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I got the Ask book when it came out, but it wasn’t until just recently that I got to put to the test the actual system and the step-by-step process explained in the book.
With my teammates at Data Driven Marketing we have recently developed a quiz funnel for a client who has a membership. We decided to try a quiz funnel for three reasons:
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The brand already had a quiz in place.
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We were looking for a great, user friendly way of creating a powerful bridge towards the offer.
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We needed a fun, reliable way to convert cold website traffic into paying customers.
With that in mind, the research began.
We stopped at the Ask Method, which is explained in a book by Ryan Levesque (CEO of The ASK Method® Company and author of the #1 National Best-Selling book, ASK – as featured by Inc. Magazine as their #1 Marketing Book of the Year and by Entrepreneur Magazine as their #2 Must-Read Book.).
It explains a step by step system that uses questions, segmentation, and a customized buyer journey to figure out exactly what your customer wants—and the exact language your customer uses to express pain points, objectives, and desires.
According to the book this is the “method my clients, customers, and I have used to quietly generate over 3 million leads and over 200,000 customers across 23 different major markets in just the past several years”.
Fortunately, we went through this book while Ryan Levesque was running a launch and we got even more in depth info and examples of how a quiz funnel is supposed to work.
You might have already tried to figure out what kind of a pizza or Disney character you are. And between you and me, quizzes, even when silly, are a fun experience. Quizzes work because they appeal to our curiosity about what we can discover about who we are.
Examples of quizzes that businesses WOULD use:
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What’s Your #1 Online Traffic Booster/Killer/Mistake?
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What Is the Best Backpack for Your Personality?
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What Is the Best Mattress for Your Back Problems?
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What Web Hosting Platform/ Social Channel/ Camera Is Right for You?
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The #1 Reason Your Ads/Marketing Strategy Is Not Working
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What Is The Perfect Wedding Dress For Your Body Type
If you are planning to implement a quiz funnel for your business, you can continue reading.
I am sharing the basics of the system Ryan explains in his book Ask, and the behind the scenes schematics of actually implementing a quiz funnel, and learning the Ask Method.
The book is a very good read if you like to learn about entrepreneurship (the first part of the book explains how Ryan got to the Ask Method), marketing and psychology in general, or segmentation tactics and email marketing strategy.
So, who can benefit from learning the Ask Method and implementing a quiz funnel?
Ryan identifies 6 big categories of business models that can use a quiz funnel. If you are in e-commerce and selling physical products, if you are selling digital products such as courses, software, memberships, templates, checklists etc, if you are in affiliate marketing, if you are a coach, an agency or a consultant, if you are working in lead generation – and even if you are a local small business.
The basic principle of the Ask Method is: asking the right questions at the right time without making assumptions of what you believe your audience wants or needs.
And it is where most online businesses fail.
Until you ask your audience to tell you what they don’t want, want, need or don’t need you will never know who it is you are communicating with or selling to.
For this purpose, the Ask Method recommends using four basic survey types at four very specific points in your online sales funnel, that will help you:
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define your market (The “Deep Dive” Survey)
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We were already familiar with using this type of survey. It is an essential part of what we do to create a customer avatar and it is one of the building blocks of creating a funnel strategy that works.
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This survey consists of one open ended question that aims to extract as much uncensored information from your subscribers about their biggest challenge with a specific topic (eg: what is your biggest challenge when it comes to promoting your business, your digital marketing, growing your business, hiring new people, getting new clients, converting prospects etc)
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The answers will help you create what Ryan refers to as “buckets”. We can call them segments of your audience and it would be just the same. After running this survey you have an overview of your buckets/segments, major pain points and actual customer language you can use to populate email and sales page copy.
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engage your market (The “Micro-Commitment Bucket” Survey)
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This survey uses the answers provided in the first survey to populate a short series of questions and multiple choice answers that will lead cold traffic or unconverted leads to become your subscribers and hopefully clients.
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The Micro-Commitment Bucket Survey is basically your quiz. It consists of maximum 10 easy to answer questions that use customer language discovered in the Deep Dive survey to lead people from your pre-identified buckets into a “customized” buyer journey.
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For instance, you have identified 4 buckets/segments of your audience and now you have the opportunity to lead each of them into a personalized journey that uses the exact pain points and phrases identified in the deep dive survey. Once they start the quiz and answer the trigger questions, you can embark them into a journey that consists of customized sales pages, and email follow-ups that touch on the exact pain points of each segment instead of a generalized one.
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refine your marketing (The “Do You Hate Me” Survey)
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This survey is sent during the final follow up sequence of a lead that has entered your quiz funnel but hasn’t converted yet. It is used to gain even more insight about your audience and buckets.
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Ryan suggests you ask your non-buyers right on the spot why they haven’t purchased your offer.
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redeem your marketing efforts (The “Pivot” Survey)
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This survey closes and opens a loop in your lead’s journey. It basically asks your lead what else would they like to learn or need help with that you are able to teach/provide.
