Why Discovery Questions Are Critical for Accurate Pricing

Think of discovery as the blueprint phase before construction begins. Without detailed information about the client’s business, objectives, challenges, and resources, you’re essentially guessing at the scope of work and the value you can deliver. This uncertainty directly impacts your ability to price effectively.

Thorough discovery allows you to:

• Understand the True Scope: Uncover hidden complexities, technical requirements, or internal constraints that could add significant time or effort.
• Identify Client Maturity: Gauge their understanding of LinkedIn Ads, their internal resources, and their readiness for lead generation campaigns.
• Assess Value Potential: Determine the potential ROI your services could generate for them, which is crucial for value-based pricing models.
• Mitigate Risk: Identify potential roadblocks early on, allowing you to adjust your approach and pricing accordingly.
• Build Rapport: Establish trust and position yourself as a strategic partner, not just a vendor.

Ignoring this phase or asking superficial questions is a common pitfall that leaves many agencies leaving money on the table or taking on unprofitable clients.

Key Discovery Questions Around Business & Marketing Objectives

Start broad to understand the client’s overall business context before diving into the specifics of LinkedIn Ads.

• What are your primary business goals for the next 12-18 months? (e.g., increase revenue by X%, launch a new product, expand into a new market)
• How does lead generation specifically fit into achieving those business goals? (Are they purely top-of-funnel, looking for MQLs, or sales-qualified leads - SQLs?)
• What is your definition of a ‘qualified lead’? (This is critical! Get specific criteria: job title, company size, industry, budget, authority, need, timeline - BANT or similar)
• What is the lifetime value (LTV) of a typical customer? (Understanding this helps justify ad spend and demonstrate ROI potential.)
• What is your target Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) or Cost Per Qualified Lead (CPQL)? (Manage expectations early and understand their profitability goals.)
• What are your current marketing efforts, and which have been most/least successful? (Helps identify what’s working and where LinkedIn Ads can fit in.)
• How does your sales team follow up with leads? What is their process and typical close rate from leads? (Crucial for understanding lead handoff and sales-marketing alignment.)

The answers to these questions inform the scale, complexity, and ultimately, the potential value of the engagement, impacting your pricing model (e.g., retainer, performance-based component, project fee).

Target Audience & Market Specific Discovery Questions

Understanding the target audience on LinkedIn is fundamental to successful campaign strategy and scoping the complexity of audience targeting and creative messaging.

• Describe your ideal customer profile (ICP) in detail. (Job titles, seniority, industry, company size, location, skills, groups they belong to on LinkedIn, interests.)
• Are there secondary or tertiary audiences you want to reach? (Adds complexity and potential cost.)
• What are the biggest pain points, challenges, and aspirations of this audience? (Informs messaging and creative strategy.)
• Where else does this audience spend their time online or offline? (Helps understand their digital footprint beyond LinkedIn.)
• Who are your main competitors, and how are you positioned differently? (Provides market context and potential ad saturation insights.)

Detailed audience information helps estimate targeting options, potential audience size (and therefore reach/spend potential), and the level of effort required for compelling ad creative and landing page copy tailored to specific segments. This directly influences your service package design and pricing.

LinkedIn Ads Experience & Technical Setup Questions

Understanding their past LinkedIn Ads experience (or lack thereof) and their technical setup is vital for assessing the foundational work required.

• Have you run LinkedIn Ads before? If yes, what were the results (good or bad) and what types of campaigns? (Past performance data is gold. Bad experiences might require managing expectations.)
• Do you have a LinkedIn Ad Account? Access levels? (Need to factor in setup/access time.)
• Is the LinkedIn Insight Tag installed correctly on your website? Do you use Google Tag Manager? (Technical hurdle assessment.)
• Is conversion tracking set up and configured correctly? For what specific actions? (Crucial for measuring ROI.)
• Do you have any existing audiences built in LinkedIn (e.g., website retargeting, list uploads)? (Leveraging existing assets saves time.)
• What is your process for creating landing pages? Who is responsible (internal team, another vendor)? (Impacts scope – are you building/optimizing pages or just driving traffic?)
• What CRM or marketing automation platform do you use? How are leads currently captured and passed to sales? (Integration complexity assessment - HubSpot (https://www.hubspot.com), Salesforce (https://www.salesforce.com), etc.)

This category uncovers technical debt or required setup work that needs to be included in your scope and potentially priced as a one-time setup fee. Understanding their internal capabilities (e.g., they have a strong internal copywriter) can also influence your service offering and pricing.

Budget, Timeline, and Decision-Making Questions

Directly addressing budget and timeline, while often sensitive, is necessary for qualifying the lead and aligning expectations. Frame budget questions around investment in achieving their goals.

• What is your realistic monthly budget range for LinkedIn Ad spend (media budget)? (Separate from your management fee.)
• What is your desired timeline to launch campaigns? (Urgency can impact resource allocation and potentially pricing.)
• Who is involved in the decision-making process for hiring a digital marketing agency?
• What is your typical process for evaluating and selecting vendors like us?
• What are your key criteria for success in this engagement? (Aligns goals and KPIs.)

While you shouldn’t base your price solely on their stated budget (especially if you use value-based pricing), understanding their budget expectations helps determine if they are a good fit for your agency’s typical client tier. Knowing the decision process and timeline helps you manage your sales cycle.

This is also where discussing different potential service packages or tiers based on their needs uncovered in discovery becomes relevant. A tool like PricingLink (https://pricinglink.com) can make presenting these potential scopes, add-ons, and tiered pricing options interactively very easy for your client, allowing them to explore options and see how the investment changes based on their selections, right after the discovery call.