The most important questions to ask a marketing agency during a discovery call are the ones that reveal how the agency thinks, not just what it sells. Ask about who does the actual work on your account, how performance is measured and reported, who owns your ad accounts and data if the relationship ends, and whether the agency can explain its strategy in terms that connect to your revenue — not just clicks and impressions.
A discovery call is not a sales presentation you sit through. It is a two-way evaluation. The agency is deciding whether your business is a good fit for its services, and you are deciding whether this team can actually improve your advertising performance and search visibility. Walking in with the right questions changes the dynamic entirely. You stop reacting to a pitch and start leading a conversation.
This guide organizes the questions that matter most into clear categories, explains what each question is designed to surface, and gives you practical guidance on what a strong answer sounds like versus one that should give you pause. These are the questions Adwest’s team — with more than 25 years of digital marketing experience — has seen separate productive partnerships from wasted budgets.
Most advice about discovery calls focuses entirely on what to ask the agency. Almost none of it addresses the fact that you need to show up prepared, too. An experienced agency will ask sharp questions about your business. If you cannot answer them, the call stalls — and the agency cannot give you a meaningful assessment of what it can do for you.
Before your discovery call, gather the following:
This preparation is not just about efficiency. It signals to the agency that you are serious, organized, and ready for a real conversation — which tends to produce a better call for both sides.
Start here. Experience matters, but the right kind of experience matters more. An agency that has run thousands of campaigns in industries nothing like yours may not understand your customer, your sales cycle, or your competitive landscape.
A strong agency will give you specific, grounded responses. It will name the types of businesses it has worked with, describe real challenges it has faced, and explain how its approach has evolved. It will be honest about what it does well and where its experience is thinner.
An evasive answer relies on broad, uncommitted language — phrases along the lines of serving every type of company imaginable or having helped countless clients achieve growth. Those responses tell you nothing about fit. Press for specifics.
This is where you learn whether the agency has a real process or just follows a template. Strategy questions separate agencies that think from agencies that execute on autopilot.
You want to hear structured thinking. A strong response might go something like this: the agency would begin by reviewing your existing campaigns and website, then pinpoint the most significant gaps between where you are and where you want to be. From there, it would propose a channel mix and offer grounded expectations for the first quarter. That kind of answer reflects process, honesty, and a genuine willingness to tailor the approach to your specific situation.
Be cautious if the agency jumps straight to recommending specific tactics before asking about your business. Recommending Google Ads or SEO before understanding your goals, market, and current performance is a sign of a one-size-fits-all approach.
This is the question most business owners wish they had asked sooner. The person on the discovery call is often a senior salesperson or agency principal. The person managing your account day to day may be someone entirely different — sometimes with far less experience.
The gap between the sales team and the execution team is one of the most common sources of frustration in agency relationships. You evaluate the agency based on the senior person you meet during the discovery call. Then your account gets handed to someone you have never spoken with. Asking this question directly and expecting a direct answer protects you from that disconnect.
Reporting is where trust is built or broken. If you cannot understand what your agency is doing and whether it is working, the relationship will erode regardless of actual performance.
Be cautious about agencies that lead with impressions, reach, or page views as their primary success metrics. Those numbers can look impressive without translating into qualified leads or revenue. The metrics that matter most for search engine marketing clients are typically cost per lead, cost per acquisition, conversion rate, return on ad spend, and qualified lead volume. If the agency’s reporting does not connect activity to business outcomes, that is worth questioning.
This section covers the questions that protect your business financially and legally. Many business owners skip these during the discovery call because they feel awkward, but they are essential.
Adwest has seen businesses lose years of campaign data, Google Business Profile reviews, and ad account history because they never confirmed who owned those assets. The right answer to this question is simple: you, the business owner, should own your ad accounts, your website, your data, and your profiles. The agency manages them on your behalf. If an agency resists this or structures ownership so you cannot leave without losing your assets, that is a significant concern.
This is a category that most discovery call guides do not cover — and most agencies cannot answer well. As search evolves beyond traditional Google results into AI-driven answer systems like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and other large language model platforms, businesses increasingly need to understand how their visibility in those environments is being addressed.
Adwest’s team has been working with search engine marketing since Google’s inception. That depth of experience across PPC, SEO, and now GEO and AEO means the team understands not just how search works today, but how it is changing — and what businesses should be doing now to stay visible as AI-driven discovery grows.