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This embarks them into an educational journey that ends up with promoting a new offer from your portfolio, or a different way of working with you.
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The nice part about the Ask book is that it gives you the detailed steps of implementing the surveys above, from how to actually create the questions of your surveys, how to interpret the answers, how to create the actual buckets, to the actual follow up email sequences and how to introduce your offer on the results pages.
Even if you are a complete beginner in online marketing, if you take the process and implement it step-by-step you will be able to launch your own quiz funnel. Sure, it is going to take some time, and dedication out of you – but it will help you understand who your audience is, how to improve your sales copy and how to convert more of your traffic into customers who feel heard and understood by your brand.
So, how do you actually implement the Ask Method, what kind of tools are you going to need?
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Quiz platform – Ryan has developed his very own quiz/survey platform (bucket.io). You can get access to this during one of his launches. But if you’re not able to access this tool because of the pricing, or you simply don’t want to wait until the next launch to get access, you can try an alternative, such as typeform.com.
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Website or Funnel tool – You will need this to create landing pages (results pages, sales and checkout pages, any follow up trainings etc). You can use WordPress or you can go with a dedicated funnel tool, such as ClickFunnnels.
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Email platform – Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Drip – anything that allows you to create tags, and integrate with your website/funnel and survey tools. You will need this to operate the email side of the quiz funnel, such as sending the emails asking leads to fill in your surveys, to sending the instant “Your results are in” message, or the follow up sequences.
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Zapier – this one is essential. While some tools have native integrations (Typeform and Mailchimp), you’re better off with adding Zapier into the process because some specific bits are not covered by that native integration. For instance Typeform has a native integration with Mailchimp that allows you to add a new contact to your list and tag them based on the answer they choose in your quiz into Mailchimp, but it does not work if that contact is already on your list and decides to take the quiz.
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Video recording – Ryan suggests you use videos on your landing page and results page to engage people into taking your quiz and leading them towards your offers. Truth is video is a thousand times better than just having plain text on your pages. So you are going to need a DSLR camera or a smartphone with HD camera capabilities and a tripod. It’s best to record this with good lighting (natural light, or with lights for video recording) and without background noise (a good mic is going to make a world of difference, and the good news is that you can get a quality one for an affordable price). By the way if you have no idea what to say on your video, Ryan is giving you the actual script in the book.
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Video editing – If you are going to record a video, you are definitely going to need to edit it. The basic editing includes trimming out the awkward parts, the babbling, that moment when your kid walked on you or when your cat jumped on your lap (oh well, you could keep that one though, cats rule the internet after all). You can do this with basic video editing apps. I use a professional tool, called Cyberlink.
All of this sounds awesome, but what are some of the downsides that you should know about?
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You need traffic to get people into your quiz funnel and/or people on your email list. The more of both, the better. The more niche, even better.
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If you are just starting and you don’t have traffic or a big email list, you should consider running cold traffic into your quiz. Depending on your niche, this can be effective with only a couple of bucks per day. Fair warning though, there are industries where the acquisition cost of a lead is a couple of dollars, whereas some will go for pennies.
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You will need to fork out some good money on tools. Whether you are using Ryan’s quiz tool or a good alternative you will need to buy a paid plan. Same goes for your email marketing platform. And if you don’t know how to design pages, or would rather just skip that part, you should consider hiring someone to do it for you. Same goes for copywriting emails and pages.
Is it worth it?
In marketing it is always worth it to know who your audience is, what they want and how they refer to their pain points and desires. If you don’t do market research you are basically counting on pure luck to get your message across and get people to buy.
Plus, according to the case studies Ryan presents in his book, and masterclasses, a well-designed quiz funnel can cut cost per lead by as much as 90% because people love taking quizzes to learn more about themselves.
Ready to give the Ask method a try? Here’s where I recommend you to start:
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Sign up for the Quiz Funnel Masterclass (it’s not always open, but when you sign up you will be added to the waitlist)
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Watch Ryan’s overview of the Ask Blueprint here
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Look at how others are doing quiz funnels
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Figure out what is the offer you will lead people into after they take your quiz
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After reading the book, lay down your plan and figure out a timeline to develop your assets
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Surveys
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Offers
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Design and write landing pages
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Record and edit videos
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Write and set up emails
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Integrations
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Set up of tools
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Running the surveys
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Evaluating your answers
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Set up your ad campaigns
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Set up your tracking
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Great summary and comparison of the breakdown between the DDS and the quiz funnel. It’s helping to answer my question/resolve my confusion.
I’m struggling with my band-aid outcomes & therefore the right quiz to ask, which leads me to realize I need to do the DDS 1st … And that it is different than that quiz (something you clarified nicely for me!). The DDS should give me the ammunition I need to figure out the quiz.
But I’m starting from zero … no list at all. How do I motivate people to go through the DDS? I get how they’d be tempted with a quiz but can’t figure out how to motivate them to answer the survey.
I feel like I’m missing an important piece.
But you’ve gotten me a little bit closer to finding my solution. Thanks. Great sum up post!