in Bangladesh.

Unit economics

What you need to start

• Computers or laptops, good internet, a UPS or backup, and a camera and editing software for photo and video work. Load-shedding stops the work, so backup is not optional.Equipment
• Trade licence from the city corporation or municipality: form Tk 10, licence book Tk 50, standard tax Tk 30, non-judicial stamp Tk 150-300, licence fee Tk 100-60,000 by trade type, plus VAT and signboard fee. Issued in 3-5 working days.Licence
• TIN and VAT registration from the National Board of Revenue. VAT on digital advertising is 15 percent. Meta is registered as a VAT payer in Bangladesh, so paying in taka makes VAT on each transaction easy to track.Licence
• The ability to make content and creative, to work inside ads manager, and to read the numbers back to the client. Skill at pressing the boost button alone is losing its market value fast.Skill
• A means of paying internationally: a dual-currency credit or debit card with a passport endorsement, capped at USD 12,000 a year. Meta has also begun piloting bKash as a payment method on Facebook ad accounts.Supplier
• A small office or a room at home. You need somewhere to sit with a client, but not a large office to start.Workspace

How the work is done

1. 1Decide first what you are selling: strategy and content, or merely access to run ads. The second is running out of road.
2. 2Take a trade licence from the city corporation or municipality and a TIN from NBR; business clients will not pay without an invoice.
3. 3Sit with an accountant on VAT registration. VAT on digital advertising is 15 percent, and the contract must say plainly whose liability it is.
4. 4Write the retainer and the ad budget as separate lines in the contract. Merged into one line, the client assumes it is all your income and the negotiation starts from the wrong place.
5. 5Work inside the client's own ad account, not on your card. Meta is adding bKash to Facebook ad accounts, so the client can pay in taka directly and your money stays free.
6. 6Give every client a monthly report: what was spent, what it reached, what it sold. Without one, after three months the client cannot see why they are paying and leaves.
7. 7Do not let one client carry a large share of income. In a small agency, losing one can stop the month's salaries.
8. 8Do the content, photography, video and landing pages yourself, not just the boosting. When the platform makes payment easy, boosting alone is no longer a service.
9. 9Bring foreign client money in through legal channels. Shown as export earnings it may qualify for policy support; the draft policy proposes recognising digital export earnings like conventional exports.
10. 10Keep backup power and internet. A missed deadline with an international client does not come back - in September 2026 the press reported Bangladeshi freelancers at risk from frequent load-shedding.

Sources

• সিটি কর্পোরেশন থেকে ট্রেড লাইসেন্স প্রাপ্তির ধাপ সমূহ

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital, Time to first revenue · বাংলাদেশ

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