Not every warning sign is obvious. Some red flags are well-known. Others are subtler and easier to miss.
Pay close attention to what the agency asks during the call. The quality of an agency’s questions reveals more about its competence than the quality of its pitch.
A strong agency will ask about:
If an agency spends the entire call talking about itself and never asks detailed questions about your business, that tells you something important. It means the agency is more interested in closing a deal than in understanding whether it can actually help you. The best agency relationships start with genuine curiosity about your business, not a rehearsed deck.
The last few minutes of a discovery call are your opportunity to clarify expectations and understand next steps.
If you are speaking with more than one agency, you need a consistent way to compare what you heard. Here is a simple framework:
| Evaluation Area | What You Want | What Should Concern You |
|---|---|---|
| Experience and fit | Specific examples relevant to your industry or business type | Broad, uncommitted claims about serving every type of client |
| Strategy approach | A process that starts with understanding your business before recommending channels | Jumping to tactics without asking about your goals |
| Account team | Clear identification of who does the day-to-day work | Inability to name the account manager or explain workload |
| Reporting and KPIs | Metrics tied to business outcomes, regular reporting cadence | Emphasis on impressions and traffic with no connection to leads or revenue |
| Pricing and contracts | Transparent fee structure, clear scope, you own your assets | Hidden fees, agency-owned accounts, long lock-in contracts with no exit terms |
| AI-search readiness | Clear explanation of GEO, AEO, and AI-visibility approach | Buzzwords without substance or avoidance of the topic entirely |
| Honesty and tone | Measured language, realistic timelines, willingness to discuss failures | Guarantees, pressure tactics, or agreement with everything you say |
No single answer should disqualify an agency on its own. But patterns matter. If you notice evasiveness, vague promises, or pressure across multiple areas, that pattern is likely to continue after you sign.
Remember that results in digital advertising vary by market size, competition, budget, offer quality, website conversion rate, tracking quality, and campaign execution. No agency — regardless of how good its discovery call is — can guarantee specific outcomes. What you are evaluating is whether the agency thinks clearly, communicates honestly, and has a realistic process for improving your performance over time.
A discovery call is the first substantive conversation between a business and a marketing agency. It is designed for both sides to evaluate fit — the agency learns about your business, goals, and challenges, and you learn about the agency’s approach, team, and capabilities. It is not a commitment. It is a mutual evaluation.
Most productive discovery calls run between 30 and 60 minutes. Shorter calls rarely allow enough depth for meaningful evaluation. Calls longer than an hour can indicate that the agency is using the time as a sales presentation rather than a focused conversation.
At minimum, bring clarity on your business goals, your current marketing situation, a rough budget range, your timeline, and any questions specific to your industry or challenges. Having access information for existing Google Ads accounts, Google Analytics, or Google Business Profile is helpful but not always necessary for the first call.
A good agency will ask about your business goals, target customers, competitive landscape, current marketing efforts, budget range, and internal team structure. If the agency does not ask about your business at all and only talks about its own services, that is a concern.
Fit depends on several factors: relevant experience, transparent communication, realistic expectations, clear pricing, account ownership terms, and whether the agency’s approach aligns with your goals. No single question determines fit, but the pattern of responses across the discovery call reveals whether the agency thinks clearly and operates honestly.
Ask whether the agency offers GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization), how it approaches visibility in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, and whether it can explain the difference between traditional SEO and AI-search optimization. These services are relatively new, and the agency’s ability to explain them clearly is a strong indicator of whether it genuinely understands the space.
A discovery call is not a formality. It is the single best opportunity you have to evaluate whether a marketing agency can actually help your business before you commit budget, time, and trust. The questions in this guide are designed to help you lead that conversation with clarity and confidence — not to guarantee a perfect outcome, but to give you the information you need to make a well-informed decision.
Adwest has been helping businesses navigate search engine marketing since 1997. Our team of search engine marketing professionals brings more than 25 years of experience in Google Ads PPC, SEO, GEO, AEO, and digital advertising strategy. We understand the questions business owners need answered because we have been on the other side of those calls for decades.
If you are evaluating agencies and want a straightforward conversation about your goals, your visibility, and what a realistic path forward looks like, we are here for that call.
Book a Free Consultation with Adwest’s Digital Marketing Experts and get a Free 14 Day Trial for GEO and AEO. Or call us directly at 800-350-5312.
